{"id":301479,"date":"2025-08-25T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=301479"},"modified":"2025-08-20T02:38:33","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T01:38:33","slug":"trumps-assault-upon-the-united-nations-is-at-odds-with-u-s-public-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/08\/trumps-assault-upon-the-united-nations-is-at-odds-with-u-s-public-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Assault Upon the United Nations is at Odds with U.S. Public Opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"

18 Aug 2025 –<\/em> If one examines Donald Trump\u2019s approach to world affairs since his entry into US politics, it should come as no surprise that he has worked to undermine the United Nations.<\/p>\n

The United Nations is based on international cooperation, as well as on what the UN Charter calls<\/a> \u201cthe equal rights . . . of nations large and small.\u201d\u00a0 It seeks to end \u201cthe scourge of war\u201d and to \u201cpromote social progress\u201d for the people of the world.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Trump has advocated a nationalist path for the United States.\u00a0 Campaigning for the presidency in 2016, he proclaimed<\/a> that \u201cAmerica First\u201d would \u201cbe the major and overriding theme of my administration.\u201d \u00a0In his 2017 inaugural address, he promised<\/a>:\u00a0 \u201cFrom this day forward, it\u2019s going to be only America first.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, \u201cAmerica First\u201d became his rallying cry as he championed an unusually aggressive nationalism.\u00a0 \u201cYou know what I am?\u201d Trump asked a crowd<\/a> in Houston.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m a nationalist, O.K.?\u00a0 I\u2019m a nationalist.\u00a0 Nationalist!\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes, his displays of superpatriotism\u2015which appealed strongly to rightwing audiences\u2015included hugging and kissing the American flag<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Given this nationalist orientation, Trump turned during his first administration to dismantling key institutions<\/a> of the United Nations and of the broader system of international law.\u00a0 He withdrew the U.S. government from the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Health Organization, the UN Human Rights Council, and the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).\u00a0 He also had the U.S. government vote against the Global Compact on Refugees, suspend funding for the UN Population Fund and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and impose sanctions on a key international agency, the International Criminal Court, which investigates and prosecutes perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, many of these Trump measures were reversed<\/a> under the subsequent presidency of Joseph Biden, which saw the U.S. government rejoin and bolster most of the international organizations attacked by his predecessor.<\/p>\n

With Trump\u2019s 2020 election to a second term, however, the U.S. government\u2019s nationalist onslaught resumed.\u00a0 In January 2025, U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), testifying at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing<\/a> on her nomination to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, assailed the world organization, and promised to use her new post to promote Trump\u2019s \u201cAmerica First\u201d agenda.\u00a0 \u201cOur tax dollars,\u201d she argued, \u201cshould not be complicit in propping up entities that are counter to American interests.\u201d\u00a0 Joining the attack, Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), the committee chair, sharply criticized the United Nations and called for a reevaluation of every UN agency to determine if its actions benefited the United States.\u00a0 If they didn\u2019t, he said, \u201chold them accountable until the answer is a resounding yes.\u201d\u00a0 He added that \u201cthe U.S. should seriously examine if further contributions and, indeed, participation in the UN is even beneficial to the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simultaneously, a new Trump administration steamroller began advancing upon UN entities and other international institutions viewed as out of line with his \u201cAmerica First\u201d priorities.\u00a0 At his direction, the U.S. government withdrew from the World Health Organization<\/a> and the UN Human Rights Council<\/a>, refused to participate in the UN Relief and Works Agency<\/a>, announced plans to withdraw from UNESCO<\/a>, and imposed new sanctions on the International Criminal Court<\/a>.\u00a0 In the UN Security Council, the U.S. government employed its veto power<\/a> to block a June 2025 resolution demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and release of all hostages\u2015a measure supported by the 14 other members of that UN entity.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has also worked to cripple the United Nations by reducing its very meager income.\u00a0 In July 2025, rescissions legislation<\/a> sponsored by the administration and passed by the Republican-controlled Congress pulled back some $1 billion in funding that U.S. legislation had allocated to the world organization in previous budgets.\u00a0 This action will have devastating effects on a broad variety of UN programs, including UNICEF, the UN Development Program, the UN Environment Program, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the UN Fund for Victims of Torture.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the administration\u2019s fiscal 2026 budget<\/a> proposes ending UN Peacekeeping payments and pausing most other contributions to the United Nations.\u00a0 Although U.S. funding of the United Nations is actually quite minimal\u2015for example, dues of only $820 million per year for the regular UN budget\u2015the U.S. government has now compiled a debt of $1.5 billion (the highest debt of any nation) to the regular budget and another $1.3 billion<\/a> to the separate UN Peacekeeping budget.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s hostility to the United Nations is sharply at odds with the American public\u2019s attitude toward the world organization.\u00a0 For example, a Pew Research Center poll<\/a> in late March 2025 found that 63 percent of U.S. respondents said that their country benefited from UN membership\u2015up 3 percent from the previous spring.\u00a0 And 57 percent of Americans polled had a favorable view of the United Nations\u2015up 5 percent since 2024.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, a University of Maryland public opinion survey<\/a> in June 2025 found that 84 percent of Americans it polled wanted the U.S. government to work with the United Nations at current levels or more.\u00a0 This included 83 percent supporting UNICEF, 81 percent UN Peacekeeping, 81 percent the UN World Food Program, 79 percent the World Health Organization, and 73 percent the UN Environment Program.<\/p>\n

Nor was this strong backing for a global approach to global affairs a fluke.\u00a0 Even when it came to the International Criminal Court<\/a>, an independent international entity that the U.S. government had never joined and that Trump had roundly denounced and twice ordered sanctioned, 62 percent of Americans surveyed expressed their approval of the organization.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s \u201cAmerica First\u201d approach can certainly stir up his hardcore followers.\u00a0 But most Americans recognize that life in the modern world requires moving beyond a narrow nationalism.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Lawrence S. Wittner (<\/em>https:\/\/www.lawrenceswittner.com\/<\/em><\/a> ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY\/Albany and the author of <\/em>Confronting the Bomb<\/a> (Stanford University Press).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

18 Aug 2025 – If one examines Donald Trump\u2019s approach to world affairs since his entry into US politics, it should come as no surprise that he has worked to undermine the United Nations.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":233181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[922,2395,249,124,70,1836],"class_list":["post-301479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-united-nations","tag-bias","tag-international-criminal-court-icc","tag-trump","tag-united-nations","tag-usa","tag-who"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":301480,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301479\/revisions\/301480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}