WASHINGTON — The outgoing U.S. ambassador to the United Nations says she watched America’s leadership diminish in the world during Donald Trump’s first presidency and China fill the vacuum. Linda Thomas-Greenfield is warning that if it happens again during Trump’s second term, adversaries will move in anew.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Thomas-Greenfield said during Joe Biden’s presidency, the United States again engaged with the world, rebuilt alliances and reestablished America’s leadership.
“That is the gift that we hand over to the next administration,” she said, “and I hope that they will accept that gift in the spirit in which it is being given to them.”
In a brief meeting with Trump’s nominee, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, Thomas-Greenfield told her “that the U.N. is important, and that it is important that we not cede any space to our adversaries.”
Those rivals “will change the rules of the road,” she warned. “And so, U.S. leadership is extraordinarily important.”
In his first term, Trump called the United Nations “just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time.” He suspended funding to its health and family planning agencies and withdrew from its cultural and education organization UNESCO and top human rights body. That’s raised uncertainty about what’s ahead, especially because the United States is the U.N.’s biggest single donor.
Stefanik has called for a “complete reassessment” of U.S. funding for the 193-nation world body, described the U.N. as a “den of antisemitism” and urged a continued halt to support for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA.
Of course, the U.N. isn’t perfect and needs reforms, Thomas-Greenfield said.
But to those who criticize the U.N. as a big bureaucracy where little gets done or decisions are ignored, she said she always quotes the late former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright, who said “if it didn’t exist, we would invent it.”
Thomas-Greenfield stressed the U.N.’s importance in dealing with major global issues, from war to humanitarian aid and the need to regulate artificial intelligence.
The United States must stay at the table, she said, “so that we can have influence and work with the entire system to ensure that the system delivers to the world.”
The most important table is the horseshoe-shaped one for the 15 members of the U.N. Security Council, the most powerful U.N. body, which is charged with maintaining international peace and security.
Thomas-Greenfield said she gave Stefanik the same advice she got — to meet quickly with all of them — including permanent members Russia and China, rivals with veto power.
“She’s going to be sitting around the table with them on almost a daily basis,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “So, it’s important to know the individuals you are going to have to engage with, whether they are friends or foes.”
In her final emotional speech to the Security Council, Thomas-Greenfield focused on Sudan, saying she wished there was closure on one crisis the world faces — ticking off Gaza, Ukraine, Congo and other hotspots.
She told AP the U.N. and the world “have to be more proactive in our engagement” to try to end these conflicts.
Sudan, where nearly two years of fighting has created famine and the world’s worst displacement crisis, is an example “of where as an international community, we could have done more sooner and ended the suffering sooner.”
Thomas-Greenfield, now 72, started her career as an academic and lived in Liberia, where she first saw U.S. diplomats at work and decided to join the Foreign Service in 1982.
She spent much of her more than 40-year career in Africa, returning to Liberia as ambassador, and rose to be assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 2013 to 2017, when Trump took office.
Biden brought her out of retirement to become U.N. ambassador and a member of his Cabinet.
At the United Nations, she said she’s gained a much broader perspective on Africa’s important place in the world and urged recognition of its immense resources — its people.
“Africa is an extraordinarily young continent,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “These young people will be the future of the world.”
At the U.N., Thomas-Greenfield harkened back to her Louisiana roots, saying she was going to engage in “gumbo diplomacy” by cooking the state’s famous dish — which mixes up lots of different flavors — for fellow diplomats.
Diplomacy is about bringing together people with different ideas, backgrounds, interests and guidance “and coming up with a solution that we all can 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 over 200 U.N. resolutions adopted during her four years as ambassador, 77 of them drafted by the United States.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “she has connected with people of all backgrounds and beliefs — using her signature ‘gumbo diplomacy,’ always speaking from the head, but also from the heart.”
Now, Thomas-Greenfield said she plans to spend time with her grandchildren and work with college students to encourage “the next generation of multilateralists who will be filling the halls of the United Nations.”
As a Black woman, she said her advice to young Black men and women is “dream big,” and if things don’t go your way, look for another tack and “open doors that you hadn’t intended to go through.”