Q&A of the Day – The U.N.’s Relevance After President Trump’s Peace
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Social: @brianmuddradio
iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station page in the iHeart app.
Today’s entry: Submitted via Talkback: Why is the UN still existing and did nothing and yet Donald Trump did it singlehandedly. And everybody should be getting rid of the UN and put the right people in place, not that whole UN citizen whatever these people are in America. I think we should put a whole new coalition in there and get rid of what's in there now that's my opinion.
Bottom Line: And it’s an opinion that is shared by many. It obviously wasn’t the U.N. that brought peace to Israel and Gaza. It wasn’t the U.N. that brought 35 of the most diverse countries on the planet together in the name of peace in Egypt. It wasn’t the U.N. that brought about peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Cambodia and Thailand, Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India and Pakistan, Egypt and Ethiopia, Serbia and Kosovo, it was President Trump.
The United Nations, like many establishment institutions, has eroded public confidence and trust over time. The U.N. peaked in public approval worldwide in 1954 when Gallup found 80% of respondents across the world held a favorable view of the international body (with 74% approval within the United States that year). There was a slow and steady decline in trust and approval until the Gulf War in the early 1990’s, in the successful U.S. led U.N. mission, led to a bump back up to about 70% approval worldwide. The slow and steady decline resumed after the Gulf War, and entering the current Trump administration the U.N. was viewed favorably by 58% of adults worldwide according to the Pew Research Center. Ironically, President Trump’s success with peace this year seems to have led to a minor boost. Most recently Pew found that 61% of adults worldwide favorably viewed the U.N., the biggest year-over-year increase in over two decades. In other words, in certain parts of the world, the U.N. may be getting credit for Trump’s work.
In the U.S. the U.N.’s favorably rating stands below average at 57%, while a record low 32% of Americans currently view the U.N. as having done a “good” job according to Gallup. In other words, there’s about a quarter of the country that thinks that the U.N. as a body is in theory a good thing, while thinking that their current performance is poor. Regardless, with fewer than a third of Americans approving of the U.N.’s performance your frustration places you with two-thirds of the country.
Notably, especially in the wake of the recent peace deal, the country that’s the least approving of the United Nations is Israel where only 16% of the population currently view the body positively. The population that’s most approving of the U.N. is Nigeria at 80%. Here’s a semi-fun fact. Nigeria is also the country where President Trump is most popular too – he has a 79% approval rating in the African country (although it’s worth noting that Trump’s approval in Israel was 69% prior to the release of the hostages and the peace deal – so perhaps in real-time Nigeria is #2). Speaking of which...
While the U.N. may have received some ambient benefit of President Trump’s success with peace this year, it’s clear that President Trump is getting credit for his work here, and likely around the world too. The three most recent approval polls for President Trump show an average increase of 3-points to his approval since the original announcement of the peace deal – with none of the samples had been taken after Monday’s hostage release and official signing of peace. This suggests that a bigger boost than just a three-point move could be in order.
As expected, following the success of the historic middle east peace deal this week, President Trump will turn his attention back to the one war he said has proved harder to end than he thought that it would be, and that’s the war between Russia and Ukraine. President Trump is set to meet with Ukrainian President Zelensky on Friday.