There are opportunities here—for Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal, and his team to forge a constructive relationship with President Trump and his administration. The United States remains the U.N.’s largest contributor, supplying 22 percent of the U.N. regular budget and making very large voluntary contributions to many U.N. agencies. For Guterres to succeed in his job he will need a good relationship with our new president and Donald Trump’s new secretary of state and U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, as our ambassador is formally called. The time to start cultivating relationships of trust and confidence is now.

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But the dual transition also poses risks. Guterres will be making up his mind over the next few months about his key appointments in the U.N. Secretariat — at a time when the Trump team is not yet in place and the influence of the Obama administration is fading. Guterres will be choosing officials to run U.N. agencies such as the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), as well as for his own top staff. He’ll be choosing U.N. special representatives handling Syria and Libya and myriad other problems that affect U.S. interests.

The number-three position in the United Nations, the under-secretary-general for political affairs, has been held by American citizens for the past decade — and is arguably the most important American post in the entire U.N. system. Having an American at the top of the World Food Program and UNICEF (as we do now) is nice, but doesn’t much affect U.S interests. Having an American as under-secretary-general for management is useful, but we don’t need an American for that; a Swiss, a Brit or a Singaporean could do the job just as well.

Having an American in the Department of Political Affairs job does matter for U.S. interests, because that department has a budget of more than $600 million, is involved with every sensitive global political issue and has missions in dozens of global trouble spots.

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The under-secretary-general for political affairs works for the U.N., not the U.S. government, and does not share confidential information with American officials—whatever the Russians or Chinese may think. Moreover, the Americans selected for this job have been American career diplomats, not political appointees from the party in power in Washington. But the man or woman in that position has the secretary-general’s ear on matters of real significance for U.S. security. He or she can bring to the United Nations a real understanding of American goals and interests. If there is no American in this position, Guterres could make decisions that will compromise U.S. interests and ruin his own relationship with Trump, without even knowing he is doing so. As a European from an E.U.- and NATO-member country, Guterres may want to bend over backward to show he is not beholden to the Western countries or the United States, or he may think he fully understands what the U.S. interests and objectives are. If so, he would be making a great mistake.

So Guterres should be told right now by the current U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, that if he takes the Department of Political Affairs position away from the United States, he will be making a decision that will shadow his entire tenure at the U.N. And the Trump transition team should somehow reach out to him to deliver the same message. Guterres should be reminded that he cannot succeed as secretary-general without the full support of the U.N.’s most generous and most powerful member, and that downgrading American participation in the top U.N. ranks would be commencing his relationship with the new administration in an almost irreversibly negative way.