SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The United Nations marks its 80th anniversary this year. And in that time, it has attracted many critics, including at this week's U.N. General Assembly meeting, U.S. President Donald Trump.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: What is the purpose of the United Nations? The U.N. has such tremendous potential. I've always said it. It has such tremendous, tremendous potential. But it's not even coming close to living up to that potential.
SIMON: And the question comes as the U.N. struggles to address the war in Ukraine, famine in Gaza and a series of funding cuts, among other global crises. Nahal Toosi is the senior foreign affairs correspondent at Politico, and she joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us.
NAHAL TOOSI: It's great to be with you. Thank you.
SIMON: You and I have both covered wars and tragedies around the world. I think especially of my experience in Bosnia, where you could see the U.N. on the ground, and yet, the conflict still goes on. The effectiveness of the U.N. at stopping conflicts can be questioned, can't it?
TOOSI: Absolutely. But it's really important to also to remember, you know, the U.N. is like an organization of organizations, right? So it does have organizations within it that deal with, like, humanitarian aid, migration, things like that. And a lot of them do good work. Some of them deal with very technical issues, like telecommunications rules or whatever. But when it comes to the geopolitical stuff, the decision-making bodies, like the U.N. Security Council, it's effectively a frozen palace. I mean, nothing can happen. The big powers are vetoing each other, and decisions are not being made. It's like being in quicksand, essentially.
SIMON: Of course, the United States was crucial in the very creation of the U.N. But the Trump administration has cut a lot of U.S. support to U.N. programs and plans to cut more, including, I gather, peacekeeping efforts, migration, public health. Are some of these programs endangered?
TOOSI: Absolutely. Yes. And there's two ways to look at this. One is you can pull all the funding and put a bunch of stress on the U.N. and say you have to do more with less, or you have to become more efficient, or maybe some of these things just don't need to happen anymore. And that could lead to just a lot of dysfunction in a lot of programs that actually do help people. Or you could actually say, look, we are the United States. We are the main donor to the U.N., and we want to see changes, and we want to push through reforms - smart reforms - that do, perhaps, involve merging some functions, some funding cuts, basically staffing cuts in a lot of ways.
There are definitely ways that the United Nations can be more efficient, but we want to be part of the solution, not simply complain and pull out resources. And I don't know, to be honest, if right now the Trump administration is thinking, let's just use the whip for a while, and then later on, maybe we'll come in and act like the saviors. But you do have to remember that the United Nations - it's a forum. It's a venue. Its member states are what matters. And if you're the leading member state, and you just choose to walk away and complain instead of try to fix things, then maybe you're part of the problem.
SIMON: U.N. Security Council wouldn't exist without the veto power, but can it do anything with the veto in place?
TOOSI: Look, that's the ultimate question. And one of the reforms that, you know, the Biden administration backed, for instance, was expanding the permanent members of the Security Council. And that included adding two seats for African countries who really are not represented on the permanent members of the Security Council. But they didn't want to extend the veto to these new permanent members. They did want to keep the veto, though, for the five current permanent members who have the veto. So I just don't even understand the point, right? I mean, the veto right now has become a real issue to anything getting done on the geopolitical front.
SIMON: Of course, the U.N. exists in the shadow of the League of Nations, which the United States wound up not joining, despite the fact that President Wilson was one of its architects. And obviously, the League of Nations was unable to prevent the start of World War II. What lessons do you think the U.N. should absorb?
TOOSI: I think that you have to ask yourself whether it is possible to have a body like the Security Council, in particular, if the veto is going to freeze it. And you have to ask whether a body like the General Assembly, which consists of all of the members - 193 members, countries, right? - and whether those votes should be more than symbolic, as they usually are, whether those votes should actually matter. Or you kind of have to say, well, maybe we need to just have a forum where ad-hoc groups can be set up to resolve different things, and the Security Council is not really relevant.
I am not much of an expert, I mean, really, on what potential structures there are, but I really hope there are people smarter than me thinking about this and asking what could be the next iteration. Because if the U.N. fades into irrelevance, we nonetheless still - as a global community - have to find a way to all talk to one another and make decisions because there are so many challenges facing the world that cross borders, climate change being one of them.
SIMON: Nahal Toosi is a senior foreign affairs correspondent at Politico. Thank you so much for being with us.
TOOSI: It's been great. Thank you.
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