The US and the UN #2: The 'strong horse' wins big at the Security Council - Thomas Lifson

by Thomas Lifson

Don't take it from me; take it from a former passionate NeverTrump.

The U.N. General Assembly's theatrics are meaningless in terms of real power, as in the vote declaring "null and void" the planned move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Where it matters, in the Security Council, Ambassador Haley just pulled off a triumph.

Don't take it from me, because I am a supporter of the president and his policies. Take it from former NeverTrump Streif of #NeverTrump Red State, who just wrote an astonishing paean to the man s/he used to despise.

[A] lesson [is] to be learned for the giddy left who were proclaiming the US to be isolated at the United Nations in the wake of the shameful vote of the UN General Assembly yesterday to condemn the United States for exercising its sovereign right to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Even as the vote was taking place, Nikki Haley's staff was circulating a no-notice resolution to tighten sanctions on North Korea and asking for a vote today[.] ...
For an "isolated" nation to pursue this strategy would be delusional. But for a strong nation, confident in its goals and dismissive of the nonsense that passes for diplomacy at the UN, it signals that the vote of the mob is of no import. Which was it?

And in fact (via The New York Times):

The United Nations Security Council imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Friday that significantly choke off new fuel supplies and order North Koreans working overseas to return home within two years, in what may prove the last test of whether any amount of economic pressure can force it to reverse course on its nuclear program.
The sanctions, adopted by a vote of 15 to 0, were the third imposed this year in an escalating effort to force the North into negotiations.

These new sanctions go after one of the last remaining sources of North Korea's hard currency, beyond outright criminality like counterfeiting and the drug trade. Streif correctly concludes:

If the US was [sic] truly isolated and ineffectual, Russia or China would have vetoed the resolution. Or one of the Security Council members would have voted no. That didn't happen.

I am not tired of winning – not yet, anyway. But there are three more years left on President Trump's term.

Thomas Lifson

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/12/the_us_and_the_un_2__the_strong_horse_wins_big_at_the_security_council.html

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