By Danielle Pletka & Brett D. Schaefer
Thursday, October 02, 2025
Last week, speaking before the U.N. General Assembly in
New York, President Donald Trump asked a
deceptively simple question: “What is the purpose of the United Nations?”
“The U.N. has such tremendous potential,” he added, “but
it is not even coming close to living up to that potential.” A recent Gallup
poll found that 63 percent of Americans believe that the U.N. is doing a
poor job in trying to solve the problems it was created to manage.
It is hard to conclude otherwise.
The United Nations was founded to prevent war, protect
human rights, and foster international cooperation. Eight decades on, the
institution’s record is mixed, at best: A few undeniable successes sit beside a
litany of failures that consume resources and damage credibility.
There have been hundreds of wars and significant
conflicts since 1945 resulting in millions of casualties. Yet the U.N. Security
Council has formally authorized the use of military force only twice: under
U.N. command to defend South Korea in 1950 and by empowering member states to
use “all necessary means” to compel the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait
in 1990. The Security Council has periodically taken lesser steps to address
threats to international peace and security, such as blessing non-U.N. initiatives
to protect civilians, most recently in Haiti,
and deploying U.N. peacekeeping operations. These efforts have seen a few
successes, such as Côte
d’Ivoire and Timor-Leste
in the early 2000s, but also shocking failures to prevent genocide in Rwanda
and Srebrenica in the 1990s. All too often, the missions—including operations
in Lebanon (established
in 1978) and Western
Sahara (established in 1991)—continue for years without measurable
accomplishments.
On human rights, contrary to the claims of
Secretary-General António Guterres, the U.N. is not a “moral compass” or a
“guardian of international law.” It is political. The Human Rights Council has
never condemned China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe or other nations with
terrible human rights records. By contrast, according to a database compiled
by the nongovernmental organization U.N. Watch, a third of all condemnatory
resolutions passed by the council since its creation in 2006 have targeted
Israel. Over the past decade, the U.N. General Assembly has condemned the
United States more than it has Iran or North Korea. Of course, Israel faced 173
condemnations—double the number of every other member state combined.
International cooperation led by the United Nations is
woeful to non-existent on the world’s most significant crises, including the
wars in Ukraine and Gaza. China’s aggression in the South China Sea goes
largely ignored in the U.N., and Beijing has successfully prevented an
accounting of the origins of the COVID pandemic. Humanitarian disasters in
Burma, Haiti, Sudan, Yemen, and elsewhere are being addressed at the margins if
at all. Even institutions tasked with technical or humanitarian responsibilities—like
the World Health Organization or the Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights—regularly fail critical tests of competence and
impartiality during crises.
Despite this record, the U.S. has annually contributed billions
of dollars to the U.N. and its affiliated agencies, funds, and programs.
Any honest assessment argues for a clear, pragmatic
reorientation of U.S. policy toward the U.N.: Fund and partner with parts of
the system that deliver measurable value; reform or withdraw from those that do
not. In short—an à la carte strategy for the 21st century.
Trump has initiated this type of approach with his executive
order calling for a review of all international intergovernmental
organizations and treaties to which the United States is a party to determine
which are in the U.S. interest. The results of this review have not yet been
made public, but the president hinted at the implications in his recent address
to the General Assembly, where he strongly
criticized the organization for wasting money, focusing on the wrong
priorities, and specializing in “empty words.”
Yet the president’s speech stopped short of mapping his
critiques to institutional fixes. Criticisms such as “the U.N. is supposed to
stop invasions—not create them and not finance them” highlight frustration, but
they do not by themselves create the institutional levers needed for change. To
make those indictments consequential, they must be followed with specific
measures: funding conditionality, benchmarked performance, restructurings, and
selective engagement.
Below are practical, politically actionable steps that
follow directly from the president’s critique.
Tie funding to performance. Historically, U.S.
funding for U.N. organizations tends to remain steady with annual increases to
fund specific initiatives, address new crises, or support overall budget
increases. This default funding practice needs to end. Instead, the U.S. should
start from zero annually and propose funding based on performance and
contribution to American policy priorities. Revelations that humanitarian
organizations failed to
report the militarization of facilities in Gaza raise questions about their
neutrality and should lead the U.S. to require enforceable reporting standards,
independent audits, and conditional access to U.S. funding. Congress and the
executive branch should agree on specific indicators and allocate funds based
on those benchmarks.
