Just as the League of Nations collapsed because of its structural impotence and inability to prevent global conflict, its successor, the United Nations, is moving toward a similar end.
The U.N. is failing. Geopolitical, cultural, and religious biases fragmenting the international community have turned the U.N. General Assembly and the Security Council into theaters for political performance rather than instruments of peace. The institution cannot function under the ideals of its original 1945 charter because the illusion of global consensus has been exposed.
From the American perspective, the U.N. is an expensive, partisan waste of time and money. The United States remains the single largest financial contributor to the organization, routinely assessed at the maximum 22% of the U.N. regular budget and roughly 26% of the global peacekeeping budget. American taxpayers essentially subsidize a platform that is weaponized against Western democratic values and American interests. Taking a 360-degree view of global geopolitics, it is clear why other factions cling to it. For smaller or revisionist nations, the U.N. provides a megaphone to extract concessions, block decisive action, and shield autocratic regimes from accountability.
Instead of uniting the world, the U.N. acts as a bureaucratic cancer that worsens geopolitical conflicts and paralyzes genuine diplomacy. The current framework is obsolete, and the verdict is clear: It is time to completely remove this bloated apparatus.
Looking back at the U.N.’s century-long legacy, its most seminal, long-lasting action was the 1947 partition plan that led to the creation of the country of Israel. Decades later, this remains the single greatest decision to reshape the face of the globe. For many, it stands as the high-water mark of the world body’s ethical and moral character. For others, it is viewed as their most catastrophic intervention.
Yet, having made the decision to create the country of Israel, the U.N. immediately turned around and systematically undermined it. In December 1949, less than two years after Israel’s independence, the U.N. General Assembly established the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
By creating and funding a parallel welfare and governance architecture exclusively for Palestinians, the U.N. deliberately manufactured two separate, segregated systems rather than allowing for an integrated, unified society. Rather than working toward real resettlement or regional normalization, this structural division doomed the area to a perpetually failed economy. We continue to see the devastating ramifications of that failed decision. The U.N. engineered a dependent ecosystem that subsidizes stagnation rather than building a sustainable future, proving that its interventions compound regional conflicts rather than solve them.
Admitting that the U.N. has failed does not mean nations must pack up their marbles, leave the global playground in a huff, and stop talking to each other. Dissolving a broken apparatus does not equal isolationism. Rather, it acknowledges that there are more expedient, practical, and effective ways to conduct multinational cooperation than in the bureaucratic cesspool the U.N. has turned out to be.
Multinational cooperation belongs in direct, bilateral, and regional negotiations between sovereign countries. In drafting this new era of foreign policy, we must intentionally discard the academic jargon of “statecraft” and “states.” Academics and career bureaucrats love the word “state” because it reduces real communities to bloodless chess pieces on a board. We are talking about countries — distinct lands with unique borders, peoples, histories, and sovereign wills.
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Tailored pacts, alliances, and treaties negotiated country-to-country — whether they govern military defense, economic trade, or environmental cooperation — are more enforceable and long-lasting than empty resolutions passed by a fractured global committee. When independent countries negotiate directly based on mutual, localized self-interest, agreements hold weight.
Ultimately, the U.N. is a grand experiment that has failed. Much like the League of Nations before it, this second global experiment has proven entirely incapable of fulfilling its core mandate for reasons far too numerous to elaborate here. The U.S. must lead the charge in defunding and dismantling it. It is time to dissolve the U.N. and return international relations to the pragmatic, direct reality of country-to-country statecraft.
Eric Wargotz, MD is a political commentator, independent geopolitical analyst, and a clinical professor emeritus at The George Washington University who has held leadership roles across government and medicine. The views expressed here are entirely his own.