NEW YORK — A year after President Donald Trump blasted world leaders at the United Nations for what he said was their failure to recognize his efforts to deliver world peace, he was set Tuesday to deliver a speech to a world that has been challenged by the war he started with Iran.
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With global energy prices skyrocketing, peace efforts faltering in Ukraine and Iran, and Republicans facing a wave of voter discontent in the coming midterm elections, Trump’s appearance this year was a measure of the scale of global conflicts.
Trump’s vigorous campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize — hot on the agenda a year ago ahead of the October announcement date — is far more muted this time. Instead, the president is focused on promoting the foreign policy wins he can claim, while trying to manage the many challenges arrayed in front of him.
Trump was scheduled to speed from his U.N. speech directly to a ceremony where he will sign a new agreement with Denmark and Greenland that he boasts will support American security in the Arctic territory for generations. It was the outcome of months of frantic diplomacy after the president all but threatened to seize Greenland by force in January — a possibility that frightened NATO allies whose security rests on the might of the United States.
“While others have spoken of peace, I have made it,” Trump was expected to say, according to excerpts from his speech the White House shared in advance. “While others have promised strength, I have used it to make America the most powerful country in the world.”
He was expected to warn that he stood ready to keep using the U.S. military wherever U.S. concerns were at threat.
“The United States will no longer permit threats to America to gain a foothold anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. And if necessary, we will use our unmatched military might to secure the vital national interests of the United States,” the written speech excerpts said.
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The speech will kick off a day full of diplomacy that serves as a reminder of the challenges Trump still faces — along with some areas where he has reshaped global affairs to his benefit. Later in the day, Trump is scheduled to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with whom Trump has had a hot-and-cold relationship and whose country is still facing an intense onslaught from Russia.
The president will stop by a meeting of Gulf leaders whose countries have faced assault from Tehran following Trump’s February decision to attack Iran. And in the evening he plans to have a quick pull-aside meeting with Venezuelan interim president Delcy Rodríguez, who came to power in January after Trump ordered a raid that captured her predecessor, Nicolás Maduro, who remains in custody in a Brooklyn federal prison, not far from the U.N. gathering.
For now, there are no plans to meet with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who is also in New York, officials said.
Trump’s most consequential meetings this week may follow the U.N. gathering, when he heads back to Washington to host Chinese President Xi Jinping for a state visit.
Trump has sought to court Beijing as he tries to boost the U.S. economy with investments and pull back manufacturing from China. Expectations for the summit with China are muted, but Trump has said that good personal relations with his Chinese counterpart are key to managing the complex and contentious geopolitics of China’s rise.
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