A month ago, the corridors and conference rooms of UN headquarters were alive and buzzing with US administration statements and whispered and subtle but stubborn resistance and pushback.
Was the playbook as simple as it then appeared: use US economic power through trade war with primary but not only weapon of tariffs as hammer to extract concessions?
Is it a one-way street for trading partners? Certainly, the US market has been the planet’s premier consumer and the decades-long ill-advised policies and pressures of the World Bank for export-led growth propelled and have cemented this powerful position.
A transition away from this reality will be painful and politically tempestuous. But let’s not forget the on-going lived pain of the present unjust model.
Under the new administration, the USA has pulled out of the negotiations on the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (3 February). But would the USA have ratified the Convention anyway? Previous administrations have a track record of undermining the role of the UN in macro-economic policy spaces; they have steadily and successfully “forum-shopped” the G20 and shifted decision-making power to the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs). We are all aware of the five vetoes in the UN Security Council but turn our gaze from the one veto shielded in the shareholder governance model of the BWIs.
Let us not forget the steady decades-long undermining of the Kyoto Protocol and the USA has again exited the Paris Agreement. Yes, the “climate COP” agreed to establish a Loss and Damage Fund in 2022, but it ended up being established in the World Bank. This was with the Biden administration.
The USA has signalled it will leave the World Health Organisation (WHO). The USA has consistently been in its top three donors for more than a decade. The bulk of support is not for multilaterally determined programming committed to public health but on an earmarked basis to specific programmes of interest to the funders. This door to enable funders to shift from core support to earmarking was opened in 1998 with the abandonment of the requirement that 51% of the budget be financed from assessed contributions.
The WHO is not alone in confronting the spectre of US defunding or cutbacks on a scale that could re-shape the UN development system and its agencies – many of which have already been humbled and diverted from their mandate to one of humanitarianism plus, plus.
This earmarking affliction has plagued the UN system for many decades and enabled the few top donors to shift the UN development system’s modus operandi to market-based solutions that respond heavily to donor priorities. And let’s not underestimate the chill factor – and resulting self-censorship.
Over the last month the USA’s many actions at UNHQ have included the well-covered alignment with Russia on UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions (24 February) on peace and security in Ukraine.
They have also ranged from proposing a (defeated) amendment to delete references to “diversity” and “inclusion” in programmes for children with disabilities at the UNICEF Executive Board (6 February) to casting the lone “no” vote on three resolutions in the UN General Assembly (4 March) on on-going programmes on the International Day of Judicial Well-Being, Education for Democracy and the International Day of Hope.
On these occasions the USA expressed its position that “Agenda 2030 and the SDGs advance a programme of soft global governance that is inconsistent with US sovereignty and interferes with the interests and rights of Americans” and that it has embarked on a course correction on gender and climate ideology, viewed as key components of the SDGs; as such the “United States rejects and denounces Agenda 2030 and the SDGs”.
“The bluntness of the US playbook has not been matched in kind but will make more visible related acquiescence or agreement. Is this “teaching” moment also a resistance moment; is this UN-ignorable evidence of global dominance or a global power shift?
What’s at stake in the medium-term is whether the USA ends up with more or less cards in hand for ongoing deal-making.
What’s at stake is the continued reduction or re-shaping of people as consumers without rights in an economic model controlled only by a few big players, be they of public or private entities and individuals. With no accountability (and much ill-gotten gain) for policies that fuel rampant inequalities.
What’s at stake are human rights and the rights and respect for the natural world we share, our collective home.
Barbara Adams is a lecturer at the Studley Graduate Program in International Affairs, The New School.
