For four years, the Trump administration and its “America First” policies rocked the United Nations Headquarters in New York, which is the epitome of multilateralism and diplomacy.

But what did those policies actually accomplish, if anything? Kelly Craft, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, looked back on her tenure in a virtual interview in February with The Asahi Shimbun.

When Craft was offered the U.N. post by then President Donald Trump in 2019, she understood that he doubted the relevance of the institution.

At the time, the ambassador post had been vacant for eight months, after a former State Department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, had withdrawn her name for consideration. 

The Trump administration had left the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in October 2017 and the United Nations Human Rights Council in June 2018, stating that the two bodies had an “anti-Israel” bias.

It had also frozen its contributions to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

‘I'M GOING TO PROVE YOU WRONG’

Contrary to Trump, Craft believed in the United Nations. So, when he offered her the job, sharing with her his doubts about the effectiveness of the organization, she recalls telling him, “I’m going to prove you wrong.”

Craft was then ambassador to Canada. She is a well-known Republican fund-raiser and Ottawa was her first-ever diplomatic job, after she and her husband, Joe Craft, donated $2 million (220 million yen) to Trump’s campaign and inauguration.

Her predecessor at the United Nations, Nikki Haley, had enforced Trump’s America First policy with an iron fist. Among other things, during a vote in the U.N. General Assembly in 2017 denouncing Washington’s decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Haley told other countries that she was “taking names.”

Craft’s approach to the role was different. While she championed Trump’s policies at the United Nations, she did so in a different tone. She also didn’t look to hog the media spotlight and rarely spoke to journalists.

Craft, who calls herself a humanitarian, wanted to make the most of her time at the United Nations and said she built meaningful relationships with many representatives. Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at the International Crisis Group, a think tank, described her as “the human face of an increasingly mad administration.”

One of Craft’s highlights as an ambassador was the U.N. Security Council’s visit to South Sudan in October 2019, a few weeks after starting her new post. She was so touched by what she witnessed over there that she decided to stay longer, even after other diplomats left.

She also traveled to the Turkish-Syrian border and met with refugees there. If Craft has one regret as ambassador, it is that she wasn’t able to travel more to visit people in need because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I would go back to South Sudan, I would go back to see if the experiences and the help that we brought back to see if actually, they are implementing it, I would go back to Colombia, to visit the border to see the refugees coming in from Venezuela, I would go back to the border in Syria and Turkey,” she says.

TAKING ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA

Craft also took up accusations that China is abusing the human rights of the Uighurs, a Muslim minority in the province of Xinjiang, in western China. She recalls that in her first meeting with ambassador Zhang Jun of China, she proposed going to Xinjiang, to see the situation of the Uighurs firsthand.

“I just very politely said I would like nothing more than to visit myself with the Uighurs just to be able to interview a Uighur, and he just kind of laughed me off,” she says, “I continued that encouragement and let him know that I was always open because I want to prove people wrong.”

But such a visit never transpired, and the U.S.-China relationship continued to deteriorate.

Before Craft arrived in Turtle Bay, the Security Council, the U.N.'s most important body, had already become increasingly dysfunctional: Russia and China had repeatedly vetoed resolutions on Syria on humanitarian access, where civil war has been raging since 2011.

China had also become more assertive in its speeches, often directly confronting the United States.

“China, in the United Nations, used to be focused on economic issues, and I find if you look at the last couple years that they've slowly moved from economic issues to peace and security issues because peace and security issues are what happens within the Security Council,” Craft says.

It is not only China’s approach that’s worrying for Craft, but also China’s desire to insert Communist Party language, such as “shared future for humankind," or "win-win cooperation," in U.N. and Security Council resolutions.

According to The Economist Magazine, for three years in a row, Chinese diplomats managed to inject favorable references to head of state Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) into resolutions on Afghanistan, and have persuaded senior U.N. officials, including the secretary-general, António Guterres, to praise the initiative in speeches as a model for global development.

In 2018, China convinced the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva to endorse its preferred approach of “promoting mutually beneficial cooperation” in this field, ie, refraining from criticism.

“It’s been a real issue for us,” Craft says, “and we absolutely said no, we are not including the language within the Security Council or within the General Assembly. We are not going to include communist Chinese party language, nor the Belt and Road. We will stand very strong with this.”

Craft is also worried about China’s use of vetoes in the Security Council. While China is the country on the council that has, by far, used its veto power the least (Russia has the most) it has increased significantly over the past few years. China has vetoed resolutions 16 times altogether, most of them in the last 10 years.

“It really showed me that China is becoming more strong or more sophisticated. They veto areas like Syria, they veto some of the areas that we look at as the worst human rights abuses, and famine,” Craft says, “and it was just very disappointing to me because as much as they pretend to care about the life of other people, then they turn around and they veto border crossings in Syria, along with Russia.

"I find that their actions don't match at all, what they're portraying themselves to be within the Security Council and within the General Assembly.”

According to Craft, China exercises its influence mainly through the Group of 77 (G77) at the United Nations.

“I find that they've got this group of countries that are being manipulated by China,” she says.

In October 2020, a group of mostly Western 39 nations issued a joint statement denouncing China’s human rights abuses against the Uighurs in the U.N.’s Third Committee on human rights.

In 2019, a similar statement attracted only 23 signatories.

“We started working early, because in 2019 we learned from countries that China was threatening countries like Albania with ongoing projects, or with future projects, so we were able to talk to more countries, and we brought 39 countries on board to sign this letter," Craft says.

