Donald Trump is right to ditch Unesco

Donald Trump and the United Nations don’t appear to have much in common. Trump is loud, angry, insular, lumpen and uncultured. The UN is caring, sharing, virtuous, and busy saving the world from war, famine and disease. But they do share something important: they are both worms in an apple. Trump is a statist hollowing out a conservative movement and a nativist who made it to the top of a nation of immigrants. The UN, founded on horror and hope after World War II, was supposed to uphold international norms and universal rights. It was an idealist’s dream. Yet that mission has been debased by a General Assembly packed with member states that practice few of the ideals it preaches, a Security Council which includes global destabiliser Russia, and institutions alternately corrupt and ideological. 

So, Trump and the UN are, in fact, something of a perfect match: arrogant wreckers of principles and institutions they are sworn to defend, all the while demanding praise for their depredations. The President’s decision to withdraw the United States from Unesco, the UN’s educational and cultural arm, is a lovers’ quarrel of sorts, for both seek the same thing.