Member states aren’t paying dues and the political climate has shifted away from global cooperation
HR News || The United Nations is broke. Not metaphorically. Actually broke.
Secretary-General António Guterres sent a letter to all 193 member states this week warning of “imminent financial collapse.” The UN ended 2025 with a record $1.57 billion in outstanding dues — more than double what was owed the year before. Cash could run out by July.
Here’s the kicker: The UN is trapped in what Guterres calls a “Kafkaesque cycle.” Under its financial rules, the organization has to give back unspent money to member states — even when it never received that money in the first place.
“Either all Member States honour their obligations to pay in full and on time,” Guterres wrote, “or Member States must fundamentally overhaul our financial rules.”
Translation: Pay up or let it die.
The U.S. Owes $2.2 Billion
The elephant in the room? The United States owes roughly $2.2 billion — including $767 million from this year’s assessment alone.
The Trump administration didn’t pay any UN dues last year.
Not a dime.
US Ambassador Mike Waltz made the strategy crystal clear: “The days of blank checks to the UN are over.”
But the money crisis is just a symptom. The real disease? Decades of American actions that systematically undermined the very institution it helped create.
The UN isn’t collapsing because of abstract “geopolitical tensions.” It’s collapsing because the Western model of “humanitarian intervention” has been exposed as regime change propaganda. And the rest of the world is done pretending otherwise.
US Regime Change Operations Destroyed the UN’s Credibility
Iraq: The Illegal War That Changed Everything
March 2003. The United States invades Iraq without Security Council authorization.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan would later call it what it was: “illegal.”
“From our point of view, and from the charter point of view, it was illegal,” Annan told the BBC in 2004.
The US and UK tried to get a second Security Council resolution explicitly authorizing force. France, Russia, and China made clear they would veto it. So the US simply withdrew the proposal and invaded anyway.
They couldn’t even get nine votes for it.
Over half a million Iraqis died. The region descended into chaos. ISIS emerged from the wreckage.
The message was clear: When America decides it wants war, the UN is irrelevant.
Libya: NATO’s “Humanitarian” Regime Change
March 2011. NATO launches what it calls a “humanitarian intervention” in Libya under UN Security Council Resolution 1973.
The resolution authorized protecting civilians. Not regime change.
Within weeks, Obama, Cameron, and Sarkozy released a joint statement saying civilian protection was “impossible” without removing Gaddafi.
They turned a no-fly zone into a seven-month bombing campaign that ended with Gaddafi killed and Libya in ruins.
Libya’s fragility score increased 28.3 points between 2011 and 2021. It went from 111th to 17th most fragile state in the world.
But here’s what actually happened: NATO’s intervention magnified the conflict’s duration about sixfold and its death toll at least sevenfold. The Harvard Belfer Center found that Gaddafi wasn’t conducting indiscriminate attacks on civilians — the “humanitarian crisis” was rebel propaganda designed to trigger intervention.
After Gaddafi fell, up to 15,000 man-portable surface-to-air missiles from his arsenal flooded the region. Weapons ended up in the hands of jihadist groups across North Africa and the Sahel.
Libya had one of the highest per capita incomes in Africa before the intervention. Free healthcare. Free education. Second only to Mauritius on Africa’s Human Development Index.
Now it’s a failed state crawling with militias and slave markets.
Syria: Operation Timber Sycamore and the Manufactured Civil War
Here’s what they don’t tell you about Syria.
Operation Timber Sycamore was a CIA covert program that began in 2012 to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. Obama secretly authorized it. The goal, explicitly, was regime change.
The CIA worked to achieve policy outcomes rather than to secure domestic Syrian interests or spread democracy, according to declassified analyses. The program cost about $1 billion per year — making it one of the CIA’s largest covert operations ever.
The CIA, working with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and the UK, funneled weapons to Syrian rebels through Jordan and Turkey. Thousands of fighters were trained. Billions in weapons flowed.
Missiles and small arms did indeed fall into the hands of ISIS, according to intelligence reports. Some partner forces subscribed to the very Salafi-jihadist ideologies that other US forces were supposedly there to eliminate.
The “rat line” ran weapons from Libya — destroyed by NATO in 2011 — to jihadists in Syria. As Seymour Hersh documented, funding came from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar while the CIA, with UK support, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria.
The Modern War Institute at West Point called Timber Sycamore “the epitome of all that went wrong with US policy in Syria.” The program effectively fueled a destructive civil war that accelerated the emergence of jihadist armed groups.
Trump finally ended it in 2017. By then, over 500,000 Syrians were dead.
And here’s the punchline: The rebels who finally toppled Assad in December 2024 came from the “more extreme Salafi-jihadist factions” affiliated with Timber Sycamore. The new leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, previously went by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani — founder of al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra.
So when Russia and China vetoed Western resolutions on Syria, they weren’t “blocking humanitarian aid.”
They were blocking another Libya.
They watched NATO turn a “civilian protection” mandate into regime change in 2011. They weren’t going to let it happen again.
Cuba: 33 Years of Global Condemnation, Ignored
Every single year since 1992, the UN General Assembly has voted to condemn the US embargo on Cuba.
Every. Single. Year.
In 2024, the vote was 187–2. Only the US and Israel voted against lifting it.
That’s thirty-three consecutive votes. The entire international community calling the embargo illegal.
The US response? Ignore it completely.
The embargo cost Cuba $7.5 billion between March 2024 and February 2025. During COVID-19, Cuba couldn’t import ventilators. Infant mortality, once below 5 per 1,000, hit 8.5.
