In an ideal world, the United States would withdraw its support for and participation with the United Nations General Assembly and many of its subsidiary organs while retaining its permanent seat on the body that at least reflects hard-power geopolitical realities: the U.N. Security Council.
But the perfect cannot become the enemy of the good. In lieu of a full-scale U.S. retreat from the UNGA, the Trump administration would do well to withdraw its imprimatur from some of the U.N.’s most corrupt and least effective institutions.
First on the chopping block has to be the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA. Last year, Congress put a pause on the transfer of funds to that apparatus following the discovery that some of its employees supported or even participated in the October 7 massacre. “Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” said UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini last year. Despite the firing of nine implicated UNRWA workers last August, the agency has not reformed itself.
Obviously, U.S. taxpayers should not be on the hook for a bill run up by terrorists engaged in a genocidal campaign against Israeli Jews.
Congress’s pause on UNRWA funding expires in March, and the legislature should make it permanent. In addition, the Trump administration should work to convince America’s partners abroad to do the same.
UNRWA isn’t the only boil the incoming administration would do well to lance. In its first year, the Biden administration thoughtlessly recommitted the United States to membership in the United Nations Human Rights Council, an Orwellian congress in which the world’s worst human-rights abusers dictate terms to the West from a position of presumed moral authority. The outfit has been populated with some of the worst crackpots and conspiracy theorists, and its anti-Western orientation is matched only by its reliable antisemitism. The incoming head of Trump’s mission to the U.N., Elise Stefanik, should follow Nikki Haley’s lead and head again for the exits.
Likewise, Stefanik should take another page from Haley’s book and leave the U.S. out of the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In 2011, Congress cut funding to this institution in response to its decision to violate U.S. law and admit the Palestinian Authority to a position reserved for recognized states. When the organization doesn’t formally honor communist executioners like Che Guevara, it erases Israeli history by renaming the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall and declaring Israel’s capital city to be an illegally occupied possession.
Defenders of the U.N.’s humanitarian bodies are quick to note that those outlets sometimes do good work. They promote charity, literacy programs, environmental conservation, and a variety of other philanthropic endeavors. But the notion that Americans must accept a little terrorism and virulent Jew hatred along with their charitable works imposes a false choice on American taxpayers.
Then, there are the U.N.’s peacekeeping operations. Take, for example, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). At roughly 10,000 troops, the U.N.-led mission to Southern Lebanon is one of the largest peacekeeping missions in the world. Not only has UNIFIL failed to achieve its objectives, it’s hard to see how the deployment has even attempted to fulfill its mission. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 forbids the presence of any armed personnel south of the Litani River save UNIFIL and the Lebanese army.
Neither Hamas, nor Hezbollah, nor the Palestinian Islamic Jihad has abided by this stricture. Indeed, following the October 7 attacks, the Islamist militias in Southern Lebanon rained rockets and artillery down on Israeli territory from areas supposedly under UNIFIL control. It was only when Israeli forces pivoted from the campaign against Hamas in Gaza to Lebanon nearly a year after the 10/7 massacre that those attacks were finally stopped.
While the United Nations does some valuable things, more capable and democratically responsive governmental organizations and NGOs could do them more effectively. Certainly, there are worthier recipients of U.S. taxpayer-provided largesse, ones that don’t require the moral compromises associated with membership in the U.N.’s most bigoted, incompetent, or subversive institutions.