Hugh T. Dugan is a former Special Assistant to the President of the United States, having also served as Senior Director for International Organization Affairs on the U.S. National Security Council (2020). A seasoned diplomat, he was formerly a U.S. Delegate to the UN and Senior Advisor to a number of Permanent Representatives of the United States to the UN between 1989 and 2015.

 

Views of the United Nations

Driving around mid-town New York City is much easier once world leaders conclude their debate at the United Nations General Assembly session each September. This essay will not add to the easy disparagement of the United Nations. One already finds plenty in editorials at this time of year. They peg the UN as missing in action on issues from rising authoritarianism abroad, to Russian aggression in Ukraine, to a very slow-go on its sustainable development goals. 

A record better than its advertisement: President Trump at the UN

 

Indeed, the autumnal pilgrimage of chieftains and the grind of their diplomatic yeomen in New York have become staples of international discourse. At base, such busyness keeps the United Nations’ mainframe up and running as a standing, readiness resource when and if crisis and agreement approach a harmonic convergence, rare as that is.

 

During the recent conclave at UN Headquarters, the prevailing mood was “a mixture of listlessness and nervousness,” according to veteran UN analyst Richard Gowan. Negotiations on The Pact for the Future—the main output for the Secretary-General’s initiative Summit of the Future in mid-September 2024—nearly collapsed as Russia again rocked the boat instead of rocking the cradle for international cooperation. Even rockier in the diplomatic hallways were the meta-effects of crises in Gaza and Ukraine—and to some extent Sudan.

 

But underlying the whole confab were concerns about the forthcoming U.S. presidential election. The mood was less about whether a Kamala Harris win would result in any changes. It was more whether a repeat Donald Trump administration would drop down on the UN like a house from Kansas onto the land of Oz.

 

Regardless of each candidate’s regard for the United Nations, whether coached, studied, or visceral, their leadership aptitude is better revealed when crises overtake their “to do” list. In those moments executive action is compelled without regard to political labels or faded campaign positions. So, although neither candidate has shared their UN “to do” lists, eventually one of them will be compelled to deal with UN potentials and pitfalls. Given that UN protocols mask a rough schoolyard justice, the capacity and quality of U.S. participation at the United Nations must become more intentional than improvisational.

 

Given this, what might be divined about the next administration’s take on the United Nations as a multilateral brokering platform for advancing American values and interests?

 

Trump’s personality precedes him. He is a masterful negotiator deploying motivation and unpredictability in potent measures. Many love him and others not so much for the very same reason: he is “transactional.” Effete internationalists revile this as a brutish trait that sullies the doorframes of their kumbaya-sanctified intergovernmental fora. Others regard being transactional as a reliable means to identify common ground and valuations placed at risk while forging an agreement cleansed of cross-cultural ambiguities—if that were perfectly possible.

 

Yes, the Babylon UN can be seen as transactional as the rough and tumble New York Stock Exchange. Yet it also bathes in the idealism of its devotees as a pious, civil cathedral enshrining the principles of the UN Charter. In that prevailing version, international cooperation UN-style is less about the art of the deal and more about gentle messengers dovetailing into consensus as a happy coincidence. Kumbaya, indeed.

 

What of the UN predispositions of candidate Harris, who remains a relative enigma as to her agenda and capability even after years as vice president. All we know of her and the United Nations is that they are both products of San Francisco. It might be useful to read her as a Biden follow-on to hold onto the White House. It is less about her as a complete person with fully formed views and more as the face of a political syndicate marketing her for electoral success to its own ends. When it comes to UN-related issues, her administration would thus likely focus more on garnering the approbation of UN stakeholders than on shaking things up in the Organization or conjuring elaborate backroom maneuvers to American needs and ends.

 

So, expect reverential genuflections to the spirit that convened allies to create the Organization in the first place, and to keep it intact throughout these 79 years. From that point of view, messing around in such a delicate force field in our Leviathan world is too risky—just show up, abide by its habits, give it some love in public; avoid coming across as a crass American overlord gauging it with western metrics that fail to honor imagined customs and values yet to be articulated by noble, lesser states.

 

Whatever the tone the next administration brings to the UN, it will be struck against an inveterate American ambivalence for participation in international organizations. The scholarly work of Ed Luck, former President of the United Nations Association of the United States of America, depicts the American tendency to go it alone in the world, but that has been tamed somewhat to engage in inter-governmental fora. However, Americans still regard their participation in the UN as first among equals.

 

Likewise, President Trump came to terms with the UN after real estate developer Trump years earlier was reportedly miffed that the Secretary-General has not entertained his construction bid for modernizing the decrepit headquarters complex. Later, with presidential eyes, Trump determined there to be a UN value proposition for American interests big enough to eclipse his earlier experience.

