The Trump administration has no plans to leave the United Nations, despite the president’s low opinion of the organization. UN Ambassador Mike Waltz said this week the administration’s goal is to reform the globalist organization, not leave it.
Withholding Funding
Waltz did say, however, that the White House is withholding funding for the UN. “The president is withholding American funding until we see the reforms,” Waltz told Breitbart Washington Bureau Chief Matt Boyle. America is “going to give the UN tough love. I think we’re going to save it from itself in many ways. We’re going to drive change.”
America has historically provided about a third of the UN’s funding. That is far more than any single other country, and more than Germany, the United Kingdom, and China combined. But as of October, the U.S. was $1.5 billion behind on “membership fees,” according to the UN. It appears it’s only going to get worse.
Less funding will mean a smaller UN, which hopefully translates into a less effective UN. Waltz said the reforms include cutting the overall budget by 15 percent, the overall personnel budget by 18 percent, and the budget of its peacekeeping force by 25 percent. He used air quotations when referring to “peacekeeping” forces, and outright acknowledged that there’s probably not a lot of peace being kept. “Some of these ‘peacekeeping missions’ have been sitting around for 30, 40, 50 years. They’re obviously not doing what they’re intended to do,” said Waltz.
He also pointed out the absurdity of the UN having seven agencies dedicated to dealing with “climate change.” He appeared to be on the same page as his boss, who has called the fabricated crisis the “green con.” Yet his remedy is not to get rid of this agenda completely. Instead, he said, the goal is to “get that down to one — at best.”
Why Not Get Out?
Waltz addressed the looming question readers of this magazine and many Americans in general have. He acknowledged that he’s been asked, “Why do we even participate in this whole thing?” then spent a better portion of the 30-minute interview explaining the administration’s reasons. His answers can be summed up this way: America is part of a profoundly entangled international economic system that is significantly affected by the regulations and influence of globalist bodies such as the UN. Retreating would hurt American corporations, industry, and citizens alike more than staying in would.
Waltz believes that, typical of all government-style bureaucracies, the UN has over time organically veered from its otherwise original benevolent mission. “Like so many agencies, bureaucracies, it’s just drifted,” he told Boyle. And so the goal is to get the UN to back to its “basic” function, which he believes is to serve as a forum where countries can solve their conflicts peacefully. Waltz said:
We need one place in the world where everybody can talk. President Trump is the president of peace. He wants to keep us out of war. He wants to put diplomacy first. He wants to create deals. Well, there’s one place in the world — and that’s right here at the UN — that the Chinese, the Russians, the Europeans, developing countries all over the world can come and do their best to hash things out.
He also said the U.S. won’t abandon the UN because someone else would step in and set rules that will affect America regardless. “Do we just walk away and let China, Russia, and all of these other countries set those global standards? Or do we get in there and block and tackle in line for our companies and in line for an America First agenda?” he asked rhetorically.
International Issues
Finance was a major theme in the ambassador’s defense of America sticking with the UN. He said 90 percent of global financial data — markets, stock exchanges, commodities trading — travels through undersea fiberoptic cables. And “those fiberoptic cables go through international waters.” And it’s the international bodies that decide where they’re laid, how large they are, when they’re installed, and which companies do that work. The international bodies come to that consensus, and if we’re not at the table, Waltz said, China and Russia will set the standards.
Another reason to stay in the UN is to carry out Trump’s executive order on seabed mining, which requires cooperation in international waters, which again comes back to the power of the UN, said Waltz.
He also said UN membership would ensure that international pilots and air traffic controllers speak English and are trained to a certain U.S.-approved and -aligned standard.
Then there’s the artificial-intelligence angle. According to Waltz, if America leaves the UN, other superpowers will exploit our absence by setting rules and standards that stunt our AI progress while benefiting theirs. “We’re seeing China influence these bodies so that it benefits their technology and their producers, and not ours,” he said.
Global Carbon Tax Scuttled
The ambassador cited the success story about how the Trump administration scuttled the UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) plan to impose the first-ever global tax on carbon emissions as an example that it’s better to stay than leave. The IMO was “this close” to mandating Green New Deal-style regulations on our global shipping fleet, he reminded Boyle. It would’ve added $1 billion in monthly costs to send American goods around the world and to receive them from other nations. Any ships fueled by fossil fuels would’ve incurred those taxes, which would’ve been passed on to the consumer. Moreover, that revenue “would’ve formed a UN-run green-climate slush fund to the tune of $10 to $15 billion a year that would’ve turned around and [paid for] more of this.” It would’ve been the first global green tax, and it would’ve inflated prices, he said.
He pointed out how close the deal was to becoming official. But Trump and his Cabinet — Waltz, State Department Secretary Marco Rubio, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright — and a number of senators jumped into action. He provided a little inside baseball on how the administration got what it wanted:
We said there would be consequences if you do this. And we laid out what those consequences were. Now, we were accused of being diplomatic gangsters and bullies and what have you, but it was they who were being the climate bullies. And we’re not going to allow them to do that to our shipping fleet. And — if it had happened, here was the real secret: The EU is subsidizing all the biofuels that they wanted to push our ships to and the only place we can retrofit our ships are in Chinese ports and shipyards. So this would’ve been a win for the EU, a win for China, a loss for the United States. And we said we’re not going to have it and we got in there and won.
“I think we just saved the American consumer [from] what would’ve been the first UN tax in global history,” Waltz concluded. “These are the kinds of wins we have to deliver for the American people.” He also said the administration planned to ignore the tax if it did pass, and acknowledged that the UN will try to pass this again.
After hearing Waltz’s justification for why the U.S. is staying in the UN, Boyle said it looks like the goal is to bend the will of the UN to suit American interests. Waltz agreed with that summation.
The Goal Is World Government
Waltz’s justification for continuing U.S. ties to the UN has compelling points. But it is based on the reality that these international bodies have amassed too much power. It also highlights how “free trade” has made America more dependent on other nations and globalist entities for goods and services that should be provided at home.
Moreover, Waltz misrepresented the main reason the UN exists. It’s not to foster peace. As we have documented here for decades, the primary purpose of the UN is to serve as the command center of the emerging world government. A slew of UN officials have admitted this throughout the years. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said last year during his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the “only way” to address the world’s needs is through “strong multilateral institutions and frameworks and effective mechanisms of global governance.” You can read more about similar comments from UN officials here.
There is little reason to believe that the people running the UN will carry out any reforms in good faith. It’s more likely that they’ll do what it takes to stay afloat and survive the Trump administration, with the hopes that a more UN-friendly administration takes power in 2028. If the neocons take back full control of the GOP, no matter who wins the presidency in 2028 — Republican or Democrat — America will likely resume sending billions to the UN, which will get back to aggressively pushing its globalist agenda.
To learn more about what the UN is really about, we encourage you to visit The John Birch Society’s “Get US Out! of the UN” page.
