THE UNITED NATIONS has known many crises since its founding in 1945, from the mysterious death in Congo of its secretary-general, Dag Hammarskjöld, in 1961, to Nikita Khrushchev’s alleged shoe-banging in the cold war, the massacres of civilians under its protection in the 1990s, and America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. As leaders prepare to gather in New York next week for the UN’s 80th birthday, veterans say none of those disasters feels as calamitous as this one. With President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, there are many traumatic scenarios for the un, but three stand out: going rogue, decay and turning Trumpian.
Nobody at UN headquarters in Turtle Bay, New York, quite knows what Mr Trump’s “America First” ideas will bring, in part because there is no one to tell them. The Senate has yet to confirm Mike Waltz, Mr Trump’s nominee as ambassador. All will be looking for clues in duelling speeches on September 23rd, when Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a Trump bête noire, will open the debate at the UN General Assembly, followed by Mr Trump himself.
The immediate shock is budgetary. The Trump administration is starving the UN of funds even before it has unveiled its promised review of multilateral institutions. A habitually delinquent member, America has not paid its obligatory UN dues for 2025. The president’s budget request for the 2026 fiscal year, currently with Congress, “pauses” almost all payments to the UN. Meanwhile, America’s foreign aid, much of it routed through voluntary contributions to UN humanitarian organisations, has been slashed. UN agency budgets have shrunk on average by about a third. Food, medicines, help for refugees and other assistance to hundreds of millions of people is being eliminated. Battered by America’s tariffs, global economic development could go into reverse.
Even as the money dries up the Security Council is mostly deadlocked and UN peacekeeping is out of fashion. Big members are mocking the UN charter’s ban on seizing another state’s territoryby force: Russia, by brazenly doing it, and America, by its airy talk of annexing Greenland and absorbing Canada as its “51st state”.
What happens next? America has long been the essential ingredient in attempts at global governance. The world’s first effort was crippled at birth by the American Senate’s refusal to ratify the League of Nations at the end of the first world war. It in effect died with the outbreak of the second world war. Its heir, the UN, endured in large part because generations of American leaders reckoned that, despite its flaws, it promoted a liberal order and American power.
Polls show a majority of Americans still support the UN but views are polarised. Republican administrations have long been suspicious of the institution. John Bolton, America’s former ambassador to the UN, once shocked many by declaring: “The Secretariat building in New York has 38 storeys. If it lost ten storeys, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” The level of Republican hostility today is higher than ever and could create the conditions for the first scenario: that the un becomes America’s adversary, going “rogue” in response to America First radicalism.
An outright rupture with America could come in 2027 if its budget arrears reach two years’ worth of contributions, the level at which a country stands to lose its vote in the General Assembly. This deliberative body makes mostly non-binding pronouncements, and America could veto any attempt to force it off the Security Council. But the humiliation might provoke retaliation, if not America’s exit.
Palestine is the another potential catalyst. Many UN members regard it as the last great colonial cause, and Israel’s war as genocide. In turn, Israel and the Trump administration think the UN is steeped in antisemitism. The latest movement to recognise Palestinian statehood, led by France and Saudi Arabia, could escalate. The Trump administration has denied visas for the Palestinian delegation to attend next week’s meeting.
Already, the Trump administration is declining to participate in global decision-making. America has stopped funding UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. It is leaving the Paris climate accords, the World Health Organisation, UNESCO (the UN’s educational and cultural organisation) and the Human Rights Council. It has withdrawn from discussions on the response to future pandemics, reforming development finance and protecting parts of the high seas. The administration now objects to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 objectives—from eliminating extreme poverty to promoting health—that are both utopian and sprawling. America regards these as creeping world government, reeking of woke gender and climate ideology, and an endorsement of Chinese ideas.
Other countries could seek to fill the vacuum with money and diplomatic efforts, altering the balance of funding and staffing within the un system. Europe might try to uphold liberal values, but other countries would not. Middle powers like Turkey and the Gulf states are already said to be influencing the delivery of aid in conflict zones on the basis of their political objectives as well as genuine need.
