In a November campaign stop in Keene, New Hampshire, last year, Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor and U.S. presidential candidate, told voters that it was time to stop spending American taxpayer money on the United Nations. It also provided an opportunity to take a catchy liberal political slogan — “defund the police” — and repackage it for his own conservative base.
“We need to defund the United Nations,” he said, citing the world body’s failure to publicly condemn Hamas for its ruthless Oct. 7, 2023, attack on civilians and soldiers in southern Israel. “We should focus on the problems here in the United States and stop lighting our money on fire.”
It was not long before Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., who is running neck and neck with DeSantis behind former U.S. President Donald Trump in national polls ahead of the Iowa Republican primaries, joined the chorus. If elected to America’s highest political office, she promised to sharply reduce funding at the world body.
“We would defund the U.N. as much as possible,” she pledged in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, adding the critical caveat that she would preserve the U.S. veto in the Security Council, which has blocked other countries from demanding Israel observe a cease-fire in Gaza.
The remarks by the two Republican politicians underscore the degree to which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is emerging as a potent political issue, providing candidates on both sides of the aisle an opportunity to demonstrate their fealty to Israel. But it also signaled to the Republican base that it is open season on U.N. bashing as we enter the 2024 election campaign.
“The prospect of the U.S. election is already casting a pretty long shadow over U.N. diplomacy,” said Richard Gowan, an expert on the U.N. at the International Crisis Group, noting that U.N. diplomats have long held lingering concerns that the United States would break from the international community and lurch to the right at some point. “They have never really shaken off the suspicion that Trump might return to power.”
The U.N. — with its byzantine bureaucracy, foreignness, and accommodation of democrats and autocrats alike — has long been a low-hanging fruit for political aspirants seeking a guaranteed applause line. In 1996, the Republican presidential front-runner, Bob Dole, routinely mocked the then-Egyptian U.N. secretary-general by stretching out the syllable of his name, “Booooutros Booooutros-Ghali,” while assuring American voters he would never yield sovereignty to the foreign statesman. Dole lost the election, but he reveled in the enthusiastic response his insults elicited from voters.
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Today, the war in Gaza is imposing enormous political, diplomatic, and human stress on the U.S., where the White House has blocked efforts in the U.N. Security Council to call for an end to Israel’s military offensive. It has also placed enormous strains on the U.N., which has suffered the greatest loss of life in its history, with more than 135 U.N. workers killed since Hamas opened the latest phase of conflict with its Oct. 7 slaughter of more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers.
Each week the war grinds on and the Palestinian death toll rises — it’s now over 20,000, according to unconfirmed numbers from Gaza’s Health Ministry, with more than a quarter of the population facing starvation — the U.S. finds itself increasingly isolated at the U.N.
“Unless we take drastic action there will be famine,” Lana Nusseibeh, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the U.N., told the Security Council on Dec. 22, 2023, as it prepared to adopt a resolution expanding humanitarian relief in Gaza. She recalled an alarming visit to the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza. “Thousands of trucks trying and failing to enter through a choke point, a crossing that was only ever intended to be for pedestrians.”
The development has undercut U.S. President Joe Biden’s ambition of putting the isolationist tendencies of the Trump wing of the Republican party behind, and restoring the U.S. role as a champion of multilateralism and the U.N., according to diplomatic sources. Since taking office, the Biden administration has rejoined the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Paris Agreement on climate change, the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, and the U.N. Population Fund. It has also resumed hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency that cares for Palestinian refugees.
Still, Washington’s robust support of Israel’s military offensive has damaged America’s standing at the U.N., and weakened its campaign to rally support from the global south for diplomatic support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia, diplomats say. “People aren’t going to just forget this,” said one senior U.N.-based diplomat.
Others, however, insist the U.S. — which spends more than $18 billion a year on U.N. activities, more than twice the amount spent by the second-largest donor, Germany — would come back.
“This too shall pass,” said Peter Yeo, president of the Better World Campaign, the advocacy wing of the U.N. Foundation.
“The reality is that there are ups and downs in terms of the view of the U.S. internationally, and at the moment, the U.S. is taking a hit for its position as it relates to the war,” Yeo added. “But the war shall end and at some point we’ll all move onto the next crisis and the U.S. and the U.N. will still be there.”
How quickly that happens will depend a lot on how the war plays out.
“If the outcome is an Israeli occupation, or the expulsions of Gazans, that would be an incredible barrier in any outreach to the global south, an extraordinary albatross around our neck for the foreseeable future,” said Michael Doyle, a Columbia University professor and former special adviser to the late former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
“If on other hand we succeed in persuading the Israelis to withdraw from Gaza and help foster some yet-to-be-explained U.N. transitional administration that could turn out to be a way to redeem what appeared to many to be uncritical support of Israel’s actions in Gaza. That could turn things around over time,” he added.
For now, the situation appears dire.
On Dec. 22, the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution calling for an expansion of humanitarian relief to Palestinians in Gaza. The vote followed negotiations that dragged on for days as the White House balked at allowing the passage of a resolution calling for a cessation of hostilities.
But U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield — deeply concerned about the diplomatic damage U.S. intransigence at the U.N. will have on U.S. interests, according to U.N.-based observers — negotiated a watered-down version of a draft by the United Arab Emirates calling for “an urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access in the Gaza Strip.”
