WASHINGTON - The outgoing U.S. ambassador to the United Nations says she has seen American leadership in the world diminish during Donald Trump's first presidency and China fill the vacuum. Linda Thomas-Greenfield warns that if that repeats itself during Trump's second term, adversaries will move in again.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Associated Press, Thomas-Greenfield said that during Joe Biden's presidency, the United States has re-engaged the world, rebuilt alliances and regained America's leadership.
"This is a gift we're passing on to the next administration," she said"and I hope that they will receive this gift in the spirit in which it was given to them."
Advice to Trump's nominee for ambassador to the UN
In a brief meeting with Trump's running mate, New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Thomas-Greenfield told her "that the UN is important and that it's important that we don't leave any space to our adversaries."
These rivals will "change the rules of the road", Safeguards. "And that's why U.S. leadership is extremely important."
In his first term, Trump described the UN as "just a club where people get together, talk and have fun". He suspended funding for its health and family planning agencies and pulled out of its cultural and educational organisation, UNESCO, and its top human rights body. This has created uncertainty about what comes next, especially since the United States is the UN's largest single donor.
Stefanik called for a "complete reassessment" of U.S. funding for the 193-member world body, called the UN a "den of anti-Semitism" and called for an end to U.N. support for the Palestinian refugee agency known as UNRWA.
Of course, the UN is not perfect and needs reforms, Thomas-Greenfield said.
But to those who criticize the UN as a big bureaucracy where little gets done or decisions are ignored, she said she always quotes the late former US ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright, who said that "if it didn't exist, we would invent it."
Thomas-Greenfield stressed the importance of the UN in addressing major global issues, from war to humanitarian aid, and the need to regulate artificial intelligence.
The United States, she said, must remain at the negotiating table "so that we can have influence and work with the whole system to ensure that the system delivers results for the world."
The most important table is the horseshoe-shaped table for the 15 members of the UN Security Council, the most powerful UN body tasked with maintaining international peace and security.
Thomas-Greenfield said she gave Stefanik the same advice she received - to quickly meet with all of them - including permanent members Russia and China, rivals with veto power.
"He'll sit at the table with them almost every day," Thomas-Greenfield said. "So it's important to know the people he's going to have to deal with, whether they're friends or enemies."
Failure to address global crises
In her final emotional speech to the Security Council, Thomas-Greenfield focused on Sudan, saying she wanted to see closure on one crisis the world faces - and ticked off Gaza, Ukraine, Congo and other hot spots.
She told the AP that the UN and the world "must become more actively engaged" to try to end these conflicts.
Sudan, where nearly two years of fighting has caused famine and the world's worst displacement crisis, is an example of "where we as an international community could have done more sooner and ended the suffering sooner".
Focus on Africa
Thomas-Greenfield, who is now 72, began her career as an academic and lived in Liberia, where she first saw American diplomats at work and decided to join the diplomatic service in 1982.
She has spent most of her more than 40-year career in Africa, returning to Liberia as ambassador and working her way up to undersecretary of state for African affairs from 2013 to 2017, when Trump took office.
Biden brought her in to become UN ambassador and a member of his cabinet.
At the UN, she said, she gained a much broader perspective on Africa's important place in the world and called for recognition of its vast resources - its people.
"Africa is an extremely young continent," Thomas-Greenfield said. "These young people will be the future of the world."
The use of "gumbo diplomacy"
At the UN, Thomas-Greenfield returned to her Louisiana roots and said she plans to engage in "gumbo diplomacy" by cooking the state's famous dish, which blends many different flavors, for her fellow diplomats.
Diplomacy is about bringing together people with different views, interests, backgrounds and leadership "and coming up with a solution we can all live with," she said.
"That's what I think diplomacy is about. That's what gumbo is about. So gumbo diplomacy has been very successful," Thomas-Greenfield said, pointing to more than 200 UN resolutions adopted during her four years as ambassador, 77 of which were drafted by the United States.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that "she made contact with people of different backgrounds and beliefs - using her characteristic 'gumbo diplomacy', always speaking from her head but also from her heart".
Thomas-Greenfield said she now plans to spend time with her grandchildren and work with college students to foster "the next generation of multilateralists who will fill the halls of the United Nations."
As a black woman, she said her advice to young black men and women is to "dream big" and if things don't go your way, look for another way and "open doors you didn't intend to walk through."
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