Will a new Trump administration challenge the United Nations? Will it defund the U.N.?
The first Trump administration:
- Defunded UNRWA.
- Pulled out of the U.N. Human Rights Council.
- Pulled out of negotiations on the Global Compact for Migration.
- Pulled out of UNESCO.
- Threatened to prosecute International Criminal Court (ICC) judges and prosecutors.
- Planned withdrawal from and defunding of the World Health Organization.
All of these challenges to the U.N. were reversed by the Biden administration.
Former President Trump has said: “I have long felt the United Nations is an underperformer but has tremendous potential.”
He has decried the large contributions the U.S. makes to the U.N. as a bad deal. He lamented “the utter weakness and incompetence of the United Nations. The United Nations is not a friend of democracy; it’s not a friend to freedom; it’s not a friend even to the United States of America, where, as you know, it has its home; and it surely is not a friend to Israel.”
During his administration, Trump appointed Nikki Haley as ambassador to the United Nations. She was an assertive critic of the U.N.’s incompetence, corruption and anti-American and anti-Israel policies.
Trump also appointed John Bolton as National Security Advisor. Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations himself, was a fierce critic of the organization. During his time in the Trump administration, he threatened ICC judges and prosecutors with U.S. prosecution.
The U.N. has attempted to become a world government and is inherently imperialistic. It seeks to extend its authority over all nations and thus is the enemy of national sovereignty. It promotes supposedly universal values and suppresses nonconforming ideas.
The U.N. comprises 193 countries, most of which are totalitarian, not democratic. The representatives and personnel these countries send to the world body do not represent their people; they represent their authoritarian dictators.
The U.N. is instinctively anti-American as a result of Russia and China (America’s most powerful enemies) sitting on the Security Council, as well as the scores of Islamic and post-colonial, global south member countries that vote in blocs. These nations’ values differ markedly from liberal democracies such as the U.S. They block U.S. initiatives and promote programs that seek to weaken our power. By supporting the U.N., the U.S. is sponsoring its enemies to the tune of billions of dollars per year.
The U.N. is antisemitic and hostile to U.S. ally Israel. More than 70% of all U.N. resolutions that condemn a specific state are condemnations of Israel. This obscene obsession and double standards have led to worldwide hatred of the Jewish state and thus Jewish people.
Antisemitism has been a feature at the U.N. since shortly after its founding and increased with its rapid expansion and the addition of Asian and African countries. Former Nazi Kurt Waldheim once led the U.N. as its secretary-general. The U.N. sponsored the virulently antisemitic Durban conference. It approved the “Zionism is racism” resolution. It created UNRWA, which perpetuates a bogus refugee status for Arabs who lived in Mandatory Palestine and teaches, supports and practices terrorism against Israel. The U.N. invited arch-terrorist and Jew-hater Yasser Arafat to speak to its General Assembly twice.
The U.N. constantly harasses and attempts to delegitimize Israel. It issued the infamous Goldstone Report accusing Israel of deliberately targeting civilians and practicing genocide. UNESCO tried to erase Jewish history in its ancestral homeland.
In short, the U.N. is a deeply antisemitic organization that reflects the bigotry and hate of a majority of its member states. These corrupt, totalitarian, violent countries long ago turned the once idealistic U.N. into a house of evil. Scapegoating, gaslighting, venality, incompetence and corruption run rampant in this modern-day Tower of Babel.
The U.N. is also incompetent and corrupt. It has overseen scandals such as the Oil for Food Program, from which profits were skimmed by the Saddam Hussein regime and U.N. operatives; child sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeeping forces in numerous countries; wrongful dismissal of whistleblower American diplomat James Wasserstrom; and causing and then denying the cholera outbreak that killed over 10,000 Haitians and sickened hundreds of thousands more.
Trump reduced U.S. contributions to the U.N. but, upon taking office, President Joe Biden increased them. The U.S. contributed more than $18 billion to the U.N. in 2022, accounting for one-third of the body’s collective budget. The U.N. functions as a wealth redistribution system by taxing developed countries to subsidize less developed countries. Worse, it taxes liberal democracies to support dictatorships.
Trump knows the harm the U.N. does to freedom-loving people and countries. If his previous policies and actions are a guide to his next term, we can expect him to confront the U.N. and use American power to steer the organization in a more positive direction or abandon it altogether. If the latter, Trump could build an organization of liberal democratic countries with common goals and interests that will work to promote the peace and human rights the U.N. has failed to achieve.
