President Trump’s coming collision with the United Nations could be something to behold. Later this month he’s due to chair the Security Council, where he may give the striped pants set a piece of his mind in respect of Iran. He’s barreling toward a showdown with the International Criminal Court. He’s cut off funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency. Watch out for the International Monetary Fund.

We characterize the coming reckoning as being with the United Nations because all of these institutions are in one way another either parts of or spawn of the world body. So, for that matter, are the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran nuclear accord, from which America has either withdrawn or announced its intention to do so. The United Nations is the focus of vast disappointment.

That is going to start percolating as the 73rd General Assembly begins gathering here this week. The Financial Times blames the erstwhile American envoy to the U.N. John Bolton, now Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. He was the point man in the campaign that won repeal of the Zionism-is-racism resolution. That’s something for which the many on the left will never forgive him.

That’s not the FTs beef. It seems particularly upset with Mr. Bolton’s warning that the U.S. could move against the International Criminal Court. That demarche, the FT reckons, “raises the question of how far this administration is prepared to go to wreck the global rules-based system.” Yet the rules-based system to which Mr. Trump is sworn is the United States Constitution.

That parchment requires such treaties as the ICC be ratified by the Senate before they become part of the supreme law of the land.* Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein will join a unanimous confirmation vote for Judge Kavanaugh before the Senate will ratify the ICC treaty. So the thing to keep in mind is that if anyone here is chafing at the rule of law, it isn’t President Trump.

Same with the the Iran deal. The main feature of pact is that it was crafted by the Obama administration, and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council, at a time when all parties understood that the each house of the United States Congress was against it. We keep pressing that point, but it’s important to us. So much for a “rules-based system.”

Then there’s the International Monetary Fund, of which the U.N. is the parent. The illogic of the IMF has been growing ever more plain with each passing year since the collapse of Bretton Woods. Now there’s a feud within it over bailouts for Pakistan and Turkey. It has reached the point where a columnist for the Arizona Republic is calling the IMF to be abolished. So we could be in for a lively time at Turtle Bay.

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* From the U.S. Constitution, Article 6: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.”