The UN, especially the General Assembly, could become radically anti-American, as it threatened to do in the 1970s, when many of the newly decolonised countries used it to push for a “new economic order” to undo Western capitalism and free trade. It could for instance, start to adopt demands that rich countries pay climate reparations, or share taxes more equitably. Even if America retained its Security Council veto, the un would become a body for galvanising resistance towards it.
That would make it easier for Russia and especially China to claim leadership at the un and elsewhere. They are already promoting other bodies in parallel, notably the BRICS economic club and the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), a Eurasian security forum. At an SCO summit earlier this month, attended by India, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, spoke of the need “to take a clear stand against hegemonism and power politics, and practise true multilateralism”. Many countries are wary of China, but they may find Mr Xi’s offer more attractive than Mr Trump’s.
Minh-Thu Pham of Project Starling, a group that supports multilateral co-operation, says the danger is less that the UN goes rogue, but that America does. “The UN is moving forward without the US, and not in spite of the US or to spite the US,” she says; abandonment by America means the UN will become more “independent”.
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A second scenario is that the UN survives—America stays in and countries avoid antagonising Mr Trump—but the system becomes fragmented and enters decay. China has adopted America’s late-paying habit (see chart). Other big contributors, notably European countries, are cutting back foreign aid to redirect funds to defence. The OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, projects that its members will cut aid by 9-17% this year, on top of a 9% cut last year. Bureaucratic resistance, and the conflicting interests of members, may leave the tangle of 140-odd UN bodies broadly untouched, though underfunded. Tom Fletcher, the UN’s humanitarian-affairs chief, says the UN has received just 19% of the aid funds it has pleaded for in 2025.
The UN could also become a pick-and-mix outfit. It would not be guaranteed American funds, but some of its agencies could benefit if, say, America decided that its refugee agency was useful to stem the flow of migrants.Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group, a think-tank, argues that the Security Council, in particular, could become half-dead, with just the odd reflexive spasm, for example, to renew the mandate of UN peacekeepers in Cyprus. The assembly might try to claim a greater role on matters of peace and security. Some of the UN’s specialised agencies—the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), say, or the International Civil Aviation Organisation—will probably live on. “You could see a fragmented form of multilateralism emerging, with no real political heart to it but lots of single-purpose agencies,” says Mr Gowan. “It would be mainly run out of Geneva or Nairobi, not Manhattan.”
The final scenario is a Trumpian reinvention. Mr Waltz says he intends to “make the UN great again”. America is pushing to restrict asylum rights under the 1951 UN refugee convention; it also wants the UN to help strengthen the mission, led by Kenya, in gang-ravaged Haiti; and it has pushed Europe to “snap back” UN sanctions on Iran. Some countries may welcome a greater focus on peace and less time spent on social matters.
Mr Trump likes pomp, and might look for showy agreements. UN insiders hope to find reforms, such as a narrower set of priorities, that would both be good for the UN and appeal to Mr Trump. Some diplomats suggest the UN should move away from peacekeeping to busy itself with peace diplomacy. Or perhaps something more practical can replace the SDGs, which are largely unachieved. Duplicative or marginal bodies could be abolished.
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America’s Security Council vote in February with Russia and China urging “a lasting peace” between Ukraine and Russia dismayed Europe. But it could lead to more big-power co-operation. Having backed different sides of the civil war in Syria, America and Russia are supporting the government of the former jihadist, Ahmed al-Sharaa. The “deal of the century” for Mr Trump, notes Ms Pham, would be to reform the membership and voting rights in the Security Council and reset the global power balance.
Much hangs on the whims of Mr Trump, and the skill of the next UN secretary-general. Hustings to replace António Guterres in 2027 begin at the end of this year. Some candidates, such as Rafael Grossi, director-general of the IAEA, are jockeying for position. Until recently, there was talk of having a Latin American woman. Trumpists may find that too woke. Only half in jest, one insider proposes a woman dear to Mr Trump’s heart: his daughter, Ivanka. If that is what it takes to keep Mr Trump engaged, so be it. Desperate times, desperate measures.