The U.S. was unwilling to call for an immediate cessation of hostilities, part of its long-standing policy of providing Israel with the freedom to continue its military offensive in Gaza. The final version calls merely for “urgent steps to immediately allow safe, unhindered, and expanded humanitarian access to create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
The final draft also weakened a provision that would have invested U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres with the sole authority to monitor “all humanitarian relief consignments to Gaza provided through land, sea and air routes.” Instead, it called for the appointment of a senior U.N. humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator to facilitate, coordinate, and monitor aid delivery, a provision that suggested Israel would continue to play a central role in monitoring and inspecting aid entering Gaza. Guterres appointed Sigrid Kaag, a Dutch politician and former U.N. official, to the post on Dec. 26, 2023.
Still, the resolution marked an important step forward for the U.N. Security Council, which has been largely paralyzed by two of the council’s permanent members, Russia and the U.S., which have wielded their veto power to prevent action to contain fighting in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip.
The resolution “demands the immediate and unconditional release” of all hostages held by Hamas; “demands” the provision of humanitarian assistance “at scale;” and “demands the provision of fuel to Gaza at all levels.”
The U.N. has expressed concern that Israel’s cutoff of fuel in the early stages of the conflict has undermined the Palestinians’ ability to operate hospitals and bakeries, and desalinate salt water to meet the Palestinians’ need for fresh water. It also reiterates the council’s “unwavering commitment to the vision of a two-state solution” and underscores “the importance of unifying the Gaza Strip and West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.”
“This was tough but we got there,” Thomas-Greenfield said after the vote. “It took many days and many, many long nights of negotiating to get this right. But today the council provided a glimmer of hope amongst a sea of unimaginable suffering.”
But in the end, the U.S., along with Russia, abstained on the final vote.
“While we are encouraged that the council spoke out on the humanitarian crisis, we’re deeply disappointed, appalled actually, the council was not able to condemn Hamas’ horrific terrorist attack on October 7,” she said. “Why is it so hard to condemn Hamas for slaughtering young people at a concert or burning families alive, or the reports of widespread sexual violence?”
The council debate is playing out at a time of rising concerns over the humanitarian consequence of Israel’s partial blockade of Gaza, and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, system declared on Dec. 21, 2023, “there is a risk of Famine [in Gaza] and it is increasing each day that current situation of intense hostilities and restricted humanitarian access persists or worsens.”
Humanitarian relief agencies rebuked the Biden administration.
“Today’s shocking figures describing the high levels of starvation in Gaza are a direct, damning, and predictable consequence of Israel’s policy choices — and President Biden’s unconditional support and diplomatic approach,” said Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America. She urged the Biden administration in a statement to use its leverage with Israel to bring about “an immediate ceasefire to stop the bloodshed.”
“The US government has repeatedly given Israel diplomatic cover, but now must urgently change course and put politics aside to prioritize the lives of civilians,” she said. “Israel has the right to defend its people from attacks, but it does not have the right to use starvation as a weapon of war to collectively punish an entire civilian population in reprisal. That is a war crime.”
“Today’s figures show more than 500,000 Gazans could be in a famine-like condition by February unless something is done to address the situation immediately,” Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, CEO of Mercy Corps, said in a statement. “It’s beyond unacceptable that we have reached yet another tipping point in Gaza — this time, death by starvation, to add to the thousands killed by airstrikes.”
There is no doubt the very concept of American leadership has taken a hit, as the U.S. heads of institutions like the World Food Programme, UNICEF, and the International Organization for Migration have faced internal dissent from staffers who claim they have aligned their policy with U.S. aims in the Middle East.
“It used to be an asset for the U.N. to have Americans in those leadership roles, people who know how to navigate Congress and protect these agencies,” said Natalie Samarasinghe, global director for advocacy at the Open Society Foundations. “I’m not sure that is going to continue. I think now there will be more questions raised as to why should these big countries get these jobs.”
Still, she said 2024 provides an opportunity for the U.S. to repair some of the damage and forge better relations with leaders of the global south, including the South Africas, Indias, and Brazils of the world. “What do they care about? They care about debt, they care about climate finance, they care about development finance,” she said.
On Dec. 21, the U.N. Security Council, with the support of the U.S., took a step in that direction, adopting a U.N. Security Council resolution that would provide U.N. funding for African Union peace operations.
Still, the current crisis over Gaza threatens to spill into other efforts to grapple with a range of other global troubles, from reform of the international financial architecture to the struggle to contain artificial intelligence and climate change.
Guterres’ signature U.N. reform initiative — Our Common Agenda — will be taken up at the September 2024 Summit of the Future. He hoped to use the event to promote a far-reaching reform initiative aimed at regulating the digital revolution, including the military use of AI, reinventing the international financial architecture, and securing rights for future generations.
But it will be difficult to build support for major new financial commitments in an election year that may see the United States turning increasingly inward.
“I don’t think the State Department has convinced the U.S. Treasury that making large financial commitments through the U.N. is in the U.S. domestic interest,” said Sarah Cliffe, executive director of the New York University’s Center on International Cooperation.
“If the polls are looking strongly pro-Trump by September, many of the long-term issues are going to be overshadowed by future fears of what Trump would do for multilateralism,” said Cliffe, “It’s hard to imagine reforming the international financial architecture in that climate.”
“The election of Trump wrecked the beginning of [Guterres’] first term, and this election could wreck the end of his second term,” she added.
Colum Lynch is an award-winning reporter and Senior Global Reporter for Devex. He covers the intersection of development, diplomacy, and humanitarian relief at the United Nations and beyond.
