The presence of Donald Trump at the kickoff of the 80th anniversary High-Level Week at the UN General Assembly will reveal shifting attitudes to global power and how it is wielded, in addition to some inklings on the future of the international order that was authored primarily by the United States in the aftermath of WWII. The U.S. president’s appearance will also likely result in some uncomfortable moments — if not outright confrontations. In the minds of many, the festivities will no doubt be an example of the feebleness and irrelevance of the UN, but the atmosphere and determination on display will also illustrate how the organization can still be a focal point and advocate for the highest aspirations of the international community.
Avoiding a train wreck may be the priority concern for those most worried about the future of the UN, but Trump’s visit to Turtle Bay may also serve to galvanize and focus on needed reforms. Trump’s antipathy toward the international liberal order and its multilateral manifestations is well known and fully baked into his approach to the UN. The fear of what he may do — and how to ameliorate the negative consequences — may enable the organization to revert to a focus on core competencies and inherent comparative advantages.
There is no doubt that the Trump approach to the UN and the multilateral system has been sharp, direct, and chaotic. A first-day executive order withdrew the U.S. from the WHO, and two weeks later, another one ended U.S. participation in the UN Human Rights Council, questioned the value of UNESCO and UNRWA, and called for a six-month internal review of U.S. membership in hundreds of intergovernmental organizations to determine whether and how they aligned with American priorities as defined by the new administration. This was followed by a replacement of the nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the UN, minimal budget requests to fund the UN, and freezes of existing funding already in the pipeline. This broad-based hostility toward the UN —and the multilateral system in general — is further illustrated by the fact that Trump and UN Secretary-General AntónioGuterres (with whom he enjoyed at least a serviceable working relationship during his first term) have apparently not spoken directly this year on any topic of substance. Moreover, that the UN has been fully sidelined by the White House in Trump’s whirlwind of personalized diplomatic activity is also an indicator of what little regard Washington now has for the role and functions of the world body.
US Funding: A Critical Indicator
Trump’s hostility toward the UN has taken its most concrete form in financial payments to the UN budget. The U.S. is assessed for funding 22% of the UN’s regular budget and a slightly higher share of its sizeable peacekeeping budget (due to U.S. status as a permanent member of the Security Council). The timeliness of full U.S. payments to the UN have fluctuated for many decades under administrations of both parties. The Trump administration’s first budget recission package, which targeted unspent international assistance resources approved for fiscal years 2024 and 2025 and cut $1 billion for three core UN-related accounts, was signed into law in early August; the second “pocket recission” released August 29 clawed back an additional $1.36 billion from three accounts used to fund UN activities. Both of these came a couple months after the detailed release of the president’s budget request for fiscal year 2026, which sought to eliminate all amounts in two accounts customarily used to pay assessed funding to the UN, and drastically reduced levels in a third. In the place of those funds, the president requested the creation of an “America First Opportunity Fund,” which could be used in part, at the president’s discretion, to fund UN activities, but at reduced levels and in competition with other administration priorities. Early indications are that Congress seems generally inclined to follow the president’s lead and zero out most U.S. funding for UN organizations and programs.
Yet to come are decisions on whether the U.S. should retain its membership in hundreds of international organizations. A comprehensive review promised in the February executive order should yield, likely after the UNGA festivities, a decision framework to determine whether to stay or to go. The review is expected to consider everything from the efficiency to the “wokeness” of the international organization and will analyze the return on investment the organization can offer in relation to a narrow list of U.S. interests.
He is Not Entirely Wrong
While despair and hand-wringing over the results of this budgetary drought and possible large-scale organizational withdrawal predominates, there are voices both inside and outside of the UN that suggest that Trump might have a point. Perhaps the UN and its many agencies have lost their way and become distant from global political realities, pushed themselves into issues and areas for which they had little comparative advantage, managed to waste money on futile gestures, and face impossible, overlapping, and contradictory demands. Clearly, the argument goes, some sort of reckoning was overdue, and it takes an American-driven budget crisis (as has often been the case in the past) to prompt it. The organization needs a shake-up — a healthy dose of “animal spirits” to animate and guide a return to its founding priorities. These voices know that this significant and fundamental challenge to the UN’s operational goals and methods will be the only way to reposition its work to be more consonant with and focused on the current and most important challenges facing the international community. While this disruptive scenario contains some plausibility, U.S. disengagement and distraction render Washington unlikely to want to lead — or even provide much input into — the reform process, so it will take the active involvement of UN institutions and other Member States to step up and decide how to direct next steps.
UN Response
There are indications that this is happening. In the shadow of this sharp shift of direction and tone in Washington, the UN has taken some smart and strategic defensive steps to seize the initiative while shifting groups of UN Member States have either been content in the U.S. slipstream or have sought tools, resources, and mechanisms to counter it. UN Secretary-General Guterres released his UN80 Initiative in March, which while falling short of the root and branch reform some had been seeking, does appear to be a serious attempt to deal with the bureaucratic malaise and incoherent chaos of roles that seem to have gripped the UN in recent years. Several rounds of UN General Assembly discussion and debate have demonstrated widespread backing among Member States. In acknowledgment, the U.S. is taking some credit for spurring the effort and getting the organization back to basics. In late July, the General Assembly approved a Russian-drafted resolution on the Secretary-General’s initiative that welcomed “efforts of the Secretary-General to strengthen the United Nations in order to keep pace with a changing world and to make it fit for the present and future challenges.”
