United Nations Archive

Here are two excerpts from relatively recent remarks by U.S. officials on United Nations peacekeeping. One is from the Obama administration. One is from a Trump appointee. Can you work out which is which? Exhibit A: “If you look at the peace missions in Africa, it has been devastating to see the sexual exploitation, the fraud, the abuse that’s happening. And we have to acknowledge that some countries are contributing troops because they are making money off that.” Exhibit B: “Examples abound of peacekeepers not fulfilling their rudimentary responsibilities, such as not responding when citizens only five miles away from […]

If you want to write about the United Nations these days, you need a thick skin. The Trump administration’s decision to cut funding to the U.N. in its first proposed federal budget, announced last week, has unleashed a vitriolic argument in the U.S. about the organization and its values. This is not new. The American left and right have long debated the U.N. in heated terms, often with little reference to what it really does. This debate last peaked a decade ago, after the Security Council refused to endorse the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The darker corners of American bookstores […]

Is China going to pass up an opportunity to reshape the international order? Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. appears to be distancing itself from its established role as leader of the global system. Many excitable pundits and even sober diplomats have speculated that Beijing could fill the vacuum America is creating. I have to confess to being one of the excitable ones. I argued in December that Chinese President Xi Jinping could counter Trump “by seizing the initiative on issues including climate change and free trade.” At the time, Trump—then the president-elect—threatened to punish the United Nations for a […]

Classic ghost stories often begin with the discovery of a mysterious manuscript in an ancient mansion. The hero turns up some yellowing necromantic texts in the dusty library, reads too much of it out loud, and before you know it the undead are all over the place, rattling their chains and spreading bloodcurdling panic. Columns about foreign policy tend to have more prosaic origins. But last week, I found myself in a stately 16th-century home looking at a strange text that summoned up the ghosts of old debates about multilateral institutions. These ghosts might feel awfully distant, but they still […]