The United Nations Crisis Is a Political Choice

Image: US Navy / Wiki Commons

The United Nations is being defunded in the middle of a crisis it was built to prevent.

I have watched the United Nations do what no other institution could. As UN Resident Co-ordinator in Viet Nam, I saw the organisation convene the government, agencies and civil society around HIV/AIDS prevention when no bilateral actor had the reach or standing to do so. When Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) arrived, the response was built on that same coalition, with UN staff working at personal risk. Later, as Deputy Special Representative in Liberia, I watched a country that had known only war and coups hold three successive peaceful elections and transfer power without violence. That does not happen without sustained multilateral presence.

That matters now because the institution that made those outcomes possible is under deliberate assault, and the consequences are already landing.

On 28 January, Secretary-General António Guterres warned Member States that the UN could face severe cash constraints in its core operations by July. This is not a bookkeeping problem. It is a political one.

The timing could not be more stark. As this piece is written, the United States and Israel have launched Operation Epic Fury, striking 24 of Iran’s 31 provinces and targeting the regime’s military and political leadership. Civilian casualties are being reported across multiple cities. Iran has retaliated with missiles and drones directed at Israel, American bases, and Gulf cities as far as Abu Dhabi. The killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, confirmed by US and Israeli officials, has opened an immediate succession crisis with no clear resolution. Much of Iran’s senior military and political leadership has been eliminated in a single operation. The Security Council has convened an emergency session. Whether it can act is not rhetorical. It is the central test of the institution at this moment, and the answer is structurally predetermined: the United States holds a veto.

Guterres condemned the escalation in unambiguous terms: “The use of force by the United States and Israel against Iran, and the subsequent retaliation by Iran across the region, undermine international peace and security.” He invoked the UN Charter, called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and urged all parties to restart negotiations. The UN Human Rights Commissioner warned of destruction on a potentially unimaginable scale, not just in Iran but across the Middle East region. The International Atomic Energy Agency urged restraint specifically to avoid nuclear safety risks, a dimension of the crisis that no Security Council resolution can currently address for the same structural reason.

The UN’s financial crisis predates the current escalation. The arrears, liquidity pressures and stalled reforms that prompted Guterres’s January warning reflect a calculated reluctance among governments about what kind of multilateral system they are prepared to sustain, and at what cost. The United States remains both the largest contributor to the UN’s regular budget and the largest holder of outstanding assessed contributions. These are not voluntary pledges. They are treaty-based financial obligations. When arrears persist at this scale, it is not oversight. It is a decision about priorities. For the first time in decades, several of the world’s largest development donors have simultaneously reduced assistance.

The consequences are already visible. The World Food Programme has absorbed funding reductions of roughly 40 per cent. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees faces multibillion-dollar shortfalls affecting operations in more than 180 locations. Peacekeeping drawdowns are underway in fragile contexts where political transitions remain incomplete. The deepest impact is not felt in New York or Geneva. It is felt in societies where the UN is often the only neutral platform capable of preventing relapse into violence.

When the UN steps back, the space does not remain empty. In the Sahel, Africa Corps, formerly Wagner Group and now operating under Russian Ministry of Defence control, has filled the vacuum left by peacekeeping contractions, with consequences measured in civilian casualties and collapsed political processes. Sudan tells the same story at larger scale: over 20 million people requiring emergency food assistance, no credible multilateral framework capable of enforcing protection or brokering a lasting ceasefire, and humanitarian appeals funded at a fraction of what is required. In the Sahel and in Sudan, the question of what replaces the UN has already been answered. The answer is militia control, famine, and collapsed ceasefires.

The UN’s dysfunctions are real and the frustration of its critics is legitimate. But the question is not whether the institution has fallen short. It is whether dismantling it produces something better or simply removes the framework without replacing it. The international architecture built after 1945 emerged from the wreckage of a world that had tried operating without enforceable shared rules. Rebuilding it, once dismantled, would take generations, and there is no guarantee the political conditions for doing so would return.

What is being called reform must be described accurately. Roughly 3,000 headquarters positions are being eliminated, close to one-fifth of the Secretariat’s workforce, with the burden falling disproportionately on working-level staff while senior structures remain largely intact. Cutting headcount without a strategic framework is not transformation. It is austerity with a different name.

A downward spiral is taking hold. The Security Council, whose veto architecture allows each of five states to block collective action including in cases of mass atrocities, has become a reliable engine of paralysis. Each blocked resolution and each overstretched mission reinforces the perception that multilateralism cannot deliver. Reduced confidence produces reduced support, which constrains performance, which deepens scepticism. The cycle is self-reinforcing.

The scale of the current crisis may ultimately require structural reinvention of the Security Council, of the financing model, of the relationship between the UN and regional bodies. That debate is necessary and overdue. But it cannot be the reason to defer what is immediately actionable. Governments must honour assessed contributions in full and on time; treaty-based obligations are not optional. Governments must reduce excessive earmarking and strengthen collectively agreed budgets, since prevention, mediation and peacebuilding cannot function on unpredictable financing. Restructuring must be linked to measurable outcomes rather than used to justify across-the-board cuts. The political capital for veto reform also exists. More than 120 Member States have endorsed a code of conduct calling on the Permanent Five to refrain from blocking credible action on mass atrocities. That capital needs to be used now.

None of this is radical. The obstacles are not conceptual. They are embedded in political incentives and institutional habits that governments have the authority to change.

Member States created this crisis through accumulated political choices. They have the authority and the means to reverse it the same way. What they cannot do is claim the consequences were inevitable.

Related articles by this author:

When Destruction Becomes Policy: What the Munich Security Report Reveals About the Future of Global Governance (3-minute read)

International Law Meets an Age of Impunity (3-minute read)

The UN’s Withering Vine: A US Retreat from Global Governance (3-minute read)

The Danger of a Transactional Worldview (3-minute read)

Jordan Ryan is a former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations. He served as UN Resident Co-ordinator in Viet Nam and Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Liberia, and later led the United Nations Development Programme’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery. He is a member of the Toda Peace Institute’s International Research Advisory Council and a founding member of Diplomats Without Borders.