At the United Nations on Monday, the United States sided with Russia multiple times in a remarkable break from its international diplomatic posture since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The American move made it clearer than ever: that President Donald Trump is pursuing a radical new alignment with Russia and, in the process, a new global order.
First, the U.S. voted against a U.N. resolution that condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The resolution, which called for Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, was backed by major European countries and Ukraine, and passed with the support of 93 U.N. member states. The U.S. was not among them. Instead, it voted in the same camp as nondemocratic Russian-aligned countries such as North Korea and Belarus, and against its allies across the Western world. (Notably, Israel joined the U.S. in its own precedent-breaking vote against the condemnation of Russia.)
The U.S. flipped its position on the war upside-down and diplomatically absolved Russia for the brutal invasion of its neighbor.
Crucially, the Trump administration declined to take a softer, middle-ground position of abstaining from the vote. That’s what some Russia-friendly countries such as China and Iran did, allowing those countries to avoid either endorsing interventionism or hurting their warm relationship with Russia. Abstention was also the move for a lot of countries across Latin America, Asia and Africa that have made clear that they have no desire to get involved on either side of the Russia-Ukraine war. But in voting against the resolution — after reportedly pressuring Ukraine to drop it — the U.S. flipped its position on the war upside-down and diplomatically absolved Russia for the brutal invasion of its neighbor.
After that vote, the U.S. presented its own resolution at the U.N. Security Council calling for a “swift end to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine” — but omitted any critical mention of Russia. U.S. allies on the Security Council, such as the United Kingdom and France, tried to amend the language of the resolution to reflect who was to blame for the war, and attempted to delay a vote on the measure. But they failed in their efforts. Ultimately, the U.K. and France — and three other European countries — abstained from the vote, which was ultimately approved by the Security Council. “No one wants peace more than Ukraine, but the terms of that peace matter,” U.K. Ambassador to the U.N. Barbara Woodward said afterward.Trump, usually eager to hold forth at length about the least consequential topics, has had little of substance to say about U.S. positioning at the U.N. “I would rather not explain it now, but it’s sort of self-evident I think,” he told reporters when asked about his administration’s opposition to the resolution condemning Russia.
He’s right: the vote speaks for itself. It says that Trump is not merely “soft” on Russia — as he was sometimes during his first term, although often not nearly as much as Democrats thought he was — but rather that he now sees a decades-long adversary as a friend, or at least potential friend, of America. It says that the once airtight U.S.-European alliance is collapsing. It says that the U.S. is done with even pretending to care about sovereignty norms and human rights. And it says that the U.S. backs an every-man-for-himself ethos in a global order in which the strong rule the weak without apology or shame.
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