- Sweeping cuts in U.S. contributions have put UN finances under great strain. Many at the UN have long felt it should slim down, but less thought has been given to what a smaller organisation will mean in practice. It is time to contemplate that question
Over the years, senior UN officials have often exhorted the staff to achieve “more with less” when the world organisation’s finances were under strain. Today, with the U.S. having announced sweeping budget cuts and freezes affecting many parts of the UN – and the institution battling cash flow problems of longer standing – a bleak variation of the phrase has become common in New York and Geneva. Diplomats and UN staff now talk about doing “less with less”, acknowledging that Washington has opened financial gaps that cannot be filled.
Humanitarian agencies have announced that they will have to shed thousands of employees, and the pain is starting to spread to other parts of the multilateral system. The Trump administration has sent Congress a “skinny budget” for the U.S. government’s next fiscal year that includes zero funding for UN peace operations, despite the fact that Washington has an obligation to pay over a quarter of these costs, and pauses most other funding to the body.
The UN leadership was slow to respond to the Trump administration’s budget-cutting blitz, but it is now striving to make savings. In March, Secretary-General António Guterres launched an initiative – dubbed UN80 as the UN reaches its eightieth birthday in 2025 – encompassing both short-term cost reductions and long-term institutional reforms. On 12 May, Guterres told UN member states that officials are working on proposals to merge administrative units and to do what he euphemistically called “work force streamlining”. He also indicated that the UN secretariat’s main peace and security sections – the Department of Peace Operations and the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs – will lose about a fifth of their staff.
While almost everyone at the UN agrees that the organisation should slim down, no one seems to know exactly what it will mean to do “less with less”. Facing a welter of trimmed budgets and redrawn organograms, diplomats and international officials are devoting comparatively little time to discussing what a shrunken UN’s goals should be. Nor, at least judging by the conversations to which Crisis Group has been privy, do they seem to share a tacit understanding of the organisation’s future. UN member states have an appetite for talking about reforms, but they are still doing so tentatively and only in general terms. As the UN80 process grinds forward, with the goal of submitting full proposals in September, UN members need to contemplate what role a smaller UN can play on the global stage at a time of geopolitical fragmentation, not least on questions of peace and security.
Delaying a Reckoning
Even before the current financial crisis, the UN’s members have wanted different things from the organisation. Developing countries have pressed for greater multilateral action on international debt and financing. Officials from richer states acknowledge these calls, but they have tended to say the UN should focus more on preserving peace and security and human rights. In 2024, diplomats engaged in protracted negotiations on a Pact for the Future initiated by Guterres, which was supposed to chart a common agenda for multilateralism. The resulting document included “something for everyone”, with states promising to work harder at almost every aspect of international cooperation. While the exact balance of the text was contentious – with non-Western countries succeeding in getting an emphasis on development – the negotiators were able to avoid making hard choices about priorities and costs, as the Pact was non-binding. Less than a year on, that luxury is no longer available.
There are reasons for diplomats to proceed cautiously with conversations about what a smaller UN should do in the world. One is that the Trump administration – which still does not have a full-fledged political appointee as ambassador in New York or Geneva – has yet to say what it thinks the UN should look like in a few years’ time. The administration is working on its own review of U.S. multilateral commitments and treaty obligations, scheduled for release in the third quarter of 2025, which might offer greater clarity, for good or ill. Some diplomats still hope that Washington will eventually take a more generous approach to the UN. President Trump’s decision to nominate former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz as U.S. Permanent Representative in New York has been quite well received in Turtle Bay, as UN insiders note that he at least has some idea about how the White House works and what its long-term goals may be. Many delegations are happy to delay detailing their own views in the meantime, not least because their own governments are focused on resolving bilateral trade and political problems with Washington.
A reckoning about what a smaller UN can and should do will come sooner rather than later.
But a reckoning about what a smaller UN can and should do will come sooner rather than later. For one thing, the real-world effects of U.S. and other budget reductions are starting to become evident. Major humanitarian agencies such as the World Food Programme (WFP), which have borne the brunt of early U.S. cuts, are struggling to manage large-scale crises in Gaza, Sudan and elsewhere. Political factors inside the UN will also drive debate about the organisation’s future. The Secretary-General has a little more than eighteen months left in his second and final term in office. UN convention suggests that a Latin American should replace him, and potential successors, including former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and Rafael Grossi, the Argentinian head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, are more or less openly campaigning to do so. Although the Security Council and General Assembly will not select a new Secretary-General until the autumn of 2026, the candidates need to start articulating their visions of the UN’s future soon.
When states or aspiring Secretaries-General discuss what the UN should do, they will be unable to avoid addressing peace and security. Other issues, including the future of international development, will loom as large or even more so. But it is necessary to offer answers to at least three questions about conflict management. First, how the UN can regain credibility with regard to peace and security after being sidelined in a series of recent wars, such as in Gaza, Myanmar, Sudan and Ukraine, while also downsizing? Secondly, how will shrinking UN humanitarian aid operations affect the organisation’s role in crises? Finally, how can the UN defend international law – including UN Charter principles such as territorial integrity of states and human rights norms – at a time when powers including Russia and the U.S. seem intent on ignoring or rewriting the rules?
