In his first address before the United Nations, an organization dedicated to maintaining global peace, Donald Trump delivered a warlike speech threatening to annihilate North Korea, criticizing Iran’s “pursuit of death and destruction,” belittling his enemies, and, naturally, bragging about his election victory. It was, in other words, par for the Trump course, if set jarringly against the backdrop of international cooperation.

“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” the president said Tuesday, reading haltingly from a teleprompter as representatives for the world’s governments, as well as Rex Tillerson and Nikki Haley, looked solemnly on. “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime,” he added, deploying a Trumpian insult he had first debuted on Twitter days before. “The United States is ready, willing, and able, but hopefully this will not be necessary. That’s what the United Nations is all about. That’s what the United Nations is for. Let’s see how they do.”

It was a peculiar call to action for a president who has long denigrated the United Nations. In his speech, Trump was careful to frame his “America First” agenda within the context of international affairs, urging all leaders to put their own “countries first” while also working “together in close harmony and unity to create a more safe and peaceful future for all people.” The result, he suggested, would be a more results-oriented and less “bureaucratic” global political system. “In some cases, states that seek to subvert this institution’s noble aims have hijacked the very systems that are supposed to advance them,” he warned.

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The glaring contradiction between those two aims were evident in Trump’s speech itself. While every permanent member of the United Nations Security Council has affirmed the nuclear framework to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting economic sanctions, Trump on Tuesday unilaterally lashed out at the agreement, which was signed by his predecessor, as “an embarrassment.” Iran, he declared, is “another reckless regime, one that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing death to America, destruction to Israel and ruin for many leaders and nations in this room.” Calling the Iranian government a “corrupt dictatorship” and accusing it of financing terrorism, he denounced the landmark nuclear accord as “of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”

If Trump’s bombastic rhetoric was meant to puff him up on the world stage, his characteristic insistence on enumerating his self-proclaimed accomplishments left him looking small. “The United States has done very well since Election Day last November 8,” Trump said, taking credit for the economic growth and stock market rally that has continued under his administration. “Unemployment is its lowest level in 16 year. And because of our regulatory and other reforms, we have more people working in the United States today than ever before. Companies are moving back, creating job growth the likes of which our country has not seen in a very long time, and it has just been announced that we will be spending almost 700 billion dollars on our military and defense. Our military will soon be the strongest it has ever been.”