A (4:54)

Alison, you've been closely watching the relationship between the United States and the United Nations. It looks like it's rather breaking down. Do you want to tell us where you think we're at at the moment?

C (5:02)

Yeah, I think, as Colm said, we're in a bit of a confused state. So the right budget hand doesn't really know what the political hand is doing. And in February The White House initiated a review of all the treaties and international institutions that the US Was a part of, and they haven't come out with the results of that review. And my suspicion is that when looking further into some of these bodies, they found that there's constituencies for them and a need for them. So, for example, one of the funding lines that did go through was for icao, the International Civil Aviation Organization, because the United States wants planes flying to America and around the world safely participate in those rules of the road. So when you look closely at some of these bodies, you see that there are actual tangible US Interests in some of these global goods. And so while you have the budget zeroing out on regular membership dues, on peacekeeping and on voluntary contributions, I do think you're going to see some discussion about what participation looks like. And then that that conflict between not paying for things that you're participating in is going to be very serious. But I do think Connell's right that the budget cuts are significant. And the pain, the pain is starting right now. So with the rescissions package, which is very wonky, when an American budget process, including this pocket rescission that's going to happen, most likely this month, the United States is only paying half of what it owes the UN for last year. So this is. The pain is immediate. The FY26 budget, which is going to be next year's money, is still being negotiated in Congress quietly, behind the scenes, you see a lot of work being done on the Senate side for those traditional kind of Republican hawks who have supported US Global leadership, wanting to put some money for the UN because they appreciate the kind of infrastructure it provides with the more maga wing of the party in the House, which yesterday just rejected an amendment to add in the US Dues, amount to the budget bill. So you really see this playing out in the Congress as well. And it's not quite clear it will land. But frankly, I'm not particularly optimistic, not only because of the political pressures in the United States, but because the administration in the end could rescind this money again next year if they're really serious about not paying at the un. What Colm also mentioned is the kind of wraparound funding. So with the drastic and dramatic cuts of U.S. foreign assistance, the closure of U.S. aid, all of these supportive programs, that maybe the money isn't going directly to the UN but support the ecosystem around that. So money going to ICRC or IRC or some of the international NGOs was so dramatically cut back. So even if you see a Few hundred million trickling out to WFP and other places. The ECO and the cluster system, all of the organizations will be. Debt will be dramatically reduced in funding, really putting pressure on the UN to figure out what the new ecosystem looks like. And it's really not very clear. More just on the political side. I think it's worth noting you see the United States pulling out of several institutions. Most of these so far are not unexpected. They happened during the first Trump administration. There was debates about them on the kind of ideological side and previous Republican administrations, but like the Human Rights Council, unfpa, UNESCO, in fact, who, which I think is more problematic but was not necessarily surprising. You see the Trump administration wanting to participate in some of the more technical bodies and security focused bodies. So like I mentioned, icao, the International Maritime Organization got at least a nod in some of the work, which accounts for 90% of the world's shipping traffic. It's an important one to American business. You also saw money go to iaea. I think OPCW will see some money on the nuclear side. So you see interest in the US Government security architecture and the economic side of the House saying, hey, we really need these institutions. You've also seen the US Fund the International Telecommunications Union and support the American candidate for the head of that body. That's interesting. Interesting because really that's where the fight over AI and emerging tech is going to play out in many ways, not only there, but certainly there. And they've endorsed a candidate that was endorsed by the Biden administration to lead that body. So I do think you will still see some participation, even though the drawback is really dramatic and I think more permanent than folks had anticipated.

