When Donald Trump’s benefactor and cost-cutter-in-chief Elon Musk recently supported a name for the US to stop NATO and the United Nations, it ought to maybe have been extra shocking.
However the first months of the second Trump presidency have already seen key elements of the present worldwide order undermined. Musk’s place matches a basic sample.
Other than the tilt towards a multipolar world order, the US now refuses to recognise the International Criminal Court, has slashed its foreign aid contributions, and has withdrawn from the World Well being Group, the UN Human Rights Council and the Palestinian aid company UNRWA.
With Trump’s home politics displaying a clear autocratic edge, the rejection of the founding ideas and beliefs of the UN comes into sharper aid. The illiberal and impatient negotiating method he displayed with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky additionally belies a disregard for cooperative and consensus-based diplomacy.
The drive to slash the federal deficit dovetails with this basic abandonment of pricy worldwide commitments. If the Trump regime follows by means of on its obvious technique of manufacturing crises to advance its agenda, then leaving the UN totally is a logical subsequent step.
Undermined beliefs
That is all in stark distinction to the central position the UN has historically performed throughout the US-led worldwide order since 1945.
Together with different establishments, the UN allowed the US to form the worldwide system in its personal picture and unfold its home values and pursuits internationally. Together with NATO, the UN was designed as a worldwide safety establishment to supply international stability.
In idea a minimum of, the political and financial values of the US and different democracies enabled the development of the postwar order. According to political scientist John Ikenberry, this was primarily based on “multilateralism, alliance partnerships, strategic restraint, cooperative safety, and institutional and rule-based relationships”.
However by the twenty first century, US actions had undermined many of those ideas. The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 bypassed the authority of the UN, inflicting then secretary-general Kofi Annan to declare that “from the charter point of view [the invasion] was illegal”.
This undermined the legitimacy of the UN and America’s place inside it. However it additionally diminished the organisation as a pressure for sustaining worldwide safety and nationwide sovereignty in international affairs.
The subsequent human rights violations by the US by means of its use of rendition, torture and detention at services equivalent to Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib additional weakened the UN’s credibility as a protector of liberal worldwide values.
The US has additionally been a daily non-payer of UN charges, owing US$2.8 billion in early 2025. And it is among the lowest contribtuors of military and police personnel to UN peacekeeping operations, regardless of paying nearly 27% of the overall budget.
AAP
US versus UN
Because the Nineteen Nineties, a number of Republican politicians have argued for the US to withdraw totally from the UN. In 1997, senator Ron Paul launched the American Sovereignty Restoration Act, geared toward ending UN membership, expelling the UN headquarters from New York and ending US funding.
Though it obtained minimal help and by no means reached committee hearings, Paul reintroduced the act in each congressional session till his 2011 retirement. It was then taken up by different Republicans, together with Paul Broun and Mike Rogers.
In December 2023, senator Mike Lee and consultant Chip Roy led the introduction of the “Disengaging Entirely from the United Nations Debacle (DEFUND) Act”.
Roy referenced the perceived adverse therapy of Israel, the promotion of China, “the propagation of climate hysteria” and the US$12.5 billion in annual funds. Lee added:
Individuals’ hard-earned {dollars} have been funnelled into initiatives that fly within the face of our values – enabling tyrants, betraying allies, and spreading bigotry.
Public polling in 2024 additionally confirmed solely 52% of Americans had a favourable view of the UN. This opposition has deeper historic roots, too.
In 1920, US isolationists blocked the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, and with it US participation within the League of Nations (the predecessor to the United Nations). Though the US would work together with the League of Nations till the UN’s formation in 1945, it by no means turned an official member.
Criticism of the UN additionally has a bipartisan angle, with the US withdrawing funding of UNRWA in 2024 throughout Joe Biden’s presidency after Israel accused the agency of links to Hamas.
A diminished UN
If Trump harnesses these historic and trendy forces to drag the US out of the UN, it could basically – and certain irrevocably – undermine what has been a central pillar of the present worldwide order.
It could additionally improve US isolationism, scale back Western affect, and legitimise different safety our bodies. These embody the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which the US may doubtlessly be a part of, particularly given Russia and India are each members.
Extra broadly, the lowered affect of the UN will endanger basic peace and safety within the worldwide sphere, and the broader safety and promotion of human rights.
There can be better unpredictability in international affairs, and the world can be a extra harmful place. For international locations large and small, a UN with out the US will pressure new strategic calculations and create new alliances and blocs, because the world leaps into the unknown.