Use arrears to leverage reform. Because the U.S.
is inconsistent in its policy, U.N. bureaucracies have an incentive to suffer
through U.S. financial withholding until the next election, which might result
in the payment of accumulated arrears. The administration should heed the
lessons of the 1999 Helms-Biden
legislation and work with Congress to create incentives for the U.N. and
its affiliated organizations to adopt reforms by tying arrears payment to
specific changes. Sticks work best when combined with carrots, especially if
the stick might be put down in the future.
Address redundancy. The U.S. should push for
consolidation and restructuring of U.N. organizations with overlapping
mandates. In response to the current financial crisis, the secretary general
has proposed
merging the U.N. Development Program and the U.N. Office for Project Services,
the U.N. Population Fund and U.N. Women, and the various macroeconomic offices
in the Secretariat, including the regional economic commissions, with the U.N.
Conference on Trade and Development. The U.S. should support such efforts
(although the regional economic commissions should be eliminated rather than
merged) and press for cost savings and additional consolidation, including
merging the International Organization for Migration and the U.N. Office of the
High Commissioner for Refugees and pressing for consolidating overlapping
health initiatives of the Global Fund, UNAIDS, UNICEF, and the World Health
Organization.
Withdraw from or cease funding for harmful
organizations. Organizations that enable political agendas or extremist
exploitation of humanitarian systems should be eliminated. At the very least,
they do not merit U.S. funding and participation. Trump has initiated this by
withdrawing from, sanctioning, or terminating funding for UNRWA,
the International
Criminal Court, UNESCO,
the Human
Rights Council, UNFPA,
the Paris
Agreement, and the World
Health Organization (WHO).
Focus on peacekeeping. Peace operations should
have achievable mandates with exit strategies and strong accountability
mechanisms. Longstanding operations without demonstrable progress should be
reassessed, and funding terminated as necessary. New missions must include
measurable benchmarks, contingency plans, and transparent, independent audits
of effectiveness and misconduct investigations. The U.S. should use its veto to
enforce these changes.
Supporters of the U.N. may recoil at suggestions like
these, but realignment is long overdue. The U.N. has sustained itself with
platitudes and shallow cliches—“global problems need global solutions”—to
excuse its failings. We have plenty of global problems, but scant solutions
from the U.N. system. After 80 years of expanding budgets, staff, and faffing,
Trump was right last week to wonder what the U.S. is getting for its
investment.
Some supporters of the U.N. system acknowledge its
failings but argue that participation is the only path to reform. “When the
United States has a seat at the table, we can shape the international
institutions and the norms that they produce to reflect the interests and
values of the American people and advance our vision for the future,” former
Secretary of State Antony Blinken asserted
two years ago.
He oversaw the U.S. rejoining and renewing participation
in the WHO and the Human Rights Council without preconditions. But U.S.
reengagement did not convince the WHO to condemn China for its lack of
transparency and cooperation during the early days of COVID—actions that
exacerbated the damage of the pandemic in terms of deaths and economic cost.
Likewise, the Human Rights Council continued its
unfair treatment of Israel despite U.S. membership. Meanwhile, the U.S. could
not even convince a majority of the council to hold a “debate” on a 2022
report by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights concluding
that China committed “serious human rights violations” against Uyghurs and
“other predominantly Muslim communities.”
History shows that genteel diplomacy and steady funding
do not lead U.N. organizations to reform or respond to criticism. For better or
worse, the U.N. moves most when pressed hard and threatened.
When the U.N. is capable and focused, the United States
should participate and support it. When U.N. organizations prove ineffective,
the U.S. should seek reform. If that fails, the U.S. should pursue coalitions
of the willing, regional arrangements, or bilateral instruments that can move
faster and enforce outcomes—while still engaging in multilateral diplomacy
where it adds value or supporting discrete, useful programs within flawed
organizations that do not merit U.S. engagement. Indeed, some parts of the U.N.
are too important to leave even if they are flawed; the most obvious example is
the U.N. Security Council, where having a permanent seat is vital to protecting
U.S. security and foreign policy interests through the judicious use of
America’s veto.
President Trump’s speech supplied a list of grievances
that resonate with the public and with policymakers. The hard work now is to
transform those grievances into institutional change. Trump is not likely to
flinch. If the U.S. and like-minded partners insist on outcomes rather than
resolutions, U.N. organizations may be nudged back to their original purpose.
And if not, Trump will be the man to walk away.
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