B (9:23)

Yeah, just to follow up on that, I mean, one of the things that's interesting is that from our perspective and from New York, it's hard to see where the decision making is happening on these issues. So we do not have a US Confirmed. Mike Waltz has been kind of waiting in the wings. There isn't going to be foreign service personnel at the senior levels. I mean, traditionally the number two has always been a foreign service officer, the deputy ambassador. This time it's the former spokeswoman of the State Department under Trump 2 and also someone who has had most of the past as an author sort of very much engaged in the culture wars and as a sort of a commentator for Fox News. So you don't have kind of traditional diplomatic figure in play. And that's going to be very interesting to see where the center of decision making is going to play out even When Waltz comes to New York, this sort of contrasts with the feeling that everybody had that was that Trump would be somewhat interested in the UN when he first came into, when he was reelected because his first cabinet appointee was Lisa Stefanik and she was going to be a cabinet member, she was going to be the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. it was a signal that the U.S. would engage with the U.N. and then she was kind of withdrew her nomination because she was needed to help in the House to pass the big, you know, budget bill that Trump was trying to pursue. And then they just left it kind of dangling for months and months and months. Most of the policy, the day to day policy is sort of run out of the State Department, a young guy named McCoy Pitt. But generally the big decisions are. It's not quite clear who's making them. And I'm not sure we'll see what happens. Maybe Waltz will be confirmed at the last minute before next week's high level meeting, or maybe they'll just send him as like a delegate, as a member of the US Delegation and confirm him later. You know, everybody's kind of waiting for him to get here.

C (11:27)

Yeah, I would agree with Akon that it's, it's really, I would say transactional at best and ideological at worst. So the first Trump administration took more of a practical approach where they engaged. You know, there were some hobby horses that they really beat up on. And you know, as you know, Americans like to call for reform across administrations at the UN but, but it was almost left comparatively alone this time. I think you see more of the ideological battle waged at the UN at the platform for that. So going as far as to say that the Americans are objecting to the use of the word gender in different texts, not just focused on abortion issues or sexual reproductive health and rights, but really not using the word gender. And so pursuing this anti DEI approach on the global stage is I think the main use that they say of the UN and then I do think you will see some transactional approaches there. There is a desire for a tool to use in AD and in the un maybe that there is a desire potentially to provide aid in Syria, WFP at UNICEF and others picking that. And so I think you'll see a lot of picking and choosing the approach. But I think the best we will get is a transactional approach to now or CISPR at the latter motor.

A (12:39)

One thing you were telling me about before we started with the different kind of pots upon it and Nicaea, obviously there's the, there's money that was owed from previous years. There's peacekeeping funding which has been building up for quite some time. There's the mandatory assessed contributions which all countries need to pay, and then a large set of pieces of voluntary funding that the United States had previously committed to. Perhaps the most serious here is the mandatory assessment, I think. Are we hearing that the US Will not pay the kind of mandatory assessed contributions that all people have to pay in order to be a member of the United Nations? Is that kind of on the cards?

C (13:17)

Yeah. The current proposal from the executive Branch here is to not pay membership dues. That's in the House bill right now. And like I said, there was an amendment rejected just yesterday by the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to add some of that money back in, and it was rejected. So that 22%, the assessment currently is on track now to pay. Now, will that stand as it makes its way through if we actually get a budget this year in Washington? I don't know. But yes, that is correct. And I think the consequence of that is that it's a little bit of a complicated formula, but if you owe more than you have to pay over the course of two years, you lose your vote in the General Assembly. So. So that would probably be about three years from now, maybe two, three years from now, depending on exactly what mets out. And so that would be the consequence. Now, I don't necessarily believe that the administration would be particularly nervous about that given their view of the UN given how some of the General assembly votes go. The United States is not often or can be on the outside of the majority on many of these, and it does not touch the Security Council vote. So the real emphasis is going to be the Security Council. I will say that dues to other organizations, each UN organization has their own kind of wonky rule book and rules of procedure of when you get kicked out of the Executive Committee or the body. And so it varies across the board. And you may see them looking more closely at that for ones that they want to stay in, like ICANN and ones maybe that they don't care about.

