China is poised to exploit America’s retreat from the United Nations, analysts warned last night, as President Donald Trump renewed attacks on the organisation and confirmed deep cuts to US funding. The UN is already facing its gravest crisis in decades, with Washington – its largest single donor – withholding payments and freezing almost all future contributions.
That move has forced the UN to reduce its peacekeeping force by a quarter in the coming months, while the US is already in arrears for 2024 and expected to leave several agencies entirely next year. In his recent address, President Trump accused the organisation of “funding an assault on Western countries and their borders” through its support for migrants, and claimed it offered little help when he was ending “seven endless wars.”
In response, UN secretary-general António Guterres said the Security Council “has a composition that doesn’t correspond to the world of today – it corresponds to the world of 1945” and must be reformed.
Dr Alexander Gilder of the University of Reading said the balance of power inside the UN began to shift in the post-colonial era.
“From the 1970s onwards, as newly independent states joined, the Soviet Union saw an opportunity to shape the General Assembly through support for non-democratic and anti-Western blocs,” he said.
“That legacy still defines much of the UN’s voting behaviour today.”
Dr Renaud Foucart of Lancaster University agreed that the world was drifting into a “leaderless era.”
“The real risk is not that China takes over but that the liberal democracies disengage and leave a vacuum,” he said.
“China wants to show there is an alternative model of development that is not liberal democracy. It will ask: wouldn’t you rather be rich and living in autocracy?”
Beijing, already the largest contributor of peacekeepers among the five permanent Security Council members, has moved to position itself as the UN’s principal partner.
It has announced new UN-backed institutes in Shanghai and pledged support for sustainable development and science education under its “Global Governance Initiative” – a plan some analysts see as a bid to reshape the international order on Chinese terms.
China expert Matthew Henderson said Trump’s contempt for the UN had “massively assisted Beijing.”
“It lets them pose as calm, reliable actors while building a parallel network of client states,” he said.
Trump has already pulled out of UNESCO, the UN Human Rights Council and the World Health Organization, dismissing the 80-year-old institution as ineffective. In his UN General Assembly speech last week, he again accused it of “funding assaults on Western borders” and called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated.”
Dr Gilder said the UN’s credibility and capacity were collapsing.
“The organisation has been planning to run on a smaller budget. Its convening power is waning – Gaza has exposed that,” he said.
“Two years into the conflict, the system should have found a pathway for humanitarian access.”
Hillel Neuer of UN Watch said Washington was right to question the UN’s value but warned that a total withdrawal could hand greater influence to non-democracies.
“There is a dilemma,” he said. “If the US pulls out, China and its allies will move in. But if it stays, it continues to fund agencies that undermine Western values.”
Dr Gilder added: “Without the US, no one leads. The UN survives – but smaller, weaker and increasingly shaped by those least committed to its founding ideals.”