Standing alongside an array of American flags in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on Monday, President Donald Trump outlined a foreign-policy manifesto rife with contradictions. “America will lead again,” he said, though he has moved to withdraw the United States from the world stage. “We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but we will champion the values without apology,” he added, though which values were unclear. Trump took a strong line on Russia and China, though he has repeatedly adopted Russian talking points and abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade pact that was designed to contain and counter Beijing’s rising influence in Asia. “We want strong alliances and partnerships based on cooperation and reciprocity,” he said, though the White House has alienated its allies on every continent. And, perhaps most laughable: “We will not allow inflexible ideology to become an obstacle to peace.”

On the same day, the president’s nod to friendship and flexibility was undercut when 14 of the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council voted in favor of a measure “expressing deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem.” Although the resolution, drafted by Egypt, did not specifically make reference to Trump, the vote followed his decision earlier this month to break with decades of internal and international policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announcing that the U.S. would move its embassy there.

As expected, the U.S. immediately vetoed the resolution. “Today for the simple act of deciding where to put our embassy, the United States was forced to defend its sovereignty. The record will reflect that we did so proudly,” said U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Hayley. “The United States will not be told by any country where we can put our embassy,” she added. “The fact that this veto is being done in defense of American sovereignty and in defense of America’s role in the Middle East peace process is not a source of embarrassment for us; it should be an embarrassment to the remainder of the Security Council.” She was echoed by Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Danny Dann, who, in a seeming rejection of the authority of the council, said ahead of the vote: “Members of the council can vote again and again—for a hundred more times. It won’t change the simple fact that Jerusalem is, has been, and always will be the capital of Israel.” Meanwhile, Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, tweeted: “Thank you, Ambassador Haley. On Hanukkah, you spoke like a Maccabi. You lit a candle of truth. You dispel the darkness. One defeated the many. Truth defeated lies. Thank you, President Trump.”

While the move brings the U.S. into closer alignment with Netanyahu’s Likud government, it comes at the expense of the peace process that Trump has claimed to prioritize. On the eve of his inauguration, Trump had expressed confidence that his young son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the Orthodox Jewish scion of a wealthy New Jersey real-estate family, might succeed in uniting Israel and Palestine where others had failed. “If you can’t produce peace in the Middle East, nobody can,” he said. “All my life I‘ve been hearing that’s the toughest deal to make, but I have a feeling Jared is going to do a great job.” The decision to move the embassy, which set off protests across the world and has raised fears of new violence in Israel, was seen as a major setback. (Proponents of a two-state solution have proposed the eastern half of Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state.)