A (14:48)

It seems like this is a kind of problematic situation for the United Nations. It probably didn't really have a structure in place for what to do if its largest member and most powerful member suddenly decided to completely disengage with every kind of aspect of it or with the most aspects of it. It's obviously, it's based in New York. The United States is a member of the Permanent Security Council. And it doesn't seem as if there's really any kind of thinking right now among the United nations and its members about how to deal with. With this level of kind of disengagement from the United States. I don't know whether that's your perception as well or whether you. You think that there's kind of some discussion taking place to the mo.

C (15:24)

Just gonna say that the pendulum does swing between Republican and Democratic administrations about the feeling of how much the Americans want to participate in multilateral institutions. But fundamentally, there had been a consensus about the liberal world order that we had built, whether we are focusing on reforming it and leaning in harder or not and using it or not. But there hasn't been this kind of rejection before. And we frankly didn't see this kind of rejection in the first Trump we administration.

B (15:51)

Yeah. So, you know, I would think that, you know, there's also this question of, you know, what happens to American influence at the UN if they sort of go down this road. You know, there's been a lot of talk about China. To what degree is it, you know, eager and willing to sort of fill the vacuum? And that's a complicated issue. I mean, the Chinese have stepped forward in the World Health Organization to step up funding as the Americans pulled out, but they haven't really kind of ramped up, you know, voluntary funding for humanitarian operations. They have. They. They haven't, you know, made sort of bold steps within the UN headquarters, too, but they have been very actively, and particularly since the reelection of Trump, they have been making the case in New York that, look, our share of the UN budget is now approaching the Americans, they pay 20% of the regular budget. The Americans pay 22%. They pay over 23 peacekeeping. The Americans are assessed about 27%, but only pay 25%. So the Chinese are saying, look, you know, if you want to do these, you know, draw down staff, cut staff, make these changes, then, you know, you need to sort of focus on nationals from the US who are not paying their bills and who are in deep arrears. And you need to give us more jobs to reflect our rightful place in the organization. And according to the UN's own calculations, China is underrepresented at the UN. So is the US strangely enough, even though it has a lot of people working at the un, but it's considered on the basis of the size of its country and other calculations that it's underrepresented. So I think that China is making a much more active push for a broader role. There have been other developments. We cover very closely the Sevilla Conference on financing for developments. I mean, they reached an agreement without the United States. The pandemic agreement was reached. So stuff is happening, legislation is moving through the UN system and states are making decisions on their own without the United States there at the table. So you know, there are real questions about whether this sort of gradually erodes the American position. I mean, obviously we're kind of the most powerful country in the world. You know, we are not going to be isolated in that way. But you know, it's, it's becoming clear that we're, that by not participating we're, we're ceding this ground to others.

C (18:22)

There are two maybe own goals that I would highlight that kind of play this particularly that benefit China. So the first would be the United States kind of unprompted rejection of the Sustainable Development Goals. Now, whether you want to invest in them, whether you want to use that framework or not, I think coming out and saying we're against this long agreed, very much a focus of developing countries doesn't make a ton of sense politically and certainly allows the Chinese to say, well, we're the captain of the G77 and we're really investing here and you should be with us. And so that I think was just an unnecessary mistake. The second is the, the pullback from the human rights institutions and frameworks. Whether you like it or not, the United States is one of the only countries that challenges China in those, in those fora, both the way that they work on changing norms and language away from individual rights to collective rights and their own human rights practices at home. Many other countries are just too risk averse to take them to the map there. And so leaving that as open space I think is really unfortunate.

