Outgoing UN Ambassador Nikki Haley addresses the United Nations Security Council on...

Outgoing UN Ambassador Nikki Haley addresses the United Nations Security Council on Nov. 26. Credit: AFP / Getty Images / Don Emmert

UNITED NATIONS — Nikki Haley marched into the lobby of the United Nations’ Manhattan headquarters in January 2017 with big plans.

President Donald Trump’s newly confirmed ambassador said the U.S. mission to the UN would work smarter and reform the international body.

Weeks later, addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, she famously used a metaphor that grated on the ears of some diplomats. A novice in international affairs, she said there was a “new sheriff in town” who would whip the global body into shape.

Now, nearly two years later, Haley has stepped down from her post as U.S. ambassador to the UN with what local scholars described as a mixed legacy. They say her tenure, which ended on Monday, was marked by notable accomplishments — including major Security Council resolutions that would be a feat even for the most seasoned diplomat — along with some maneuvers that isolated the United States and may have marred its image.

The former governor of South Carolina, who during the 2016 presidential campaign positioned herself in opposition to Trump, quickly became one of his more prudent cabinet members. And she was a stalwart for Trump’s laser focus on buttressing Israel, which the administration maintains has been bullied at the UN for decades.

She was a staunch proponent of some traditional U.S. positions, often publicly chiding Russia and China, as well as Iran, Syria and North Korea, and getting the UN to shed red tape — but she departed from other long-held U.S. positions in expressing an unabashedly unilateral approach in what is perhaps the world’s most prominent multilateral body.

“Long Islanders are likely to see Ambassador Haley’s aggressive support for Israel and her weak leadership on climate change as a mixed legacy,” said Scott Carlin, a professor of geography at LIU Post in Brookville, referring to the United States’ decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement even as scientists sound the alarm that the world is getting warmer.

He praised her as a “rational” voice who secured sanctions against North Korea as well as Russia and an arms embargo in South Sudan, which is embroiled in a civil war.

Still, he said, “Nikki Haley missed an important opportunity to be a visible and passionate public advocate for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, with an emphasis on human rights for all peoples.”

Katie Laatikainen, director of international studies at Adelphi University in Garden City, said Haley departed from previous ambassadors because she declined to pay lip service to the UN’s communal approach. Haley articulated the U.S. decision to withdraw from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, and to exit the Global Compact on Migration.

“Her lack of even rhetorical support for the concept of the international community coupled with a clear preference for defining America’s friends, foremost Israel but also Saudi Arabia, and enemies — Iran, Russia, and early on North Korea — represents an important shift in the way the U.S. approaches the UN,” she said. “She was successful in promoting a Trumpian approach to U.S. policy at the UN, so she might be considered successful from the administration’s point of view.”

But, Laatikainen said, “This approach failed to win a great deal of support from the rest of the UN membership, and so a number of high-profile US-sponsored resolutions,“ such as the resolution against Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls the occupied territory of Gaza, was roundly rejected in the UN General Assembly in December. The General Assembly also voted to condemn the U.S. decision in late 2017 to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, with 128 countries voting for the condemnation, nine voting against it and 35 nations abstaining.

Haley said ominously that the United States would “remember” how each nation voted.

“The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in this assembly,” she said, threatening to withhold aid or advocacy to countries that didn’t share the U.S.’s view.

“She and the Trump administration then blame the UN for failing to do what the U.S. wants, appearing to understand the UN as a tool only for American interests,” Laatikainen said.

That transactional approach to international affairs is not necessarily new, said Hofstra University School of Law Professor Julian Ku, who serves as faculty director of international programs.

But Haley’s candor about it — stating on several occasions that she would be “taking names” by noting who voted with the United States and openly threatening to punish those nations who did not — is new.

“What’s different is that she said it in public,” he said, noting the arm-twisting done by previous ambassadors occurred in closed-door talk sessions or in private conversations in the halls of the UN, or in capitals during bilateral chats. “I think it’s almost certainly true that prior ambassadors said the same things — just not in public. The jury’s out on whether that was effective because she was able to get cooperation on some things and, on some things, she was not.”

Overall, Ku said, Haley’s tone was harsher than her predecessors’ and she reflected the Trump administration’s skepticism for international institutions, but he said she accomplished as much as an ambassador could in two years.

“I think she was a success as much as any U.S. ambassador can be successful at this,” he said, adding that two years is a long time to serve in the post. Ku said Haley’s most significant contribution likely was turning up the pressure on North Korea, which has long been under UN Security Council sanctions but — after Haley’s advocacy — is now saddled with the toughest sanctions ever, coping with measures that have put a dent in the country’s finances.

“I think the most important legacy for her is her keeping the United Nations as a focus for the U.S. government,” he said. “It’s a place where you speak to the world, and she commanded a lot of public attention and focused everyone’s attention on the UN in a way that another ambassador would not have. The fact that she played a prominent role at the UN was a really important part of her legacy because it made the UN seem very important.”

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