Peace and Security on the Cheap?
Many UN members already feel that when it comes to multilateral conflict management, smaller is better. Most states are frustrated with the Security Council after its failures in Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere, and diplomats and UN staff have doubts about whether the organisation’s mediation efforts and peacekeeping forces are fit for purpose in an increasingly complex conflict landscape. Mali’s 2023 decision to expel UN peacekeepers from its territory, along with violent protests against the UN’s presence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), left diplomats shaken. They do not want to throw away UN crisis response tools entirely, but they do want to see them overhauled. As Crisis Group noted in January, for example, many still see strengths in blue-helmet peace operations. But if the Trump administration refuses to send money for UN operations, it will be impossible to avert more downsizing (for what it is worth, UN officials appear to think that, in the end, the U.S. will not chop all the peacekeeping funds but nonetheless curtail them sharply).
The Pact for the Future emphasised the need for “agile, tailored” peace operations – implicitly drawing a contrast with the larger, multi-dimensional missions that the UN deployed in cases such as the DRC and Mali. In seminar rooms around the UN, it is also common to hear diplomats and international officials stressing conflict prevention, rather than reactive responses to war, for both political and financial reasons (a December 2024 IMF paper calculating the lower costs of prevention is the toast of Turtle Bay). The concept is hardly new. Guterres for one has been talking up the value of prevention – and questioning the value of peacekeeping – since he took office. But at a moment of financial crisis, it will be natural for the UN system to double down on cheaper means of conflict management, such as mediation.
Yet while such lightweight tools have a place, they may not always have much purchase in conflict settings. Just as large-scale UN peace operations have struggled in Mali and other countries, so, too, UN envoys and political missions have accomplished little or nothing in Myanmar, Sudan and many parts of the Middle East. Regional powers, such as Türkiye and Gulf Arab states, are taking on diplomatic roles the UN might once have filled. More generally, sceptics caution against adopting a “supply side” approach to crisis management – focusing on models for engagement designed to satisfy political and financial concerns in New York – rather than assessing what will work in individual cases. The Security Council is also a non-minor problem; in an era of intense competition among its most powerful members, it has failed to agree on a UN-led response to many wars, and it is unlikely to suddenly become more effective. It is easy to sketch a small but flexible UN peace and security role in theory, but it will be hard to translate one into practice.
A Humanitarian Void
While senior diplomats in New York tend to focus on political matters, the Trump administration’s humanitarian budget cuts may be of even greater consequence for UN conflict management. With the UN unable to prevent or resolve many conflicts, its humanitarian agencies have assumed a growing role in mitigating the effects of violence. The organisation’s financial history tells the story plainly. In 2010, the UN peacekeeping budget was $7 billion while its humanitarian operations spent a combined total of $9 billion. In 2024, the money allocated for peacekeeping budget was less than $6 billion, while the funds for humanitarian work approached $35 billion, although this sum was still far short of what UN officials had called for. This surge in spending is in part a response to natural disasters and the effects of climate change, but conflict has been the single biggest driver. The humanitarian sector’s rapid growth has been haphazard – with agencies duplicating one another’s activities and setting up rickety coordination mechanisms rather than sticking to their core mandates – but it has helped mitigate the effects of many wars.
The world organisation’s political approach to many conflicts has mirrored the shift in priorities toward conflict mitigation over conflict resolution. Since becoming Secretary-General, Guterres has often emphasised the need to maintain humanitarian access in war zones, such as Ethiopia, over mediation or other forms of diplomatic intervention. The Security Council has spent so much time discussing aid in cases such as Syria and Gaza that some ambassadors call it a “humanitarian council”. UN envoys and political missions in cases such as Yemen and Afghanistan have often focused on life-saving assistance.
The Trump administration’s cuts, which no other power has offered to compensate for at scale, have ruined UN humanitarian balance sheets.
This trend has relied to a significant – and now damaging – extent on U.S. largesse. In 2024, Washington provided over two thirds of all humanitarian spending and almost half the WFP’s $9 billion budget. The Trump administration’s cuts, which no other power has offered to compensate for at scale, have ruined UN humanitarian balance sheets. WFP officials estimate that they will see their finances dwindle by 40 per cent in 2025, and they are planning to let go up to 6,000 staff as a result. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees is looking to slash costs by 30 per cent.
These cuts will filter through to different humanitarian operations with differing levels of intensity. The U.S. has already defunded the WFP’s life-saving aid in Afghanistan and Yemen, citing the risk that bad actors could intercept deliveries and use (or sell) the supplies themselves. It is probable that donors will find cash to continue UN efforts in cases such as Ukraine. But aid officials imagine that other crises – especially in parts of Africa – will be ignored. The UN system’s capacity to manage the fallout of wars will be severely curtailed. In addition to the human costs, the organisation as a whole, up to the Security Council, will pay a price, as it will have fewer entry points for crisis response.