B (19:25)

Yeah, you see them, I mean, you see the Chinese in these closed door meetings at the UN on development issues. And China has traditionally negotiated alongside the group of 77, which is in 30 plus kind of developing countries who operate as a, as a bloc, somewhat divided bloc, but as a bloc at the un. And so they keep driving this point about how they're supporters of multilateralism, something that, you know, countries in the developing world really, really depend and care about. And they're aligning themselves. And if you listen to their public statements, I mean they sound like, you know, they might as well, they could be Norway or something like that. They seem like they really embrace all of these, you know, issues of international cooperation. I mean the way that they conduct themselves in reality is qu, you know, different. They behave like a big power and they throw their weight around and that sort of stuff. But they really are kind of, in a way increasingly sort of like identifying themselves with the broader membership. And you know, the UN in some ways is, it's a game of numbers and votes, particularly in the General Assembly. And this over time could really help the Chinese, you know, sort of, you know, project their influence. At the same time, though, the Chinese don't seem like they're keen to replace the Americans as the leader of the international system. That requires a lot of kind of, you know, diplomatic software that maybe they're not comfortable, you know, using and maybe they don't want to have that responsibility and the risk of being, you know, blamed when things go wrong. But, but they're clearly finding ways to sort of assert themselves a bit more aggressively. But one, one point though, which runs counter to this narrative is that because China is now assessed so much of a portion of the UN budget, when you get into these closed door budget negotiations, you know, they sound a lot like the Americans, right? They want cuts in peacekeeping, they want, you know, they're wondering, why does this stuff cost so much? How could we save money? And it's not just the traditional view they took in budget negotiations, which we don't want, you know, we don't want like governance funding, we don't want gender human rights funding. It's basically core security stuff that they don't want because it's expensive. And that's an area where the US and China are probably going to come closer together than they are a lot of other issues.

D (21:47)

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A (22:25)

Obviously, we're moving into the Unger high level week where everybody's gathered in New York to kind of talk this stuff through. How do we see it moving forward over the next few days? What are they going to talk about? What might change? Are we going to see progress on any of the key issues that we're discussing here?

B (22:42)

No. Well, the first thing, the big thing is going to be Palestinian statehood, right? So the French and the Saudis have arranged, you know, have sort of supported this process of General assembly resolutions of meetings, sort of trying to reinforce the two state solution. And this is becoming a vehicle for expanding the recognition of Palestine as a state. You know, the concern is, is that the Israelis are moving towards possible annexation of the west bank, the destruction of Gaza. And so the feeling is, is that a negotiation between the parties is not really going to happen. And so they're going to have unilateral recognition. So countries like France, the U.K. australia, Canada, a number of others have indicated that they're looking to recognize Palestine. So the US has responded by denying a visa to President Mahmoud Abu Abbas from the Palestinian Authority. The Israelis have kind of warned that, kind of hinted that this may, you know, trigger a decision by them to announce the annexation of the West Bank. President Prime Minister Netanyahu will be here at the end of the week and he always delivers a quite combative address. And that's expected to happen this time again. So in terms of the whole question of Palestinian statehood, that is going to really come to a boil next week. And so people will be watching that Ukraine will be on the schedule. It will be important. But there's a feeling that Trump's visit and Gaza are going to suck up a lot of the oxygen. There will be a meeting on Sudan, the kind of major international conflict that doesn't get as much attention, particularly in the west, that will come up. But again, Gaza, Palestine will really be kind of the dominant issues. And also one can expect a whole series of speeches during the General assembly debate, basically just making the case on the importance of saving the multilateral system. I think that a lot of people will be coming here and trying to figure out, you know, kind of what's the future of international cooperation. And, you know, are we kind of at a tipping point where the system is kind of breaking down? Is there a way to save it? And I think there were a lot of minds will be very, you know, heavily focused on on that issue.

C (25:05)

I think that's right, that you won't see President Trump come with a grand vision for where the UN System is going and clarifying where they are on this. I think you're going to see, you know, a listing of his Nobel Peace Prize worthy accomplishments. Some America first language. And he enjoys being up there on the stage with the world leaders. And so you will see him comment on some of the major situations he's been working in Gaza and Ukraine. But I don't think you'll see clarity coming out this week.