The reaction among other Member States has been more mixed. Trump’s belligerence toward the UN and some of its landmark initiatives has caused some Member States, such as the Group of 77 developing countries, to highlight “the need for stronger coordination and inclusive processes to ensure the Group speaks with one voice on key issues.” The European Union has stepped up its coordination role among its Member States in an effort to demonstrate abiding support for high-profile UN initiatives. Other Member States, however, have viewed Trump’s approach as permission to exhibit their own skepticism about the value of UN initiatives and programs. Argentina, for example, recently decided to follow Trump’s lead, refraining from being a candidate for the UN Human Rights Council and withdrawing from the WHO. Although greater visibility may be beneficial, the risk is that there will be increasing polarization surrounding a number of UN projects and programs.
What’s Next?
While the UN80 Initiative is clearly necessary, it is not sufficient. The 80th UNGA will also mark the first anniversary of last year’s UN Summit of the Future, which was a strategic yet least- common-denominator effort to categorize new and revised thinking about where the UN could make a difference, even as it shied away from tackling some of the toughest organizational and financial questions the UN faces. Trump’s return to the international stage has forced those questions to the fore with a renewed urgency, triggering acceptance of an existential re-examination of where the UN needs to operate and why.
A realistic scenario at the end of this reform process could see the UN back in the center of international diplomacy as a trusted arbiter of conflicts and manager of limited humanitarian and development programs after some meaningful measures of rightsizing and reform. It will necessarily have to include a tighter focus on where the UN has a comparative advantage — peace and security, humanitarian relief, and global social and economic challenges. But this process will also necessitate a visible pullback from areas, such as many of the sustainable development goals, where the UN has recently ventured and which still maintain a significant number of engaged stakeholders among Member States, civil society, and the private sector. Will it be enough for Washington? Maybe.
The U.S. push to shift the financial burden of the UN onto the backs of other countries may create some awkward dilemmas. Some see it as an opportunity to loosen what they perceive as excessive U.S. control and influence over the operations of key UN agencies. One particular and vivid example of other countries rallying to the UN’s defense could come from China. A few years ago, China tried to chip away at U.S. leadership in the UN through a combination of “wolf- warrior” diplomacy, which involved steady and pointed criticism of U.S. behavior at the UN, notably on its laggardly financial commitments. China also made a concerted effort to insert its nationals into key UN agencies, with the high point in 2020 when four Chinese citizens were in charge of major UN agencies. Additionally, Beijing sought to shift language across a range of UN decisions, mandates, and policies to bolster its own international initiatives, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, and to move away from traditional UN concerns such as human rights. In the past few years, Beijing has dialed these efforts back, but the UN’s new vulnerability at the hands of Washington may prompt a resurgence as China augments its efforts to diminish and constrain U.S. global leadership.
Learning Curve
It is also not unreasonable to speculate that an “America First” White House may come to see how a reformed and focused UN could be marginally useful in advancing U.S. national interests, as long as it remains fully subordinate to national governments. While Trump feels that multilateral diplomacy and settings enable countries to “gang up” together against the U.S., some of its advantages to U.S. national interests may also become apparent to him. Multilateral settings often give national leaders and diplomats a unique chance to better assess and anticipate other countries’ positions on key issues. UN Security Council debates, for example, are opportunities for countries to detail their visible positions on high-profile peace and security issues, identifying possible opportunities for common ground. Multilateral “convenings,” such as September’s High-Level Week, often provide unparalleled global attention for U.S. policies and personalities. President Trump relished the global attention paid to him during his appearances at the UN General Assembly during his first term. Presenting U.S. policies and positions at the UN can significantly shape international action, further legitimizing a U.S. priority or concern. Managing an international governance framework for artificial intelligence, for example, was something the Biden administration pursued through a UN General Assembly resolution; Trump may find the UN platform useful in promoting his very different set of priorities and gaining some degree of global acquiescence. In addition, multilateral institutions can often provide a formula and mechanism for burden sharing (and opportunities for burden shifting) on important U.S. foreign policy goals, such as peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance. These often have a direct fiscal benefit for the U.S. economy through products and services procured from the United States. Domestic economic headwinds from a softening U.S. economy and energized lobbying from affected U.S. stakeholders, such as farmers and exporters, may prompt some White House reversals on funding cuts.
Trump is instinctively distrustful of multilateralism — its institutions and practices. It complicates dealmaking and diminishes, in his view, comparative U.S. strengths. Bilateral negotiations, he feels, give the U.S. an advantage across the negotiating table. However, while he has some recent success in bending global partners to a more direct bilateral approach on trade, many issues must still be addressed within a multilateral framework. Trump and other global leaders will want to find a way to work together in those multilateral frameworks to tackle those problems. A key factor will be how fast and far major world leaders, including Trump, can adapt to make that a real possibility.
One result of that adaptation could be a UN that today is more reflective of the needs and agenda of its members, but this will also necessarily have to be a UN with reduced ambition and capacity to tackle the world’s most urgent needs. Is that a tradeoff UN Member States are willing to make? Addressing the crisis directly is no doubt preferable to a steady decline in capabilities that mirrors a reduced relevance. Such a step might also provide an opening for the U.S. to find its way back to some form of global leadership, even if on the narrower terms of U.S. interests and their continual advancement.