House speaker as US emissary: Pelosi emerges as force abroad

There's an American leader whose words resonate on the global stage. Who draws attention in foreign capitals. Who carries a message from the United States by simply arriving.

It's not just President Donald Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is emerging as an alternative ambassador abroad, an emissary for bedrock democratic values and the promise of stability that some see as diminishing in the Trump era.

As the president heads to the Group of Seven summit in France next week with his "America First" agenda , Pelosi has been quietly engaging the world from another point of view. She is reviving a more traditional American approach to foreign policy, in style and substance, reinforcing long-standing U.S. alliances and commitments to democracy and human rights, at a time when the old order appears to be slipping away.

FILE - In this Aug. 10, 2019, file photo, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi smiles during a news conference at a hotel in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. There’s an American leader whose words increasingly resonate abroad, who’s adored in foreign capitals and who sends a message just by her arrival. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has emerged as an alternative ambassador in the Trump era. (AP PhotoElmer Martinez)

"What's really important for people to know is, we're all in this together," Pelosi told The Associated Press in an interview. "This isn't about me. It's about our country and our shared values, to show our strength of who we are and what we believe."

Since retaking the speaker's gavel this year, Pelosi has led large congressional delegations abroad: to assure European allies at a Munich security conference; warn Britons of the pitfalls of Brexit; assess the migrant crisis in Central America; and mark the 400th anniversary of the slave trade in Africa with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including the immigrant congresswoman who became the subject of a Trump rally chant, "Send her back!"

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that at a time when U.S. policy is "confusing everybody in the world," Pelosi and the members of Congress are trying to "present the best face of America."

"Thank goodness that they're doing this," Albright said.

With the lawmakers, Pelosi is sending a "very clear message" to the foreign officials in the room, said Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif., a Guatemalan American who joined the Central American trip.

"Presidents come and go. Congress will always be there," Torres said.

The scope of Pelosi's diplomacy often resonates with members of the president's party, creating rare bipartisan accord.

This past week, when Trump said he hopes it works out with Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters facing retaliation from China — "I hope nobody gets killed," he told reporters — Pelosi affirmed the U.S. commitment to human rights and urged the Hong Kong government to end the standoff. It was a sentiment shared by several top Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Congressional leaders routinely play a role influencing policy abroad. While House speaker, Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., visited the former Soviet Union. More recently, when John Boehner, R-Ohio, was speaker, he invited Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress amid opposition to the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran. Pelosi, as a young lawmaker, went to China to oppose the violent crackdown on democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.

But not since the late Republican Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., globe-trotted the world has a U.S. lawmaker emerged with such a presence, as a protector of long-held American values, as Pelosi.

"This is what diplomacy looks like," said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who traveled with Pelosi this month to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras as the migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border played out.

Trump has not been pleased with some of Pelosi's trips.

In a stunning move this year, the president abruptly ordered the grounding of the military aircraft that was set to take lawmakers to Belgium and Afghanistan to visit troops. The move was in retaliation for Pelosi's decision to postpone Trump's State of the Union address during the federal government shutdown.

Trump dismissed Pelosi's "excursion" as a "public relations event" and suggested the lawmakers could fly on commercial aircraft to the combat zone. Congressional travel is, by law, federally funded.

Critics may see the trips as merely junkets or, worse, meddling in the administration's foreign affairs. American politicians generally abide by a rule to leave their political differences at water's edge. During a trip to Africa, Pelosi surprised some when she declined to answer questions about Trump's racist tweets against members of Congress.

Sometimes more can be said diplomatically by saying little.

At the Munich security conference this year, Pelosi was embraced by European leaders at a time when Trump's attacks on NATO were threatening the decades-old alliance of Western nations.

"She was greeted like a rock star," said Wendy Sherman, an Obama-era ambassador and former State Department counselor under Albright. Around that time, Pelosi and McConnell invited the NATO secretary-general address to Congress.

Still, words matter and Pelosi's interventions in Brexit rippled this past week across the United Kingdom again. She reiterated the message delivered earlier this year, in London and in a speech to the Irish Parliament, that there will be "no chance" of a U.S.-Britain trade deal passing Congress if British efforts to leave the European Union result in a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, which could undermine the peace process there.

Her stand countered the one Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, was taking during his own visit talking up a quick trade deal.

Lawmakers who travel with Pelosi say the trips are demanding, with grueling schedules and working meals, but rewarding as she delegates others to speak for the group. Many of the trips were initially their ideas.

When the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Karen Bass, D-Ca., asked her to Ghana, Pelosi sought out the highest ranking African American in the House, Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, to lead the group's discussion with the country's president.

Later, Pelosi took a photo with Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., the Somali American refugee who the Trump rally crowd wanted to send "back," as the two passed through a historic doorway at the coastal site where enslaved Africans were bound for the middle passage to the Americas.

"So much of what we are doing carried history," Clyburn said.

Mark Salter, a longtime aide to McCain, said while the Republican senator and the Democratic speaker disagreed on "a million things," Pelosi, like his former boss, "believes in the ideals of this country" and fostering those ideals abroad.