"And that doesn't sound like a lot, but it is when you think about China and the initiatives they have, especially within the G77 countries, and all of the influence that they have with dangling money and projects, with the Belt and Road initiative over a lot of these leaders.”

In 2020, China also gathered a group of countries to praise its human rights record with 45 signatories. However, in 2019 the pro-China statement had more than 50 countries sign on.

“I think once the countries themselves realize that China left them worse off than when they arrived, then that's where we go in,” Craft says, “and we can show them areas where they would be much better off joining countries that promote freedom and democracy and promote the rule of law. So I'm not giving up.”

‘WHO A MOUTHPIECE FOR CHINA’

While Craft was prioritizing human rights, her time at the United Nations was marked by many confrontational stances taken by the Trump administration, particularly as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded.

When the United Nations closed in mid-March last year, U.N. operations were disrupted, and the rhetorical war between China and the United States also worsened.

At the same time, as infections and deaths in the United States were skyrocketing to the highest in the world amid Trump’s looming re-election campaign, the World Health Organization (WHO) became a scapegoat.

In July, the United States announced its intent to withdraw from the WHO.

“We pulled out of the WHO because they were not providing the transparency they were not providing accurate, honest information,” Craft said. “They weren't even providing honest information in a timely manner.”

She continued, “We are demanding transparency and accountability from the United Nations organizations because we have to put Americans first, we have to put our American taxpaying dollars first. We owe that to our taxpayers. We also owe it to a lot of the different organizations, whether it's the church groups, the individuals, the private foundations, that are putting forth very large amounts, we owe it to them to provide transparency.”

One concern often raised by Washington is that an increasing number of Chinese individuals are taking a leadership role in U.N. bodies: currently, four out of 15 U.N. bodies are led by a Chinese citizen.

When asked if she was concerned that the United States withdrawal could eventually give way to a more Chinese influence in the WHO’s administration, Craft said, “The WHO was basically a mouthpiece for China.

 “We felt it very important to give the WHO 30 days to be able to correct their mistakes to be able to make the wrongs or right just to show us that they were actually making progress, and they did not," she added. "The funds that we stopped from the WHO was used in many, many other organizations that provided medical aid and care that we could hold accountable.”

A resolution from the secretary-general calling for a global ceasefire in the face of the pandemic also took the Security Council more than three months to pass, with the United States and China bickering over the wording.

Craft claims that China wanted the resolution to praise the WHO, which the United States did not want to do.

“We would have been very quick to have our own resolution,” she says. “But it became so entangled, they wanted to compliment the WHO, they wanted to compliment (WHO director-general) Tedros (Adhanom Ghebreyesus).”

However, U.N. expert Richard Gowan has a different understanding: "Craft wanted to compromise with China, but Washington refused to do so. The fact that it took so long to reach a resolution was a sign that Craft had not been able to exert influence within the Trump administration.

“I think that in private she was much more reasonable than the Trump administration was in public about the United Nations,” Gowan added, “but I think after COVID began, she was pretty marginalized and there was always a feeling she did not have a lot of influence in Washington.”

Craft was also responsible for implementing the Trump administration’s attempt to reimpose U.N. sanctions on Iran even after Washington left the Iran nuclear deal, among other things.

The efforts to reimpose U.N. sanctions, mostly spearheaded by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, failed, and President Joe Biden recently withdrew the letter.

So, how does Craft look back on her time at the United Nations?

“I think time will tell,” she answered, “That's something that takes a little while for that administration's accolades to be able to surface.

"I just feel like the Trump administration has so much to be very proud of within the U.N. system, and it's more about what we prevented from happening within the U.N. system than what did happen--that is preventing waste and fraud and calling that out, and also being very strong with China not only in Washington, D.C., but carrying that to New York City to Turtle Bay to be able to carry part of the Chinese malign influence and have that hand-in-glove relationship with Washington.

"That was very important and I don't think the U.N. had that opportunity before.”

PASSING THE TORCH

Craft’s term as ambassador ended when Trump left office, on Jan. 20. Her successor, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, is a seasoned diplomat who has represented the United States in countries such as Liberia, Pakistan, and at U.N. organizations in Switzerland.

The Biden administration has taken a 180-degree turn toward the United Nations from the Trump administration. Nevertheless, Craft says she’s in touch with Thomas-Greenfield regularly and is hoping for the best for her.

“She and I speak frequently,” Craft says. “I would not have had my success (without some of my predecessors), and my success and Linda’s success are going to be intertwined. So I'm going to make every effort I can to make sure that she is successful.”

For now, Craft is back in her home state of Kentucky, where she says she is spending time with her family and relearning to play the piano. She doesn’t want to speculate about her future.

However, Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky, will be up for re-election in 2023.

In 2019, Beshear won by a margin of only 5,000 votes out of more than 1.4 million cast, so the state could be up for grabs by a Republican challenger. Craft was also named as a possible candidate in an article by The Intercept to replace Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell in his attempt to allegedly handpick a successor in their home state of Kentucky.

“I’m thinking through my opportunities and the best way to serve my state,” Craft says about the article.

“Right now I am focused on just our private foundation,” she says, “what my husband and I were doing before Canada. I didn't need a title, but I just had an incredible stage, being the ambassador.”

(This article was written by Stephanie Fillion and Gakushi Fujiwara.)