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– The Trump administration, spearheaded by senior adviser Elon Musk, has been on a wild rampage: mass layoffs of government employees, gutting federal agencies, dismantling the Department of Education and USAID, defying a federal judge and threatening universities with drastic cuts in grants and contracts—decisions mostly engineered by the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Perhaps with more to come.
The cuts were best symbolized with an image of Musk wielding a heavy chainsaw aimed at slashing “wasteful spending”
But the layoffs and subsequent reversals– the on-again, off-again decisions– have triggered chaos in the nation’s capital.
And political outrage is fast becoming the norm.
Musk, the tech billionaire, who acts as a virtual Prime Minister to President Trump, has called on the U.S. to exit the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United Nations.
“I agree,” he wrote in response to a post from a right-wing political commentator, saying “it’s time” for the U.S. to leave NATO and the UN.”
The threat against the UN has been reinforced following a move by several Republican lawmakers who have submitted a bill on the U.S. exit from the U.N., claiming that the organization does not align with the Trump administration’s “America First” agenda.
What’s next?
The abrogation of the 1947 US-UN Headquarters Agreement?
That 78-year-old agreement helped establish the world body in a former decrepit slaughter house in Turtle Bay New York.
The Agreement is an international treaty, and under international law, treaties are generally binding on the parties that sign them. However, the U.S. has a constitutional process for withdrawing from treaties.
In an article in the Wall Street Journal March 14, titled “The U.N. Is Ripping America Off in New York”, Eugene Kontorovich, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a professor at George Mason University School of Law, points out the U.S. offered to host the newly-created U.N. after World War II, amid a wave of optimism about the organization’s ability to prevent future wars.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated the land, and the headquarters was given an interstate-free loan from Washington that would be worth billions today.
The United Nations shall not be moved unless the headquarters district ceases to be used for that purpose, the agreement says. Some U.N. officials have taken this to mean the U.N. can’t be evicted.
“But the agreement is a treaty, and the default rule of international law is that treaties, unless they say otherwise, last as long as the parties wish. If the U.S. cancels the treaty, the entire arrangement disappears, nothing in the treaty’s text prohibits withdrawal. Indeed, had an irrevocable agreement been intended, (the US) Congress, which is needed to approve treaties, would not have allowed the agreement to pass without making it explicit”.
While the treaty refers to the “permanent” headquarters of the U.N., this simply means “durable.” Many international treaties use “permanent” in this way, to mean long-lasting, not eternal. The Permanent International Court of Justice lasted from 1922-46.
“Trump should reopen the 1947 agreement locating its headquarters. It was a terrible real-estate deal”, declared Kontorovich
Dr. Stephen Zunes, a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco, told IPS removing the United Nations headquarters from the United States has long been advocated by the far right and generally dismissed as a fringe idea not to be taken seriously.
However, as the Trump administration has already demonstrated, even the most extreme ideologically-driven proposals can indeed end up being implemented as policy, he said.
“The United States has not always upheld its obligations under the treaty, such as in 1988 when the Reagan administration refused to allow PLO chairman Yasir Arafat to address the world body, resulting in the entire General Assembly relocating to Geneva to hear his speech”.
Removing the United Nations headquarters from the United States, he argued, “would symbolize the end of the global leadership we have had since the end of World War II when the victorious allies established the world body.”
Along with the Trump administration’s decision to disestablish the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Fulbright Program, and other symbols of American leadership internationally, it would end any semblance of the United States remaining a preeminent force in international cooperation.
At the same time, the United States has increasingly become an outlier when it comes to the international community rather than a leader or partner.
“This is true even under Democratic administrations, as indicated by Biden’s rogue positions in regard to Israel’s war on Gaza, Palestinian statehood, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and other UN institutions.”
Having the UN headquarters in a more neutral location may end up being for the best, said Dr Zunes, who has written extensively on the politics of the United Nations.
So far, the US has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), while it has warned that two other UN organizations “deserve renewed scrutiny”– the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—a warning seen as a veiled threat of US withdrawal from the two UN agencies.
Meanwhile, the United States has cut $377 million worth of funding to the UN reproductive and sexual health agency, UNFPA.
Giving an indication of UN agencies moving some of their functions out of the US, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters at a briefing last month: “We have been investing in Nairobi, creating the conditions for Nairobi to receive services that are now in more expensive locations”.
“And UNICEF will be transferring soon some of the functions to Nairobi. And UNFPA will be essentially moving to Nairobi. And I can give you many other examples of things that are being done and correspond to the idea that we must be effective and cost-effective,” he said.
Asked about the possible withdrawal of the US from the world body, Martin S. Edwards, Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, told IPS it would not be clear what the intent of this move would be.
In fact, what is certain, he pointed out, is that it would be a mistake of gigantic proportions. The Trump administration, solely to curry favor with some small fraction of its base, would be handing a huge diplomatic victory to China, who would not hesitate to jump at the chance to host the UN.
“And even this White House has to see that, so I don’t see this as advancing US interests in any form. On the contrary, had the White House thought the UN as unimportant, they wouldn’t have designated Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador,” he declared.
A report in the Washington Examiner last January said Stefanik, the fourth-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, and the US Ambassador-elect to the UN, has vowed to utilize her skills as a lawmaker to scrutinize the funding provided to the U.N. and cut the budget provided if necessary.
“As a member of Congress, I also understand deeply that we must be good stewards of U.S. taxpayer dollars,” Stefanik said. “The U.S. is the largest contributor to the U.N. by far. 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.”
As the largest single contributor, the US currently pays 22% of the United Nations’ regular budget and 27% of the peacekeeping budget. Still, the US owes $1.5 billion to the UN’s regular budget.
And, between the regular budget, the peacekeeping budget, and international tribunals, the total amount the US owes is $2.8 billion.
IPS UN Bureau Report
