U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and U.S. President Donald Trump could not be more different in background, temperament, experience and leadership style. Trump is brash, loud, vulgar, an amateur outsider and the ultimate disrupter, used to bossing everyone else, who does not do sensitivity. Guterres is courteous, sophisticated, cultured, professional, a global insider and the ultimate conciliator who persuades colleagues to follow his lead.
Truly, one is from Mars and the other from Venus. Yet, if the world is to weather the gathering storm to emerge in relative safety, for the next four years the two will have to work together.
The United Nations is not and never can be immune to the golden rule: He who has the gold writes and polices the rules. With 193 member states, it is unhealthily dependent for almost one-quarter of its regular budget on just one, the United States. Yet in some calculations, the U.N. system contributes more to the U.S. economy than it gets from Washington.