"She's a statesman and McCain would applaud it," Salter said. "He would look at the speaker, those activities, with appreciation."

Associated Press writers Jill Lawless in London, Francis Kokutse in Accra, Ghana, Sonia Perez D. in Guatemala City, Marcos Alemán in San Salvador, El Salvador, and Luis Alonso Lugo in Washington contributed to this report.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Russia on Wednesday vetoed a U.N. resolution sponsored by the United States and Japan calling on all nations to prevent a dangerous nuclear arms race in outer space, calling it “a dirty spectacle” that cherry picks weapons of mass destruction from all other weapons that should also be banned.

The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 13 in favor, Russia opposed and China abstaining.

The resolution would have called on all countries not to develop or deploy nuclear arms or other weapons of mass destruction in space, as banned under a 1967 international treaty that included the U.S. and Russia, and to agree to the need to verify compliance.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said after the vote that Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow has no intention of deploying nuclear weapons in space.

“Today’s veto begs the question: Why? Why, if you are following the rules, would you not support a resolution that reaffirms them? What could you possibly be hiding,” she asked. “It’s baffling. And it’s a shame.”

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia dismissed the resolution as “absolutely absurd and politicized,” and said it didn’t go far enough in banning all types of weapons in space.

Russia and China proposed an amendment to the U.S.-Japan draft that would call on all countries, especially those with major space capabilities, “to prevent for all time the placement of weapons in outer space, and the threat of use of force in outer spaces.”

The vote was 7 countries in favor, 7 against, and one abstention and the amendment was defeated because it failed to get the minimum 9 “yes” votes required for adoption.

The U.S. opposed the amendment, and after the vote Nebenzia addressed the U.S. ambassador saying: “We want a ban on the placement of weapons of any kind in outer space, not just WMDs (weapons of mass destruction). But you don’t want that. And let me ask you that very same question. Why?”

He said much of the U.S. and Japan’s actions become clear “if we recall that the U.S. and their allies announced some time ago plans to place weapons … in outer space.”

Nebenzia accused the U.S. of blocking a Russian-Chinese proposal since 2008 for a treaty against putting weapons in outer space.

Thomas-Greenfield accused Russia of undermining global treaties to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, irresponsibly invoking “dangerous nuclear rhetoric,” walking away from several of its arms control obligations, and refusing to engage “in substantive discussions around arms control or risk reduction.”

She called Wednesday’s vote “a real missed opportunity to rebuild much-needed trust in existing arms control obligations.”

Thomas-Greenfield’s announcement of the resolution on March 18 followed White House confirmation in February that Russia has obtained a “troubling” anti-satellite weapon capability, although such a weapon is not operational yet.

Putin declared later that Moscow has no intention of deploying nuclear weapons in space, claiming that the country has only developed space capabilities similar to those of the U.S.

Thomas-Greenfield said before the vote that the world is just beginning to understand “the catastrophic ramifications of a nuclear explosion in space.”

It could destroy “thousands of satellites operated by countries and companies around the world — and wipe out the vital communications, scientific, meteorological, agricultural, commercial, and national security services we all depend on,” she said.

The defeated draft resolution said “the prevention of an arms race in outer space would avert a grave danger for international peace and security.” It would have urged all countries carrying out activities in exploring and using outer space to comply with international law and the U.N. Charter.

The draft would have affirmed that countries that ratified the 1967 Outer Space Treaty must comply with their obligations not to put in orbit around the Earth “any objects” with weapons of mass destruction, or install them “on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space.”

The treaty, ratified by some 114 countries, including the U.S. and Russia, prohibits the deployment of “nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction” in orbit or the stationing of “weapons in outer space in any other manner.”

The draft resolution emphasized “the necessity of further measures, including political commitments and legally binding instruments, with appropriate and effective provisions for verification, to prevent an arms race in outer space in all its aspects.”

It reiterated that the U.N. Conference on Disarmament, based in Geneva, has the primary responsibility to negotiate agreements on preventing an arms race in outer space.

The 65-nation body has achieved few results and has largely devolved into a venue for countries to voice criticism of others’ weapons programs or defend their own. The draft resolution would have urged the conference “to adopt and implement a balanced and comprehensive program of work.”

At the March council meeting where the U.S.-Japan initiative was launched, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned that “geopolitical tensions and mistrust have escalated the risk of nuclear warfare to its highest point in decades.”

He said the movie “Oppenheimer” about Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the U.S. project during World War II that developed the atomic bomb, “brought the harsh reality of nuclear doomsday to vivid life for millions around the world.”

“Humanity cannot survive a sequel to Oppenheimer,” the U.N. chief said.

United States Ambassador and Representative to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield addresses members of the U.N. Security Council before voting during a meeting on Non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, Wednesday, April 24, 2024 at United Nations headquarters. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)

FILE - U.S. Ambassador to United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield speaks on Thursday, April 18, 2024, in Tokyo. The U.N. Security Council is set to vote Wednesday, April 24, 2024, on a resolution announced by Thomas-Greenfield, calling on all nations to prevent a dangerous nuclear arms race in outer space. It is likely to be vetoed by Russia. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool, File)