B (25:32)

You know, there's one Thing that one thing that I'm really curious about, I want to be in the waiting room outside the General assembly right before Trump delivers his speech, because for some strange historical reason, Brazil always speaks, speaks before the United States. And there's a huge feud going on right now between President Lula from Brazil and Trump over the conviction of Trump's good friend, former President Bolsonaro. And so there's a moment like basically, Trump will be on the entry, at the entry door of the waiting room as Luke comes out through the back door. So they'll both be in the room for the same, for a moment. It'll be really interesting to see if, if Trump turns around and if they exchange some pleasantries or they take a couple of swings at one another. But I would love to be hanging out there.

A (26:20)

WOMAN OPEN I want to raise briefly a couple of issues that I think are important to delegate readers that I think are not going to get much oxygen here and kind of just have a check in on where we've got to with those. The funding of humanitarian aid is obviously a really key issue that looks like it's taken a huge hit. Debt is an issue that a large number of development people are really focused on at the moment. A lot of people describing it to us as the single biggest development problem. Then decision making reform is another thing that has really been put to us as something that these people think are really important. Now, my sense is that none of those issues are even going to make it onto the agenda this time around. Like a year ago, they were quite prominent, all three of them, albeit we didn't make much progress. But I think we can presumably see here that we're not going to get anywhere on any of those. Is that your perception?

B (27:11)

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, you know, a year ago, the focus was on negotiating the pact of the future, and there were a lot of ideas about reforming the international financial architecture, giving the United nations membership a broader role, broader say, and how issues on debt financing, all these other things played out. And, you know, that seemed to be the basis of some sort of grand bargain between the west or the north and the south, particularly, you know, kind of as, as the US and the Europeans had difficult rallying support from the global south for, for the support for Ukraine in the war against, against Russia. And all that has pretty much, you know, kind of coming apart at the seams. I mean, if you look at, I mean, we had an interview with Tom Fletcher, the humanitarian relief coordinator, earlier in the week, and he was saying that they anticipate that the humanitarian sector is going to shrink by about a third and that he's basically going to be in every single meeting, a meeting with heads of state ministers and others trying to reverse this trajectory. But there's nothing a clear sense that that's going to happen. The Europeans are shifting a lot of their kind of ODA and foreign assistance funding to defense funding as questions about U.S. support against Russia comes into question. So that's looking pretty difficult and not just because of the US on debt. I mean, the US Was very much, and frankly with a lot of support from other Europeans during earlier negotiations of the year on the run up to the Financing for Development conference, on trying to limit any major requirements that would would increase the prospects for debt relief or for giving, you know, members of Global south more of the say in these issues and on decision making for reform. You know, part of that would involve bringing decision making to the un, the UN General assembly, where you have a more democratic sort of collection of member states rather than in the boards of the World bank and the IMF and other development agencies. So that movement is likely going to be constrained by the new approach by the Trump administration. So in general, I think that's. That a lot of that stuff is kind of frozen.

A (29:38)

That's a pretty dismal and depressing summary of where we are. But it does seem to be quite an accurate picture, just like one followed.

B (29:44)

I mean, the upside, the question that like, I think the real question is the Trump administration is shifting to much more of an investment related business model. So, you know, that's an area where interesting things could happen and that's an area to look at. You know, and on the humanitarian front, they kind of want to do humanitarian work, but, but it's a lot of that is frauds. You know, we look at Gaza and the US has helped with the Israelis stand up this private company, the Gaza Humanitarian foundation, to distribute food. They have a checkered record. The UN has refused to cooperate with them as of other NGOs because they feel that they don't align with humanitarian principles and that they're helping to aid in a process of, you know, of the forced movement of Palestinians, which is, you know, a violation of international humanitarian law. So, so there is that the State Department has talked about. You know, there, Jeremy Lewin, who is overseeing a lot of this for the State Department has been in talks with a number of religious organizations. I imagine groups like Samaritan's Purse are going to be increasingly more active on this front, but nowhere along the line, nowhere near the scale of what we have now, this would be small time, bit by bit, support for humanitarian relief efforts. And then the investment side of it, the private sector side of it, is going to be the area where they're going to invest most of their energy.