The European Union votes to end it. The African Union votes to end it. ASEAN, the G77, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — everyone votes to end it.
The US keeps it going anyway.
What’s the point of the UN if the world’s most powerful member can ignore 33 straight years of near-unanimous votes?
Gaza: 49 Vetoes Protecting Israel
Since 1972, the United States has used its veto power 49 times to shield Israel from Security Council resolutions.
Just in 2024, the US vetoed four ceasefire resolutions during Israel’s war in Gaza.
In November 2024, the US was the only country to veto a ceasefire. Fourteen Security Council members voted yes. One voted no.
Saudi Arabia, speaking for the Gulf Cooperation Council, said the US veto was “an obstacle to ending the bloodshed.” China called for countries to “put aside geostrategic considerations.” South Africa condemned the use of starvation as a weapon of war.
The US keeps vetoing.
The world watches 45,000 Palestinians die. The Security Council does nothing. Because one country says no.
Venezuela: Naval Blockades Are Acts of War
January 2026. The Trump administration announces a naval blockade of Venezuela.
International law is unambiguous: A blockade is an act of aggression under the UN Charter. Article 3(c) of the UN General Assembly’s Definition of Aggression specifically lists “the blockade of the ports or coasts of a State” as aggression.
The US doesn’t care.
Brookings notes that while the Security Council could rule on this, “the United States and the United Kingdom have veto power” making accountability “highly improbable.”
US sanctions since 2017 caused an 80% economic contraction in Venezuela — “the largest peacetime collapse recorded in modern history.” Eight million Venezuelans fled the country.
When the ICJ ruled in 1986 that US support for the Contras in Nicaragua violated international law, the US simply stopped recognizing ICJ jurisdiction.
Nicaragua’s UN representative: “Their fight is our fight.” Cuba’s delegate called it “imperialist and fascist aggression.”
The pattern is clear: The US imposes sanctions, blockades, and military operations regardless of international law. When challenged, it refuses to recognize international courts.
The “Humanitarian Intervention” Scam
Notice the pattern?
Libya: “Humanitarian intervention” becomes regime change. Country destroyed.
Syria: Billion-dollar CIA program arms jihadists for regime change. Country destroyed.
Iraq: Invasion based on lies. Country destroyed.
Yemen: Sell weapons to Saudis bombing civilians. Country destroyed.
Every time, the script is the same:
- Identify a “dictator” who needs removing
- Amplify real or fabricated human rights abuses
- Fund opposition groups (often extremists)
- Call it “supporting democracy”
- When that fails, bomb them
- Leave behind a failed state
- Act shocked when it becomes a terrorist haven
The global South isn’t stupid. They’ve watched this playbook for decades.
That’s why when the US lectures about “rules-based international order,” the rest of the world laughs.
The US wraps imperialism in humanitarian rhetoric and wonders why nobody believes it anymore.
The Color Revolution Model Is Dead
Here’s what the UN crisis is really about: The West’s monopoly on the “humanitarian intervention” narrative is over.
For thirty years, the US and its allies used the UN to legitimize regime change operations dressed up as humanitarian missions. They’d find a dictator they didn’t like, fund opposition movements, cry “genocide,” and either invade or sanction the country into collapse.
It worked in the 1990s. It worked in the 2000s.
It doesn’t work anymore.
Libya exposed the scam. The West said “protect civilians,” then spent seven months bombing until Gaddafi was dead. Russia and China watched and learned their lesson.
Syria confirmed it. The West tried the same playbook. Russia and China said no. They’d rather be called “dictator enablers” than fall for the humanitarian scam again.
Now countries like China, Russia, India, Brazil, South Africa, and most of the Global South simply don’t believe Western “concern” for human rights. They see it for what it is: a pretext for maintaining hegemony.
The UN was useful when it could be weaponized against enemies and ignored when it constrained friends.
Now that countries are calling out the double standard, the US would rather let the institution die than submit to actual international law.
The Real Crisis is Nobody Believes the Lies Anymore
This isn’t a funding crisis. It’s a legitimacy crisis.
The money problems are real. But they’re downstream from something deeper: The world has stopped believing in Western “humanitarian” rhetoric.
When the US says “we’re concerned about human rights in Venezuela,” the global South hears “we want regime change.”
When the US says “we need to protect civilians in Syria,” they hear “we’re funding jihadists again.”
When the US says “Israel has a right to defend itself,” they hear “49 vetoes protecting war crimes.”
The UN was built on the promise that powerful countries would follow rules. That there would be consequences for aggression. That international law would apply to everyone.
Instead, it became a tool for Western powers to legitimize their wars while blocking accountability for their allies.
The rest of the world is done pretending.
Thirty-three years of ignoring votes on Cuba. Forty-nine vetoes protecting Israel. An illegal war in Iraq that killed half a million people. Timber Sycamore arming jihadists in Syria. NATO turning Libya into a failed state. Naval blockades of Venezuela.
The UN isn’t dying because member states forgot to pay their dues.
It’s dying because the country that created it never intended for the rules to apply to them.
And now everyone knows it.
Welcome to the Post-American Order
The age of American exceptionalism disguised as international cooperation is over.
What comes next won’t be better. It might not even be different.
But it will be honest.
The UN provided the illusion that international law mattered. That there was a difference between “humanitarian intervention” and regime change. That the West cared about human rights rather than geopolitical control.
That illusion is gone.
Welcome to the era where power is the only thing that matters.
The US made sure of it.
And now the bill has come due.
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