GENEVA — The United Nations is experiencing the gravest crisis in its 80-year history, marked by declining legitimacy and warnings of financial collapse. The crisis deepened after a direct challenge from the United States, historically the organization's primary architect, sponsor and largest financial contributor.
President Donald Trump's administration has moved from rhetorical criticism to concrete action since his return to power. It has sharply reduced voluntary contributions to various U.N. agencies and withheld mandatory payments designated for both the regular and peacekeeping budgets.
U.N. officials say the United States currently owes billions of dollars in assessed contributions. Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that the organization faces the risk of "imminent financial collapse" due to those outstanding payments.
Pressure on the U.N.'s funding is expected to grow. Trump's proposed 2026 budget outlines drastic reductions or outright elimination of funding for several U.N. bodies, including core operations and peacekeeping missions.
Trump has also launched a separate initiative called the Board of Peace, explicitly presented as an alternative to the existing multilateral system. He chairs the new body, which aims to reshape global diplomatic engagement.
Participation in the Board of Peace remains limited. Only a small number of countries — primarily governments aligned with the United States in the Middle East, Central Asia and Latin America — have signaled their involvement. Western nations have either declined or hesitated to commit, while major powers such as China, Russia and India have refrained from formal engagement.
The initiative is widely perceived as a tool for projecting U.S. power and legitimizing its foreign policy approach. The U.N. system will likely continue, but in a weakened and increasingly contested state.
The erosion of the U.N.'s authority cannot be attributed solely to institutional failures. Like other international organizations, the U.N. ultimately reflects the global distribution of power. International law, despite its universal language, has often been a selective instrument — enforced when aligned with dominant powers and disregarded when not, as demonstrated by the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The current period is distinct for a diminishing effort to cloak power politics in legal or moral justification. Previous U.S. administrations sought at least the appearance of multilateral legitimacy, a veneer that is now absent. The U.N. possesses limited means to counter such unilateralism.
Concluding that the organization or international law is obsolete would be premature. Even without strict enforcement mechanisms, international norms exert real influence. States, including powerful ones, rely on alliances, trade and diplomatic recognition, and disregarding widely accepted norms carries reputational and political costs.
Some critics argue the U.N. has become a politicized and hypocritical institution. The U.N. Human Rights Council has made Israel a recurring focus while overlooking abuses by other governments, according to some observers — a pattern they describe as a political mechanism targeting a convenient subject.
That perceived bias is evident in voting patterns within the U.N. A coalition of non-democratic states, many accused of human rights violations themselves, frequently takes the lead in censuring Israel. Countries such as Iran, accused of internal repression and financing armed groups, and South Africa, which pursues an aggressive political line against Israel while facing accusations of violence and discrimination against LGBTQ people, are among the influential voices.
Guterres has been cited by some critics as a figure symbolizing the organization's decline. They argue that under his leadership the U.N. has deepened its distortions rather than correcting them, embracing a one-sided political discourse that undermines its credibility as a mediator.
The organization also faces a financial reckoning, with donor states growing weary of funding a large bureaucracy that produces statements rather than results. Billions are allocated to what some describe as a bloated apparatus while public trust diminishes, raising questions about the U.N.'s viability if it loses its moral relevance.
