The US Is Dooming the UN – Whether It Leaves or Not

From symbolic rejection of World Horse Day to boycotting the oceans conference, the US has many ways to inflict damage short of a pullout.

- Andreas Kluth

Say you are president of the United States and you've been clear that you put America First and that you disdain "globalists" and all their organs of international multilateralism, chief among them the United Nations. How do you go about discrediting those institutions? One option is to withdraw the US formally. For example, Mr. Donald Trump began his second term by announcing that he'll pull the country out of parts of the UN system, including its Human Rights Council, the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement on climate change. That just about hobbles these conventions, since fighting, say, pandemics or global warming without American participation seems futile.

But the attack doesn't need to be so blunt. You could also nominally remain a member of an institution while ignoring, undermining or sabotaging it. The US still belongs to the World Trade Organization, for example, even though Mr. Trump has inverted its foundational idea by launching a trade war on the world. America also remains, for now, the backbone of NATO, although Mr. Trump has undermined its credibility by casting doubt on the US commitment to Article 5, the alliance's mutual-defense clause and thus its reason for being.

Something similar is happening at the UN. In 2015 all its members, including the US, adopted an updated mission statement in the form of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These were meant to be answers to humanity's biggest problems, from ending hunger and poverty to improving health and education and reducing inequality. Even though progress on most of these efforts is running behind schedule, it's hard to fault the intention.