22 January 2025

The UN and Trump’s America are on a collision course

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The United Nations celebrates its 80th anniversary this year. We have got used to it as part of the furniture of global diplomacy and come to assume it will always be with us. But the next four years could prove especially challenging for it. I wonder if it will survive a second term of Donald Trump at the White House. Trump is not deferential by nature and I suspect his patience with this curious body will prove very limited. Usually, national leaders find it expedient to join in the hypocrisy of paying homage to it as a worthy institution. I suspect Trump’s view will be closer to Enoch Powell’s, who once declared:

It is conventional to refer to the United Nations in hushed tones of respect and awe, as if it were the repository of justice and equity, speaking almost with the voice of God if not yet acting with the power of God. It is no such thing. Despite the fair-seeming terminology of its charter and its declarations, the reality both of the Assembly and of the Security Council is a concourse of self-seeking nations, obeying their own prejudices and pursuing their own interests. They have not changed their individual natures by being aggregated with others in a system of bogus democracy. I am not saying that nations ought not to pursue their own interests. But those interests are not sanctified by being tumbled into a mixer and shaken up together. An assembly of national spokesmen is not magically transmuted into a glorious company of saints and martyrs.

Trump’s election manifesto (or ‘Platform’ as the Americans call such documents) did not mention the UN. But his first term showed the strain already starting to show. It’s true that during his first term, he would dutifully pitch up each year to address its General Assembly in New York. But during one such speech, his description of the achievements of his administration was greeted with derisive laughter.

His first address, in 2017, criticised ‘unaccountable international tribunals, and powerful global bureaucracies’. He also declared that:

It is a massive source of embarrassment to the United Nations that some governments with egregious human rights records sit on the UN Human Rights Council.

The Trump administration withdrew the United States from the UN Human Rights Council – the Biden administration later rejoined. Trump also gave notice of the US pulling out of the UN’s World Health Organisation. This was cancelled by Biden but has now been implemented by one of President Trump’s early executive orders. Trump had also pulled the plug on UNRWA – UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Biden resumed funding – but cancelled it again after evidence that the money was bankrolling Hamas terrorist operations.

Trump cancelled the US sub to the United Nations Population Fund after telling the General Assembly: ‘We are aware that many United Nations projects have attempted to assert a global right to taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, right up until the moment of delivery. Global bureaucrats have absolutely no business attacking the sovereignty of nations that wish to protect innocent life.’

Unesco, the UN’s educational, scientific and cultural organisation, was also ditched by the first Trump administration. In doing so, Trump followed an earlier withdrawal by Ronald Reagan. (Margaret Thatcher also cancelled the UK’s membership.) Reagan’s decision, which held from 1984–2003, was prompted by Unesco’s anti-western propaganda as well as its extravagance and mismanagement of its budget, with appointments said to be characterised by cronyism and sometimes nepotism.

Trump did not find Unesco any better a generation later. In 2013, for example, it held a ceremony to honour brutal executioner Che Guevara. A couple of years earlier, it emerged that it was funding a Palestinian youth magazine which praised Hitler.

Predictably, Biden again opted to rejoin.

All these different branches of the UN, with different categories of funding, make assessing overall budgets rather complicated. But according to the Council on Foreign Relations: ‘The United States remains the largest donor to the United Nations. It contributed more than $18 billion in 2022, accounting for one-third of funding for the body’s collective budget.’

Of course, one can argue that $18 billion is a footling amount for the US Federal Government. It had a deficit last year of $1.8 trillion. But with a rigorous, Javier Milei-style economy drive about to start, UN funds could be an obvious item for closer scrutiny.

If Trump resents the United States paying an unduly high share of funding to Nato, to contribute to the security of its allies, how much more is he likely to resent funding his country’s enemies?

Quitting several of the UN agencies is highly likely. But if the US went further and withdrew from the whole thing? What if the UN was obliged to leave New York and relocate in another country? My understanding is that Congress would need to back such a momentous decision – it would require the repeal of the United Nations Participation Act of 1945.

In many ways, the isolationist aspect of Trump’s ‘America First’ philosophy is alarming. Seeking to ignore hostile dictatorships that don’t appear to offer an immediate threat is dangerously short-term. But if this mentality prompts the US to disengage from the UN, then it will be doing the right thing – albeit for the wrong reasons.

Such a decision might seem extreme. But the reality is that the UN itself tolerates extremism. Current members of its Human Rights Council include China, Cuba and Qatar. What a hollow joke for the oppressed people of those countries.

In any case, ditching the UN need not be isolationist. It could depart with other democratic countries and establish an Alliance of Democratic Nations as an alternative body. It would not seek to intrude on national sovereignty with ‘international law’ – but it could still champion cooperation in the cause of prosperity and freedom. As with the Commonwealth, it would be a club with some proper standards before membership would be granted – thus having true moral authority, in marked contrast to the moral bankruptcy of the gangster states of the UN.

The United Nations is a failed project. If Trump brings it to an end we should not mourn its passing.

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Harry Phibbs is a freelance journalist.

Columns are the author's own opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of CapX.