C (31:16)

I would say the humanitarian picture is a little bit less clear because of the way that money moves through the US Government. It's need and demand based. So there is a bigger, potentially available. Advocates have been fighting kind of tooth and nail to get every little drop out of that as they can for either specific emergencies or disease issues. And there are congressional constituencies around that, particularly for American farmers who are providing a lot of that food aid and now have been kind of left hanging with bags of cornmeal and other things that like should be going overseas. And so I don't think that discussion is down and out. But you still see WFP, 90% down in US contribution. One billion that should have been with or could have been with UNICEF this year is now not. So even if we see a little bit of reclaiming of that space in US Interest, you're not going to see the numbers that you've seen in the past.

A (32:10)

No. And we saw that that process was beginning even in 2023 under the previous US administration. We saw large cuts and funding to WFP and UNICEF and that sort of thing. There is overall more aid spending than we thought there might be, or at least there's a lot of confusion over how much aid spending is actually going to emerge from the US Congress. Very mixed signals. They're very hard to read the runes on exactly what's happening. The question that I think I find very curious, and I really don't think we have an answer to at all, is kind of at what stage do the other powers in the world kind of respond to this kind of US Behavior? At some stage, surely you would say if you're not going to pay your bills, if you're not going to fund the United nations, you do not get this privileged access to it any longer. You don't get to have your cake and eat it effectively. But there don't seem to be any mechanisms for kind of causing that to happen. And certainly in Europe at least, there's complete paralysis in European capitals because they're dealing with so many serious problems of their own. They just don't have the bandwidth to kind of completely renegotiate their relationship with the United States. And there's no unity over what they might want to see. If they did try to have that renegotiation so I'm not sure where it goes.

C (33:21)

Yeah, I don't think anyone knows quite yet. I mean, we haven't talked about the tariff negotiations going on. So every country has some broad equities with the United States. And so playing hardball at the UN is probably not on anybody's top five ass right now. And you will see the Americans assert their both military power, political and economic power in different transactional ways. And so having an ideological fight isn't going to change minds in this administration and probably not worth folks while. We'll see if things come to a head. But I don't expect anybody to put this on the top of their list.

B (33:55)

I agree. I mean, basically this shows the power of money and the degree to which the entire international system was propped up by American taxpayer funding. Right. And so the Americans have kind of pulled out the rug on that. And there's a vacuum, but there's no one to fill it. And so the US Is still too important. And as Alison mentioned, all these countries have tariff discussions that they negotiations they have to carry out with the US and no one wants to jeopardize their position on that by saying anything critical of the U.S. i mean, look at the example of countries like, you know, Brazil, who are, you know, standing up to the Americans and they're getting hit with massive tariffs. And so, you know, I think there's a question as to, you know, maybe this is the beginning, you know, provides an opportunity for countries to become increasingly more reliant. You know, an opportunity for blocs like the brics to try and develop ways to insulate themselves from American financial pressure. But we're not there yet. And the Americans still wield a lot of power, and their withdrawal has kind of left a vacuum, as I said, that, you know, nobody is prepared to fill at the moment.

A (35:06)

Right. And I could carry on talking about this, but I think we're already a little bit longer than we should be. So apologies to our listeners that we talked about this for so long, but it's a very interesting subject, so I think we'll wrap it up there. It just remains for me to say thank you very much to you, Colm, and to you, Alison, for joining me today. And for anybody watching Unger next week, please pay close attention to what we have at devex. We've got a really full schedule of events and news. We'll have multiple newsletters tracking what's going on. We'll have a reporter's diary bringing you up to date with all the latest events. We'll be talking continually to the key figures. Watch this space. We'll have a huge amount of news from under, and we hope you find it interesting. Thanks so much, everybody.

B (35:52)

Sam.