Undermining the UN is not a new US policy
While acting as the official host for the UN, the US has sought to weaken it for decades.
The annual general debate of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) starts on Tuesday morning in New York amid dire circumstances. Besides traffic gridlock and overpriced hotel rates, cavalcades of motorcades and successive dignitaries delivering calibrated speeches, this session will hear Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s last speech on the state of the UN.
Guterres headed the UN for 10 years, and during that time, he repeatedly failed to defend it when it came under attack. He passes on his post at the top of a world organisation on the verge of financial collapse and more marginalised than ever before.
Paradoxically, Guterres has the United States, the host government of the UN, and its mercurial president, Donald Trump, to thank for this dismal state of affairs.
But just like during the Reagan years, there is another major factor driving Trump’s assault on the UN: US congressional politics. As Israel faced growing backlash at the UN for its genocide in Gaza, pressure from the Israeli lobby in Washington mounted. The Iron Dome diplomatic cover the US provided to Israel in the UN Security Council (UNSC) was no longer sufficient.