President Donald Trump was again the center of attention at the United Nations on Tuesday, as world leaders scrambled to stay in his good graces.
But behind the headlines, there was an undercurrent of discontent — and even defiance — from some leaders who are seemingly preparing for a life after the U.S.-led order.
After Trump threatened to “annihilate” elements of Iran, some allies sounded the alarm.
“I was worried when I heard a leader of a great power saying that he is considering annihilating a country. I mean, this is clearly a massive violation of the whole principle of the U.N.,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in an interview.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, one of Trump’s principal critics on the world stage, didn’t meet with the American president. Instead, he pushed for less reliance on traditional American power, even as he’s courting new investors including China — with his U.S. trade war a key selling point.
“It’s not wishful multilateralism which defends only the status quo, nor a cold realpolitik that dismantles the status quo altogether,” Carney told reporters on the sidelines of the U.N. “And the alternative that Canada and many others are pursuing is values-based realism.”
On artificial intelligence, Norway and Finland called for human control of AI, gathering signatures from nearly two dozen world leaders including Germany, the United Arab Emirates and Canada. The push came after Trump rejected global AI oversight.
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