To no one’s surprise, President Donald Trump, eager to slay the spawn of modern globalism, such as the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement, is less eager to confront their sire: the United Nations itself.
That Trump is skeptical of the United Nations has been borne out by his scathing addresses to the General Assembly during his first administration, and by his occasional contemptuous comments since. But that he would ever be amenable to actually withdrawing the United States from the pestilential institution — the only solution that would prevent future administrations from re-entangling us in globalism, as Biden did as soon as he was installed in 2021 — is far from a foregone conclusion. Case in point: today’s Senate hearings featuring Elise Stefanik, Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, were all about the need to reform, and not terminate our involvement in, the organization.
“I share President Trump’s vision of a U.N. reformed by strong, America-first, peace through strength,” Stefanik told mesmerized members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, adding for good measure that “our tax dollars should not be complicit in propping up entities that are counter to American interests, antisemitic, or engaging in fraud, corruption, or terrorism.”
Reform Won’t Work
We don’t have any quibble with the second statement, which accurately (if incompletely) characterizes the United Nations. The problem is that no amount of reform will change these or other obnoxious features of the organization. It was designed from the get-go to be counter to American interests, because it is a multilateral, globalist institution designed in the furtherance of globalist outcomes culminating in the creation of a world government.
These are not paranoid delusions of the so-called “Far Right;” they are facts borne out by the history and pedigree of the organization. Its American architect and first secretary-general was the ultimate bad boy of the international Left, a secret Communist and Soviet agent unironically named Alger Hiss. Most of the UN’s top leadership from the time of Hiss until now have been unapologetic socialists, including the current Secretary-General, António Guterres, the former Socialist prime minister of Portugal and past president of the Socialist International. And UN supporters have written publicly and voluminously on the ultimate purpose of the institution in laying the framework for a true “world order” (i.e., world government).
Den of Terrorists and Dictators
Quite aside from the urbane Western Leftists and globalists who have been its motive force, the UN is also home to terrorists, radical Islamists, and even occultists of every stripe — a very far cry from the demographics and ideology of the American Founders.
To her credit, Ms. Stefanik seems to regard portions of the UN as beyond redemption, such as the UN Relief and Works Agency, which was found to employ individuals complicit in the October 7 Hamas terrorist assault on Israel. Well and good; but what about entire regimes, such as Russia, China, and Iran, which are driving much of the organization’s agenda and who use it to gain legitimacy for their murderous regimes? Absent a forum like the UN, regimes like Communist China, North Korea, Cuba, and Iran would retreat to deserved international pariah-hood. But the UN in effect forces us to be yoked unequally to them, giving unnatural vigor to their totalitarian ideologies and monstrous ambitions.
Acknowledging this, Stefanik told the Senate panel that the United States needs to do more to counter the influence of China at the United Nations, and that more Americans needed to occupy high posts at the organization.
And Stefanik went further, to the delight of her audience, praising the World Food Program and UNICEF as models of effectiveness — while supporting Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO.
Get Us Out!
Withdrawal from the entire United Nations is often portrayed as problematic, because the UN Charter itself, unlike other treaties (including its predecessor, the Covenant of the League of Nations), has no exit provision. This is of course by design, because the exit provisions for the League of Nations led to a number of countries actually withdrawing from that organization. But in the case of the UN Charter, absent an exit provision to be invoked, it isn’t entirely clear whether the president could remove the United States without a congressional vote of some kind. But given the precedent of presidential withdrawal from the likes of the WHO and other UN agencies (like UNESCO, from 1984 to 2003), it seems likely that President Trump could effect a withdrawal from the UN with the stroke of a pen.
But instead, he has appointed yet another UN ambassador. And Stefanik, if confirmed, is not likely to disappoint the pro-UN faction. “We must invest in programs to strengthen our national security and deliver results to increase the efficacy of U.N. programs,” Stefanik told the Senate panel. “We must drive reform.”
We’ve heard this story before, and the outcome is always the same: the United States, by hook or by crook, remains a captive member of the United Nations and the broader UN-centered globalist system.
