Trump calls the United Nations a racket. At the General Assembly he talks about American sovereignty, bureaucrats in New York, and wasted taxpayer money. The applause lines always land with his base: America footing the bill for an institution that seems toothless and worst hostile.
But step back. Is the UN really that bad?
The critique is not baseless. The U.S. contributes about 22 percent of the UN’s core budget and 25 percent of its peacekeeping budget. That is billions of dollars every year. In return, Washington does not get much credit. Autocracies sit on human rights panels. The Security Council is stuck in 1945, with Russia and China blocking anything meaningful. The bureaucracy is thick, reform is slow, and scandals are real. It is not hard to see why American taxpayers ask: why are we underwriting this?
Still, does anyone really want a world without the UN? For all its flaws, it remains the only global convening table. Peacekeeping operations help stabilize fragile regions at a fraction of what it would cost the U.S. military alone. Specialized agencies like WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO, and the FAO do work that would otherwise fall through the cracks.
The UN also plays a quiet but essential role on the environment. Climate reports, biodiversity conventions, and global frameworks on emissions all flow through UN platforms. Strip that away and you do not get nothing, you get chaos. Fragmented regimes and weaker standards.
Trump frames UN spending as a shakedown. And, as we all know, a large portion of Americans love attacking federal and supranational platforms. The realpolitik is different. The U.S. spends far more to maintain military bases in Germany, Japan, or Qatar than it does to keep the UN lights on. And unlike those bases, UN spending actually buys legitimacy, soft power influence, and a stage where Washington can shape global norms. The UN amplifies U.S. leverage.
The UN is not efficient. But it is not the enemy. It has flaws, but abandoning it would cost America more than keeping it. Maybe try to reform it. Walking away is not a strategy.