Sorry Mr. President, the UN isn’t going away

Starving and vilifying the United Nations won’t kill it, it will just deliver the global body to China.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump addressed the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on its 80th anniversary, delivering a meandering, often denigrating speech that sounded like one taken from a MAGA convention—ego forward, policy last. He said he had predicted “everything” and told attendees that their countries were “going to hell,” all while drifting through a string of falsehoods. Delegations listened respectfully, though laughter could be heard on occasion—as happened at his UNGA speech in 2018.

Trump offered nothing about the UN’s role or value. Instead, he questioned the institution’s mission, claimed it “did not even try” on Gaza, Sudan, or Ukraine, and spent long stretches on his usual grievances—taking shots at President Joe Biden, political opponents, and NATO allies that recognized a Palestinian state—plus dubious claims on immigration and green energy.

He did not announce a U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations. But he also gave no indication of support. What matters now is less what he said in the hall than what his administration has done and is doing outside it: cutting off money and capacity in ways that steadily weaken the UN’s ability to function.

On the compulsory side, the United States accounts for roughly a fifth of the UN’s regular budget and just over a quarter of peacekeeping costs. On the voluntary side—the money that helps keep the World Food Program, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and the World Health Organization moving—U.S. contributions often determine whether rations are halved and clinics stay open. Turn those spigots down, and you don’t reform the UN; you reduce output.

On the charge that the UN has done “nothing”: It cannot force outcomes on Gaza, Sudan, or Ukraine—major powers hold Security Council vetoes that block that path—but it has acted where politics allowed. The General Assembly repeatedly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when the Security Council stalled. The Black Sea Grain Initiative, brokered with Turkey, moved millions of tons of food through a war zone and helped hold down global prices until Moscow walked away. In Gaza and Sudan, UN relief agencies have organized convoys, negotiated pauses in fighting, and kept some aid moving, even when governments and armed groups blocked wider access. These efforts don’t stop wars, but they reduce the damage.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) matters because it translates dollars into deliveries. Folding development and humanitarian lines into a shell or pushing everything through bespoke bilateral deals does not make the work “efficient.” It strands partners midstream, severs ties to UN cluster coordination, and doubles the costs of alternatives. If the plan is to bypass multilateral pipelines, own the trade: more time, more money, more political risk carried by Washington alone.

If the United States starves the system, the system doesn’t die; it answers to whoever remains. China’s assessed share of the regular budget is now roughly one-fifth, with a similar slice of peacekeeping. That shift shows up in budget committees, personnel decisions, and program priorities. Recent reports show China is working to limit independent scrutiny in UN human rights forums: it pushes language of mutual respect, consultation, and joint cooperation, delays or blocks NGO participation, and amplifies government-aligned voices through state-linked NGOs. These maneuvers shift the balance from public accountability toward quieter, procedural control.

It is also true—and essential to say—that China does not replace U.S.-scale humanitarian giving. Beijing will surge selectively, especially nearby or where equities are clear—as with disaster relief in Myanmar—but it has not backfilled the global pipelines that voluntary dollars sustain. Read the consequences plainly: fewer deliveries overall, plus more Chinese influence over the standards and committees that remain.

Reform is not a panacea. The secretary-general’s “UN80” push to consolidate overlapping entities and trim overhead can reduce duplication at the edges. It cannot neutralize vetoes or conjure cash. Under austerity, “streamlining” quickly becomes attrition—hiring freezes that hollow analytical capacity, travel bans that slow fieldwork, merged desks that look tidy on a flow chart and brittle under pressure. If the aim is better outcomes, the order of operations is simple: stabilize financing, then rationalize structures. Doing it the other way around burns muscle before fat.

None of this pretends the UN is what its founders imagined on their best day. It cannot force outcomes when the major powers are divided, and that will remain true. But the UN still matters in a different lane: coordinating food aid, setting health standards, monitoring conflicts, and creating rules that shape what the next decade looks like. That is where lives are saved and where norms are written. Walking away from that role doesn’t strengthen U.S. sovereignty or cut waste; it simply gives more influence to governments that prefer weaker oversight, less transparency, and a smaller role for independent voices.

So the choice after Trump’s speech is not whether to clap or heckle. It is whether to keep the parts of multilateralism that serve U.S. interests and values—or to thin them out and let others define what remains. If Washington wants to reduce UN theatrics, fund the work that isn’t theatrical: food pipelines, vaccine campaigns, grain corridors, inspections, monitors. If it wants the UN to “do more,” pay on time, shape mandates, and put capable people in the chairs that decide how money is spent.

The room laughed again, as it did in 2018. But the arithmetic isn’t funny. Berating, lecturing, and defunding won’t end the UN; it will shrink what still works and shift the rule-writing to those who keep showing up. If that is the strategy, say so. If not, stop starving the pipes and turn the valves back on.

Brian O’Neill, a retired senior executive from the CIA and National Counterterrorism Center, is an instructor on strategic intelligence at Georgia Tech. His Safehouse Briefing Substack looks at what’s ahead in global security, geopolitics, and national strategy.

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