Suzanne Nossel
The United Nations is in crisis. Secretary-General António Guterres has mandated 20 percent across-the-board spending cuts, amounting to more than $700 million. The proximate cause of the pinch is the United States’ clawback of around $1 billion in allocated funds, doubts over Washington’s future contributions, and, to a lesser extent, other nations’ retrenchments and practice of routinely paying dues late.
The crisis is not solely financial. Under President Donald Trump, the United States—which drove the U.N.’s founding—has turned its back on liberal internationalism. Washington has withdrawn from key U.N. agencies, suspended financial obligations to these bodies, and put the rest of its funding commitments to the organization under review. The U.N. has endured decades of U.S. pendulum swings, but this time is different: Trump is drastically reshaping Washington’s stance toward the world in ways that won’t easily be undone. The emergence of alternative multilateral bodies, great-power deadlocks, and global reductions in development assistance all threaten the U.N. in its current incarnation.
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