 

American ambivalence notwithstanding, the people of the United States believe that no nation’s leader should pointlessly antagonize or sheepishly follow. Leadership is not primarily about getting along. It is about unabashedly defending the nation’s interests, coaxing allies into joint action to defend common interests, and confronting forces threatening the peaceful principles and purposes of agreements such as the UN Charter. Therefore, Washington’s position on the UN value proposition for its interests has changed remarkably little from one presidential administration to another. What has differentiated them from time to time has been whether and how certain issues are addressed at the UN. Those include matters falling in the social development sphere, most notably involving reproductive issues. Another differentiator has been the degree to which an administration indulges UN managerial inefficiencies and chews out the Secretary-General and member states by threatening to withhold U.S. dues, which comprise about 25 percent of total funding.

 

However, on the whole, there has been consistency in the U.S. predicate for participation at the UN. This is described in “U.S. Participation in the United Nations,” an annual report from the State Department required by Congress. Its 2022 edition frames the U.S. policy in phraseology cut-and-pasted faithfully from prior editions. “Affirmative U.S. Vision for Multilateral Engagement… Across the broadest range of UN and other international organizations, the United States presents an affirmative vision for multilateral action on a host of transnational challenges.”

 

“During the year, the United States worked closely with traditional and nontraditional allies and partners to advance this vision, aligned with the following principles:

 

1. All nations should uphold the UN Charter, including respect for sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity.

 

2. The UN must be an effective tool to tackle urgent challenges such as food security, global health threats, the climate crisis, extreme poverty, sustainable development, and conflict.

 

3. The UN must also be a key venue in which nations can safeguard our shared and interconnected resources, from oceans and rivers to cyberspace and outer space.

 

4. The UN and other international organizations should champion universal respect for all human rights and fundamental freedoms, as reflected in such instruments as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

 

5. Finally, member states should pursue a UN modernization agenda consistent with this vision, including UNSC reform.”

 

“Throughout 2022, the United States prioritized its work in international organizations in line with this vision and in concert with President Biden’s multilateral reengagement strategy designed to advance U.S. national security, expand our nation’s economic opportunities, and address global challenges.”

 

The next administration is likely to continue this basis for its UN engagements. Nonetheless, after inauguration day, UN stakeholders will closely watch its distinct body language and tone worldwide.

 

A Harris style would likely absorb the pretext of the UN Secretary-General’s recent initiative, the Summit of the Future. Acting as sage, he inventoried the medievality of cross-border slaughter and other inhumanities, the modernity of sustainability in economic and social spheres, and the inevitability of artificial intelligence in all realms of existence. Given his predictable hyperbole, he prescribed a redesign and jump-start of intergovernmental, multilateral mechanisms to be fit for purpose. Unfortunately, he left unuttered the need to improve the knowledge, skills, and abilities of multilateral diplomacy practitioners and their international civil servants.

 

Incredulous to Trump supporters, media mockingbirds speak as if there were no track record of U.S. participation in the UN under Trump 45. For example, Gowan states that “many worry that a Trump administration would go out of its way to undermine the world organization.” Other wags routinely voice the presupposition that President Trump 2.0 would run the same software as the 2016 version—one of disdain for the UN. But the record on 2016-2020 does not contain any incidence of sabotage or contempt from the White House. Nor is there registered disdain from time to time greater than that held by previous U.S. presidents when frustrated by UN group think. Nonetheless, Trump is placed in the penalty box as an “isolationist” and bad sport in foreign affairs as played out in the United Nations. 

 

For a better perspective on this, since its inception, the fate of the Organization has been tested, sometimes existentially. During the Soviet era, the UN was bifurcated into East and West enclaves throughout every office and corner of the building. The suspicious 1961 airplane crash death of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold nearly broke the UN’s spirit. Due to the Clinton Administration’s arrears of $1 billion in assessed dues, UN impoverishment nearly cost the United States it is voting rights there. Today, also, the Organization edges close to insolvency due to managerial and administrative irresponsibility. 

 

There was no such episode attributable to the Trump Administration. The retort would be that the Trump Administration was as committed to effective U.S. participation at the UN as were previous administrations. In Trump’s case, it depended on whether the UN worked and whether it worked for U.S. and others’ mutual interests. 

