Anjali Dayal, professor of international politics at Fordham, provided commentary on the future of the United Nations amid shifting global power dynamics.
Trump and his lieutenants seem intent on pushing their vision for a pared-down U.N. “This institution desperately needs strong, effective leadership,” Mike Waltz, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., said, during a Senate briefing this spring. That, in his view, means appointing a figurehead who will embrace U.S. priorities, including defunding programs whose focus is distinct from the “basics” of “peace and security.”
Anjali Dayal, a professor of international politics at Fordham University and a longtime U.N. watcher, is concerned about a future leader whose ambitions for the United Nations get hamstrung by the projects and whims of the great powers. “The U.N. could face a kind of reduction toward obsolescence,” she told me. “In ten years, we could have a vestigial organization that doesn’t really serve many purposes in the world.”
