UNITED NATIONS, Aug 29 (IPS) – The Communist Manifesto of a bygone era, written by Karl Marx And Friedrich Engelsbegins with an implicit warning: “A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of communism.”
And today, another specter haunts the United Nations – this time, the specter of a second Trump presidency.
When Trump first took office in January 2017, he withdrew from, disengaged from, or made negative statements about several UN agencies and affiliated institutions, including the World Health Organization, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the UN Human Rights Council.
Should the UN prepare for a new political nightmare in the unlikely event that Trump becomes a second president?
According to a Cable News Network (CNN) report from last October, Trump was quoted as saying that if he were re-elected to the White House, he would re-impose and extend a travel ban to suspend the resettlement of refugees from predominantly Muslim countries and aggressively deport those he described as having “jihadist sympathies.”
He cited Hamas attacks on Israel as a reason for his hardline immigration policy. Trump also said he would ban travel from Gaza, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya “or anywhere that threatens our security.”
When Trump first took the stage in the General Assembly Hall, he looked out over the hundreds of foreign delegates from 192 countries and, according to a joke circulating in the UN’s delegates’ lounge, asked, “How the hell did you get into this country?”
There was also much talk about a new slogan to promote tourism during Trump’s presidency: “Visit us on a one-way ticket — and we’ll deport you for free.”
Meanwhile, during a 2017 White House meeting, Trump apparently said that all Haitians “have AIDS,” that Nigerians should “go back to their huts in Africa” and questioned why the U.S. should welcome people from “shithole countries” to Africa, according to a New York Times report.
And he also showed his ignorance by asking whether the UK was a nuclear power – and whether Nepal (which he pronounced Nipple) and Bhutan (pronounced Button) were part of India?
When asked about a possible second Trump presidency, Kul Gautam, former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, told IPS: “Yes, the unlikely event of a second Trump presidency poses significant potential risks and great unpredictability for the UN system.”
However, he pointed out that the scale of the danger depends on what happens in the US Congress. If Trump wins and the US House of Representatives and the US Senate are also captured by the Republicans, the UN could be at mortal risk.
And consider that earlier this year, Republicans in the House of Representatives cut funding to the regular UN budget and more than a dozen UN agencies, including UNICEF and the WHO.
The worst-case scenario for the UN would be Trump in the White House and Republican majorities in both houses of the US Congress.
But if one or both houses of Congress are controlled by the Democratic Party, Trump alone cannot do irreparable damage to the UN. Still, the US defunding of certain UN agencies will do great harm to those UN entities and the important services they provide, said Gautam, author of “My journey from the hills of Nepal to the halls of the United NationsS”. (www.kulgautam.org).
Stephen Zunes, a professor of politics and director of international studies at the University of San Francisco who has written extensively on the politics of the United Nations, told IPS: “Yes, this would indeed be disastrous and UN funding for these agencies and affiliated institutions would indeed be cut.”
It should be noted, however, that Biden has already cut off U.S. funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and has threatened to cut off funding to any agency that has Palestine as a full member. While Harris is generally less hostile to international legal norms than Biden, I have seen no indication that Harris would reverse this policy, Zunes said.
“Given Trump’s disrespect for domestic laws and institutions, it is not surprising that he has the same disdain for international laws and institutions,” he said.
Samir Sanbar, former UN deputy secretary-general and head of the former Department of Public Information (DPI), told IPS that the former US president not only welcomed senior UN officials to Trump Tower, opposite the UN headquarters, but also enjoyed sitting at the head table at the heads of state luncheon at the opening of the General Assembly.
However, under a Trump presidency, he said, there is a serious risk of blocking payments to certain UN agencies and funds, notably UNRWA, which provides assistance to Palestinian refugees and advocates for their right to return. WHO and possibly UNICEF would also face budget cuts, particularly for their aid in Gaza.
“And I read somewhere that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner would like to remove the two million residents of Gaza and turn it into a tourist resort,” Sanbar said.
Responding to the ongoing US threat to cut funding to the UN, Gautam said a blessing in disguise of the drastic US cut in funding to the UN would be if the organisation would seriously explore a more robust alternative long-term funding mechanism for the UN and reduce its heavy reliance on US funding.
In order to avoid the constant threat and blackmail of the US and occasionally other member states seeking to defund the UN, I am all for reviving, rethinking and reformulating a very creative proposal presented by former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1985.
Palme proposed that no country should be asked or allowed to contribute more than 10 percent to the UN budget.
That would be a significant decrease in the US share of the UN budget from 25% to 10%; and a modest increase in the contributions of most other countries.
“I am FOR Palme’s proposal to reduce the UN’s over-reliance on a handful of major donors and thereby also reduce the undue influence of those countries on the appointment of high-level UN positions and other decision-making processes.”
“Today, many UN activities benefit from voluntary contributions from governments, but also from the private sector and philanthropic foundations. I believe we should seriously explore more such innovative opportunities, including revenues from the Global Commons and the Tobin Tax, to free the UN from the constant threat of arbitrary budget cuts and funding cuts from major donors.”
It is worth remembering that in the larger scheme of international finance, in a global economy of $103 trillion and global military budgets of $2.4 trillion per year, the UN’s regular annual budget is less than $4 billion, and the total budget of the UN system for humanitarian assistance, development cooperation, peacekeeping operations, technical assistance and other essential normative functions is less than $50 billion per year.
“This is a modest amount to respond to the enormous challenges the UN is being asked and expected to address. To put it in perspective, the total expenditure of the UN system annually is far less than the US defense expenditure in a single month, and less than the US military aid to Israel or Ukraine alone.”
With comparable investments, bilateral aid and much larger national budgets, we would hardly be able to achieve results comparable to what the UN and international financial institutions are achieving, Gautam said.
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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