 

Further, the Trump Administration continued paying all assessed dues. It dutifully scrutinized sizeable voluntary contributions that had become too assumed and too automatic (including stopping monies to the UN Relief and Works Agency in Palestine which the Biden Administration did, as well). It also spent weeks in residence in the UN neighborhood each September, from which it conducted White House global and domestic affairs, and fielded a U.S. diplomatic team that wrought historic consensus out of the sphynx-like Security Council to check North Korean aggression. 

 

Several such “Nikki Haley moments” validated the Organization to President Trump so much so that he hosted the entire Security Council to a working lunch at the White House on January 29th, 2018—the first and apparently only such presidential outreach in UN history. There he pronounced to the 15 ambassadors: “My administration is proud to work with you. We’ve already done a tremendous number of coalition-building, and the United Nations Security Council, in particular, is very important to us. The power and the respect that it has all over the world is very, very excellent.”

 

So, going forward, who could doubt that Trump would be predictably interested in maintaining the UN’s viability—if only to continue its larger than $4 billion regional economic impact each year for his beloved New York City? While critics impugn the candidate as boogey-man ready to pounce, in reality, Trump’s four-year record of UN interactions argues well that he left the Organization better than he found it. 

 

What might another Trump administration do in UN affairs? A second Trump administration likely would call out the Secretary-General’s Summit of the Future as a distraction of what UN membership should have held instead: a Summit of the Present. That exercise would have assessed the administrative and managerial performance of the UN Organization, monitored its programming, eyeballed its budgeting, and evaluated its cost/benefit argument. It is in fact a necessary chore to describe the present before anticipating the future. Otherwise, what would be the cost to us of UN member states’ inattention to their own house? 

 

Beijing has been surreptitiously squatting in UN spaces. It has been growing its influence one corner at a time in leadership roles and in the UN’s program of work. It discretely double-duties UN resources to its Belt and Road Initiative and hegemonic ambitions—all the while shorting human rights. As the largest funder and senior steward of the Organization, the United States must open the door to this China shop and put things right. No one else can or will. 

 

As for a Harris approach to the United Nations, it is a complete unknown. One should be prepared to be pleasantly or otherwise surprised. What are some tea leaves? One might consider her boss’ “America is back” line meant to remind that Biden reversed key decisions that Trump had taken multilaterally. Regarding this sloganeering, “Unfortunately we still do not know much beyond platitudes, catch phrases, and a conviction that if Trump was for it, it must be bad,” comments veteran UN analyst Brett Schaefer of the Heritage Foundation. Nevertheless, the catchphrase “America is back” has continued as the Biden/Harris “go-to” line and easy caption for its UN tree-hugging selfies. 

 

Are there any other hints about Harris and the United Nations? One can look into the “‘24 Democratic Party Platform” prepared to support her presidential nomination. However, its 91 pages do not mention U.S. participation at the United Nations. However, one UN mention in passing states the “the Administration opposes any effort to unfairly single out and delegitimize Israel, including at the United Nations…” But did Biden’s farewell speech to the UN repeat that? It mustered only “Now is the time… to secure security for Israel, and Gaza free of Hamas’ grip…” 

 

The power of example from Harris’ boss continues. In that final Presidential moment, Biden suddenly ghosted the ritualistic September UN week and lawn-planted there his Secretary of State, undersized against the 130 plus presidents and heads of state who made it a priority to remain. Vice President Harris was otherwise disposed, but no one appeared to have noted. Further, on any given day, the Biden team has not always acted as if it wanted to be at the United Nations. This was most notable when it refused any UN-brokered ceasefires in Gaza, even though that initiative had traction with many other interested member states. Indeed, Biden has eschewed the Obama “hands on” approach at UN confabs for influencing opportunities on climate, refugees, peacekeeping, and the like. Foreign delegations in New York have grown dis-spirited with the United States given the absence of an Obama-style reprise the past four years. And “Back at the UN” apparently has not been squaring well with Biden’s increasing “minilateralism” elsewhere, i.e., working with a few key states and assuming the concurrence of others in the mix. The UN looked redundant.

 

For more clues, looking at Vice President Harris’ actual UN interactions find a rare few footnotes. Briefly into her term, she zoomed herself to the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women on the importance of women’s equality for democracy. Also, that selfsame day she might have addressed the Security Council on the crisis in the Middle East. But research finds no actual Harris interventions at the United Nations. This includes Harris’ absence from the major UN opening sessions, probably unaware of those “diplomatic speed-dating” opportunities. The White House chronicled that Harris played a crucial role for rallying UN membership’s support for Ukraine following Russia’s 2022 invasion. But that was mostly at the Munich Security Conference—an ocean away from UN Headquarters. So, research, perhaps flawed, shows that Vice President Harris has not set foot in the UN complex, making her even less familiar at Turtle Bay than at the U.S. southern border. This poses the question whether under a President Harris the United States would continue to “be back” at the UN.

