John Bolton a former US ambassador to the United Nations (2005-2006) once infamously declared that if the 39-storeyed UN Secretariat building in New York “lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”
That statement triggered a sarcastic response from a New York Times columnist who said Bolton would have done better as an urban planner than a US diplomat –while another newspaper described him as “a human wrecking ball”
Similarly, one of his successors Niki Haley told a Republican National Convention that the “UN was a place where dictators, murderers and thieves denounce America, and demand that we pay their bills.”
And now comes President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee — House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York—who has condemned the United Nations as “corrupt and antisemitic” — to be his next ambassador to the world body.
She has threatened to cut funding for the UN, including a UN agency providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and denounced the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.
So, what else is new?
According to a November 11 report in Politico, a Washington-based digital newspaper, Trump is elevating a fierce critic of the U.N. as his emissary to the world body — the latest sign that he plans to make good on pledges to strongly support Israel on the world stage and play hardball with international organizations and alliances.
In a 25 September article in the Washington Examiner titled “If the United Nations continues its antisemitism, the US must withdraw support”, Stefanik said the U.N. “has proven again and again that it is a cesspool of antisemitism that has completely turned against Israel in its darkest hour.”
But her hard-hitting comments have triggered equally strong condemnations.
Kul Gautam, a former UN assistant Secretary-General, told IPS Trump’s proposed new appointment is “a frightening prospect for the UN”.
“Stefanik seems to represent the antithesis of the UN ideals, multilateralism, and respect for international laws — all in the interest of blanket US support for Israel,” he said.
Indeed, all of Trump’s national security nominees seem to fit what Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council characterizes as: Israel-First, America-Second, Humanity-Last ethos, said Gautam, a former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF.
According to the US Congressional Research Service (CRS), the approved regular budget for U.N. is $3.6 billion for FY 2024. The General Assembly determines a regular budget scale of assessments every three years based on a country’s capacity to pay. The Assembly will likely adopt new assessment rates for the 2025-2027 period in December 2024.
The United States is currently assessed 22%, the highest of any U.N. member, followed by China (15.25%) and Japan (8.03%).
But this may change under the Trump administration.
As Stefanik warned: “We must strive for a U.N. in which no one nation is expected to foot the bill but receive no accountability or transparency in return, in which no despot or dictator can sit in judgment of others while deflecting attention away from their own human rights abuses, and in which no organization corrupted by the likes of the Chinese Communist Party can dictate sweeping conventions and international standards across its membership”.
Ian Williams, President of the New York-based Foreign Press Association told IPS the vultures are fluttering home to roost.
“When Elise Stefanik launches off at the UN, interpreters should program their ChatGB with the translation “yada yada yada” for her message.”
Delegates and media should deride, rebut or mock her. There is no upside to pandering to her nor even to trying to reason with here, said Williams.
During the Balkan Wars, he pointed out, many young State Department professionals struck the board and cried “no more!” at the shameless double standards. The current generation appears either to be opportunistically complaisant in the face of Netanyahu’s genocide, or worse, true believers.
“Observers often wonder whether the UN could survive without the United States. Time to reverse the query- how can the UN survive in any meaningful way with the US as a malignant metastasizing tumor at its core” said Williams, a former President of the UN Correspondents’ Association (UNCA).
In his last days, Obama let through a conscience-easing resolution against Israel resolution: there is little or no chance of a significant gesture from the Biden administration in its dying days.
In contrast, Biden and Harris forfeited their chances of power with their shameless abasement to indicted war criminal Netanyahu- who had spent his term as Israeli PM campaigning against their re-election.
“We have been here before. John Bolton’s initiative to punish member states that failed to explicitly pre-amnesty American troops brought the US into more disrepute than the UN and not just its “moral” standing. It was simply shrugged off and forgotten by most members. This time, the organization’s members would get their retaliation in first. It is pointless to try creative engagement with bigots”, declared Williams.
Norman Solomon, executive director, Institute for Public Accuracy and national director, RootsAction.org, told IPS for many decades, the U.S. government has viewed the United Nations as either a legitimizing rubber stamp or a recalcitrant dissenter to be ignored and belittled.
During the leadup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for instance, the George W. Bush administration sought UN approval and never got it. But when the Security Council approved aggressive military actions led by the United States, as with the 1991 Gulf War, officials in Washington were glad to trumpet the UN’s importance, he pointed out.
“Stefanik is a jingoistic politician who gladly asserts the U.S. prerogative to run as much of the world as possible. To the extent that the Trump administration sees the United Nations as useful in that pursuit, her stint at the UN will go smoothly.”
And to the extent that many of the countries, with the other 95 percent of the planet’s population seem to be getting in the way, “we can expect chauvinistic bombast from Stefanik, and Trump, reviling such countries and the UN as retrograde impediments to the glorious supreme virtues and power of the United States of America”, said Solomon.
Mandeep S. Tiwana, Interim Co-Secretary General, CIVICUS, told IPS the United States played a key role in the establishment of the UN in 1945.
“By choosing someone who clearly despises the UN and what it stands for as a candidate for Ambassador, Donald Trump and his advisors are repudiating the legacy of Late President Franklin Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who put in significant efforts to help set up the UN as a world body committed to international law and determined to save future generations from the scourge of war,” he said.
Disdain for human rights and the rules based international order brought untold suffering to humanity in the 20th century through two world wars. It would be extremely unwise for the incoming presidential administration in the United States to ignore these lessons from history,” declared Tiwana.
Solomon argued what was sometimes a more subtle attitude of a leader, such as president Joe Biden, providing king-of-the-world messages tinged with condescension and noblesse oblige, will be transformed into a harsher and more vicious approach beginning next year.
Stefanik as a personality will be largely beside the point. The underlying imperial approach to the world will be a no-holds-barred assault in rhetorical, economic and – when seen as needed – military terms, he said
“For domestic consumption, the message from the Trump presidency will be the equivalent of no-more-mister-nice-guy, asserting that it’s time to insist on fairness to Uncle Sam at last.”
Posturing as the victim will, perhaps more than ever, be the effect of the U.S. government in foreign policy, at once claiming to be a victim while the United States renews efforts to dominate as much of the world as possible, said Solomon, author of “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine”
Meanwhile, Stefanik was also critical of “the absurdly misnamed “Human Rights Council,” composed of some of the world’s worst human rights abusers, which has a standing antisemitic agenda item related to Israel and adopted a resolution stating that Israel should be held responsible for war crimes, all while failing to condemn the atrocities committed by Hamas”.
“The world is looking to the U.S. for moral leadership. As Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran and its terrorist proxies such as Hamas create a dangerous axis of evil that threatens the shared global commitment to peace, prosperity, and freedom, the U.S. must boldly defend our principles at every opportunity”, she declared.
As the largest financial contributor to the U.N., the U.S. must present the U.N. with a choice: reform this broken system and return it to the beacon of peace and freedom the world needs it to be, or continue down this antisemitic path without the support of American taxpayers, she noted.
Thalif Deen, Senior Editor, UN Bureau, Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, is a former Director, Foreign Military Markets at Defense Marketing Services; Senior Defense Analyst at Forecast International; military editor Middle East/Africa at Jane’s Information Group, USA; and one-time UN correspondent for Jane’s Defense Weekly, London.
