The new US ambassador to the UN: The battering ram of Trump’s ‘Israel first’ policy

On the mental map of Elise Stefanik, the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, two countries are marked in red, one friendly and one hostile: Israel and Iran. The rest, except for China or Ukraine, do not seem to figure in the itinerary of the Republican congresswoman from New York, a neocon fervently reconverted to the MAGA movement and rewarded for it with this ambassadorship, of ministerial rank.

Stefanik’s agenda will therefore not differ too much from that of her Republican predecessor in the post, Nikki Haley, or that of the current U.S. permanent representative to the multinational forum, Democrat Linda Thomas-Greenfield. The shielding of Israel — by vetoing any Security Council resolution contrary to its interests — is a dogma of faith for all U.S. administrations, Democratic or Republican. Stefanik’s difference with regard to her predecessors is her belligerent and extreme character when it comes to defending Israel.

In May, Stefanik, 40, spoke before a Knesset committee, calling for “unconditional” aid to Israel. She said that Washington should provide Israel with “what it needs, when it needs it, without conditions, to achieve total victory in the face of evil,” which she said is embodied in Hamas.

Her speech was in response to President Joe Biden’s decision a few days earlier to halt the delivery of 3,500 heavy bombs to prevent the Israeli military offensive against Gaza from causing an even greater catastrophe in a densely populated area like Rafah, amid the enclave’s long-standing humanitarian crisis. “Total victory starts — but only starts — with wiping those responsible for October 7 off the face of the earth,” Stefanik proclaimed in the Israeli parliament, in a tone similar to that used to refer to Hamas by future Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

In her Knesset speech, Stefanik dwelt on her favorite topic: the rise of antisemitism in the U.S. At a hearing of the House Education Committee last December, she took center stage, lashing out viciously at three female presidents from the universities of MIT, Harvard, and Pennsylvania, who were called in to account for their responses to pro-Palestinian campus protests against the Gaza war.

After concluding that the three presidents had been too soft, Stefanik’s exorcism was such that the chancellor of the University of Pennsylvania, Liz Magill, resigned almost immediately, and that of Harvard, Claudine Gay, three weeks later. The pro-Palestinian mobilization that has swept through American campuses, in which many Jewish students and donors have seen messages of antisemitic hatred, was one of the main weapons deployed by the Republicans against the Democrats, and many believe that without Stefanik’s prominence, the debate would not have attained such virulence; in fact, most universities still block access to the campuses for fear of a repeat of the protests. Stefanik once again raised the specter before the Knesset, accusing pro-Palestinian activists of “calling for intifada and genocide” of Jews.

Her ardor was rewarded with the Israel Defense Prize, instituted by the late Israeli-American tycoon Sheldon Adelson — who orchestrated the political careers of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and his wife Miriam, a major donor to the Republican’s presidential campaign. Stefanik also boasts of having been part of Netanyahu’s personal entourage during his visit to the U.S. Congress in July, before which she delivered a particularly belligerent speech.

The fact that Stefanik considers the U.N. an antisemitic organization — in line with Israel’s repeated attacks on the body and its secretary-general, António Guterres — does not, according to the new administration, prevent her from playing a role that in theory, and always depending on Trump’s opinion, will be very similar to the one Haley had, albeit with more modest manners and tone. Her legacy at the U.N. generated many headlines: she defended the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018, calling it “terrible,” the withdrawal from the U.N. Human Rights Council, in protest against the allegedly discriminatory treatment of Israel, and the decision to leave the Paris Agreement in 2017.

The Paris Agreement stated that countries could not withdraw within the first three years of its entry into force in 2016, so by the time Trump began to move to formally exit, Haley was no longer U.N. ambassador. She resigned in December 2018, and it took the then-president eight months to find a replacement, evidence of his scant interest in the U.N. During that period, a career diplomat — something Haley and her eventual successor, Kelly Knight Craft, a wealthy businesswoman and Republican donor, were not — was in charge of U.S. representation.

The reasons for Haley’s resignation were not made public, but George Lopez, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Notre Dame, points to a lack of zeal when it came to defending the policies of the first Trump administration. “As Nikki Haley learned, as an ambassador you can follow the order to vote no in the Security Council, only to be called to the White House to be reprimanded for not doing so forcefully enough, or for a minor lapse in expression in explaining the U.S. position to the press,” explains the academic.

Haley’s fleeting stint at the U.N. was a shadow of Trump’s isolationist and dismissive foreign policy in his first term; but unlike then, when the Republican administration still contained some career officials, in the second, with the election of hawks to the main international posts, including Stefanik’s, Washington’s relationship with the rest of the world seems likely to be more turbulent. Progressive Jewish groups have described the future ambassador’s speech as “rabid,” an excess of ideological zeal that Haley lacked despite her radicalism: “Israel first,” a copy of the battle cry “America first” that has swept Trump back to the White House.

Of Stefanik’s likely role, Lopez, a two-time member of the U.N. panel of experts on North Korea, notes: “I suspect she will have a tough job. Her lack of diplomatic and U.N. experience contributes to this. Trump’s agenda to marginalize the U.N. from any significant role in resolving various wars, reducing nuclear weapons proliferation, or mitigating climate change, will also play a role. In addition, the U.S. will withdraw from several organizations under the U.N. umbrella, such as the World Health Organization.”

A key issue, according to the expert, will be “Stefanik’s ability to recruit staff with experience in the functioning of the U.N., and especially the Security Council. The State Department’s Office of International Organizational Affairs, from which nonpartisan staff are usually assigned to the U.N., could be eliminated under the cuts [proposed by] Trump-Musk-Rubio,” Lopez says in reference to the dismantling of the state apparatus envisaged by the new Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Lopez recommends Stefanik “spend the entire month of December at the mission [to the U.N.], when the U.S. will occupy the presidency of the Security Council. There, she will be able to observe the complexities of the position and learn very directly.”

There are no substantial differences between Stefanik and Haley. As a congresswoman, the former has vehemently denounced the Democratic administration for insufficiently arming Ukraine and Israel, and for supposedly bowing to China; she also criticized the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. Her flattery of Trump has borne fruit, although the political dimension of her role is largely irrelevant unless, because of its commitment to Israel, the U.S. decides to freeze its contribution to the U.N., to its ongoing peace missions — Washington is the organization’s largest contributor — or to deliver the final blow to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Israel’s bête noire.

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