 

The United States used to lead, then it “led from behind,” and under Harris it would simply watch from the curb. Harris on the United Nations is a blank canvas. It will either remain blank or it will end up covered with her stream-of-consciousness tone poems on the United States in the world. So, after four years of such on-the-job training, it is unlikely that Harris would publicize her views on U.S. policies and participation at the United Nations, even if successful at the polls in November. Apparently, there is no “Day One” UN task for President Harris’s calendar.

 

Turtle Bay appears patient in the belief that a President Harris would continue a Biden approach, one perhaps too light on engagement but also dependably appeasing the status quo and relaxed about holding the Secretary-General’s feet to the fire on the Organization’s ineffectiveness and corruptions aplenty. However, there is one more clue to ponder. A recent White House fact sheet entitled “Biden-⁠Harris Administration Accomplishments at the United Nations” (September 2024), proposed expanding the permanent membership of the Security Council to include two African countries and one island developing country (no specific countries were named).

 

The Clinton Administration made a similar pitch, otherwise confident in knowing that regional countries would never surmount their neighborhood jealousies to settle on who would sit at the adult table. Yes, the Security Council has stalemated repeatedly. But is that attributable to a shortage of Africans and islanders as permanent members of the Security Council? No, of course not. Those failings have not been due to the size of the group. They have been due in great part to the distractions and dalliances of risk-averse diplomats and their Secretariat staff, which has evolved into a deep state within the UN. On any given issue on any given day, it pronounces pompously, prescribes pitifully, and performs to stay employed.

 

These public servants have been either unable or unwilling to explore the capacity of commonalities where consensus might emerge, those delicate zones that tissue together the bones and sinew of the global body politic. “We the peoples” recruit and pay their diplomats and UN staff well to use their talents—not to be so easily discouraged in difficult tasks. That Biden and Harris are blaming poorly utilized multilateral machinery distracts from the greater need: an improved human resource component. Clearly, the UN chessboard is poorly played, not so poorly designed.

 

Another explanation for the raft of so-to-speak Security Council failures is that sometimes some of the players throw the game. This is a self-validating fact. Despite the compelling global need for the Council to dutifully address a massive wrong, that wrong’s status quo must be satisfying the purposes of a preponderance of the powerful—or it would no longer be allowed as the status quo.

 

Assuming that the United States seeks alleviation and resolution of such crises—and that it commands enough power to persuade others toward better outputs from the UN—what might the next U.S. presidential administration bear in mind, whichever candidate were to prevail? First of all, each administration is well advised to appreciate and utilize the special role the United States has played throughout the UN’s history. This subtle authority, if played well, enhances American credibility and sincerity in its representations and overtures in the Organization.

 

The United States initiated, conceived, and recruited post-World War II support for its proposal to improve upon the League of Nations, for developing global consensus among stakeholders, blueprinting an organizational structure, hosting preparatory conclaves to elaborate its charter, hosting its signatory event, and offering a physical campus and arranging turnkey infrastructure as the host country, making the dream a reality. UN funding depended upon the largesse of the U.S. taxpayer bearing the greatest portion, which continues to today.

 

While critical to the UN’s founding and funding, the United States must also take ownership for some of its fumbling. The UN fumbles when its more powerful actors appear undependable, overly compromising, and contemptuous of messengers and modalities instead of overcoming their own constraints and imperfections. (GLOSA) Finally, the next White House administration would be well served by utilizing the global organization’s absolute advantage, one that has been grown irreversibly in spite of UN shortcomings. No, it is not the power to agree, rather, it is its power to convene. The UN’s power to convene sets the table, brings all to the table, and keeps them at that table.

 

The routine attendance of nearly 150 of the world’s 193 sovereign leaders—not merely their emissaries—is a relatively recent matter. Obviously, the place has pull. The General Assembly proceeds on democratic methods of mutual respect among sovereign equals. Its routines model behavior for tyrants in attendance that are not accustomed to waiting in line for the microphone and similar proceedings, which matters. The Security Council works well, paradoxically even when stalemated, because if not at the table, the troublemaker would be on the menu. And the Organization has developed into the only 24/7 readiness platform on demand by any state for sudden crises to alight in the first instance—and perhaps to resolution. So, the world would be much worse if there were no New York City traffic jams each September in the UN neighborhood.

 

The next U.S. presidential administration will likely support and expand its ties with nations threatened by mutual adversaries or transnational crises. That president needs to show allies that America is capable and dependable, and effective U.S. participation at the UN, day in and day out, can make that case in word and deed.

 

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