The Trump administration also appears willing to challenge the UN’s claim to leadership in the humanitarian field as a whole. It has backed the creation of a private “foundation” to manage aid to Gaza as an alternative to UN relief coordination. As Crisis Group has written previously, Guterres and UN aid chiefs believe that this arrangement would breach basic humanitarian principles. But it risks creating a precedent that other countries affected by conflict or hosting refugee populations could use to shoulder UN operation aside, further reducing the organisation’s leverage.
Some UN staff predict that, as the negative consequences of defunding aid efforts and peace operations become clearer, the U.S. will reinvest in them on a case-by-case basis. It is notable that the Trump administration, despite its threat to stop funding blue-helmet efforts, lobbied hard in the Security Council to renew the UN Mission in South Sudan in May, as the country again teeters on the brink of civil war. Some in New York speculate that, if Washington brokers a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, the Council might support deploying UN, or at least UN-mandated, observers on the front line (who would be separate from any European-led reassurance force in Ukraine). But if such U.S. support emerges, it would likely only be piecemeal. Other member states will still have to decide if they are willing to stand up for the existing UN humanitarian system – and at what price.
A Safe Haven for Laws and Norms?
The UN’s role (or lack of a role) in addressing individual conflicts will also play out in parallel with debates about the laws and norms that govern war and peace. While the Trump administration’s financial cuts have directly hurt UN activities, some of its positions on legal and normative issues have also unsettled the world organisation. The president’s recurrent harping on the possibility of acquiring Greenland and retaking the Panama Canal – possibly by force – has raised doubts about the U.S. commitment to the UN Charter’s prohibition on using force to gain territory, which already suffered blows from Russia’s all-out aggression against Ukraine and Washington’s recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. If Washington further weakens this core UN norm, other greedy states may resort to land grabs, while at least some potential victims may look for new forms of protection – even nuclear weaponry – to guard against existential peril.
The administration’s stance on human rights and gender issues is also having a corrosive effect on the UN system. Washington’s newly negative stance on gender equality – a term that itself is newly unacceptable to the U.S. when it appears in UN documents – has posed a challenge to other states that have championed the cause. Some, such as Norway, have promised to invest more in gender-related projects. Others have quietly paid less attention to the theme. The administration’s statements on the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda are expected to tempt other states to retreat from their own pledges, such as expanding women’s role in militaries.
If the U.S. and other major powers go further in flouting established laws and principles at home and abroad, UN members will face unpalatable choices about how to respond. Some may turn to the UN system as a platform for reaffirming the principles under attack. In recent years, UN members vexed by breakdowns in the Security Council have turned with increasing frequency to the General Assembly and International Court of Justice for political and legal rulings on cases such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some may adopt similar tactics to deal with future transgressions by the Trump administration, Moscow or Beijing. Such endeavours could in fact be one area of multilateral activity where member states want to do more, not less. Yet others may conclude that the political costs would be too high – or that it would be counterproductive to push for multilateral statements and rulings that the big powers simply ignore – and more conservative states may see an opening to roll back the world organisation’s focus on themes like WPS, with tacit or explicit U.S. support.
Time to Start Thinking
As UN officials continue to flesh out the details of the UN80 proposals, it behoves UN members to look not only at institutional issues – but also at what they expect a smaller UN to do. International officials and diplomats are already discussing what different parts of the UN system can achieve after the expected cuts are made, but not in a very joined-up fashion. Humanitarian agencies are, for example, pondering whether to focus narrowly on getting life-saving aid to vulnerable people or on working with development organisations to make at-risk communities more resilient. Some member states with a history of shepherding UN reforms, such as Singapore, have also convened diplomatic chats about ways forward in certain areas. But there is no sustained, strategic discussion about what the world organisation’s trajectory should be and what priorities it should have.
States have institutional hooks to advance a wider debate. Following up on the Pact of the Future, UN reviews of both peacekeeping and peacebuilding are under way. As part of the UN80 process, UN officials are also assembling a list of the approximately 3,600 active mandates that member states have agreed upon for the UN Secretariat and the costs of meeting them. Looking into 2026, if the General Assembly selects a new Secretary-General in the same way that it did in 2016, it will convene a series of meetings with candidates where they can lay out their manifestoes. As ever, the one thing that is not in short supply at the UN is the opportunity for diplomats to talk.
But public meetings in New York and Geneva are rarely where states transact real UN business. As the prospect of a smaller UN becomes a reality, concerned member states will need to consult behind the scenes – preferably cutting across regional and political blocs – to compare notes on how the organisation should evolve. In the past, pioneer groups of states (broadly representing different schools of thought in the organisation) have often moved UN reform efforts forward through informal discussions of this type. Since January, UN members have been watching to see what proposals the UN Secretary-General and secretariat would table as the shock induced by the Trump administration wears off. Now that Guterres has started to set out his ideas, UN members should begin to focus more on what they hope a reduced UN can achieve and how to help it get there.
@International Crisis Group (ICG)
