UN: Russia and China call Trump’s bluff
The Wall Street Journal of 29 May 2026 informs us that “Washington has failed to pay billions of dollars owed to the international body [the United Nations] and exited dozens of its programs and agencies, including the World Health Organization, to combat what President Trump describes as wasteful spending and bad policymaking. The US is more than $4 billion in arrears to the UN” (James T Areddy, ‘The UN is going broke as the US and China withhold billions’).
We can only respond to this by saying that by threatening to pull the plug on UN funding, US imperialism has only hastened its own departure. The UN was fashioned primarily as a tool to assist the hegemonic project of the United States postwar and steer the nations away from the gravitational pull of the proletarian revolution. If Moscow and Beijing follow through and leave the UN to wither on the vine, or they resume the funding but transform the union into an institution that instead serves the people, either way Trump is screwed.
The founding of the United Nations in 1945 was a key moment in the postwar drive to establish an institutional framework within which the new pattern of international relations resulting from the world war could be sufficiently stabilised to permit the resumption of monopoly capitalist profit-taking unimpeded by socialist revolution, anti-colonial revolt or disruptive national rivalries. It was at root a stratagem to get the old gang of exploiters, looters, warmongers and parasites back into the driving seat so that eventually the whole murderous racket could be repeated ad nauseam, dragging mankind back on the treadmill of boom, bust and war.
Like just about everything else of note that happened in 1945, the United Nations project came dressed in the guise of peace, progress and the amity of nations. What the welfare state offered to the masses was something sounding an awful lot like socialism. Similarly, if you squinted, what the UN offered to the world’s nations looked like the long-dreamed-of democratic world government, one that would enforce international law, peace and social justice for the world’s grateful peoples.
As was the case with the welfare state, it was the fear of revolution that persuaded the imperialists to go along with the notion of a pretend world government pledged to upholding peace and justice for all the nations of the world. The one shining example of this, in practice, was the Soviet Union, whose Red Army had just taken world humanity a giant step onward towards this goal by sacrificing 27 million of its people in the course of crushing the Third Reich underfoot. Imperialism hoped to bask in some of that reflected glory by drawing Russia, only yesterday America’s wartime ally, into diplomatic moves to set up the UN.
Russia joined in with these plans with no illusions about Washington’s hegemonic aspirations that were concealed behind all the flannel about peace and international law. For its part, the USSR’s genuine intentions were as stated on the tin: peace and progress. By supporting the establishment of the UN, Moscow was best placed to hold US imperialism to account for its rank hypocrisy and to enforce the agreements made at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam.
From the outset, the Soviet Union used the UN as a platform for the anti-colonial struggles of the oppressed nations. Whilst the UN’s version of democracy guarantees that the whole system is permanently skewed in favour of imperialism, the simple fact of having Russia serve as a rallying point for all those voices hostile to imperialism has proved to be a very effective thorn in Washington’s side. Remarkably this still remains the case – no less so now that Russia is anti-imperialist rather than socialist.
There can be few who still fall for the guff about the UN as a guarantor of world peace. It has greased the wheels for wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, ever ready to pop up with a quick resolution to legitimise genocidal adventures, or a peacekeeping force to freeze a conflict that isn’t going as the West planned (Kosovo). And the bureaucratic waste, corruption and rape allegations are legendary and appalling.
There will remain some woolly liberals who are prepared to believe that, for all its sins, the UN has nevertheless saved millions of human lives through the various UN agencies like the World Health Organisation, those looking out for the welfare of refugees, the alleviation of famine and other humanitarian efforts. But the unprecedented proliferation of do-gooding NGOs and charitable institutions, for which the UN sets the tone (Oxfam with guns) has not only failed to make the slightest dent in world poverty and inequality, but crucially has served its purpose of distracting attention from the urgent revolutionary tasks which remain to be performed. How many more lives will be snuffed out because of this dereliction of revolutionary duty?
The UN was founded in 1945. In 1948 Palestine was torn from its people in the Nakba. In the seventy-odd years that followed, there have been dozens of tut-tutting UN resolutions, declarations and reprimands aimed at the Zionists – but no action to prevent the continued bulldozing of homes, murder of children, torture of prisoners, genocide. By contrast in the same span of years, blue helmets popped up in Africa and Yugoslavia, and the US was happy to help smooth the path for one genocidal imperialist war after another, Meanwhile the US-ordered Zionist aggression was allowed to carry on unhindered with not a blue helmet in sight. This tells us all we really need to know about the United Nations.
Whilst the honeyed words which greeted the birth of the UN had much to say about the brotherhood of nations, international peace and common goals, a world in which nation shall speak peace unto nation and the lion shall lay down with the lamb, the rather more prosaic imperatives actually driving the whole enterprise were glossed over.
No more striking an example of the disconnect between theory and practice is provided by the UN’s attitude towards the occupation of Palestine. Again and again, the UN has sworn allegiance to the rights of small nations to self-determination, up to and including the right to defend the homeland by force of arms. And yet again and again, when it comes to putting theory into practice, the UN does nothing.
Whether or not Trump goes ahead with trashing the UN, the ideological damage that is being caused by his hooliganism is hammering another welcome nail in the coffin of US hegemony.