'Get their comeuppance': Ex-Trump official calls for cuts to United Nations

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Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who is the presumptive next United Nations (U.N.) ambassador is one of President-elect Donald Trump's more traditional Cabinet appointments, and is unlikely to face a tough confirmation battle in the Senate. But one former Trump administration official is hoping she'll usher in drastic cuts to the U.N.'s budget during the president-elect's second term.

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, John Bolton — who was former President George W. Bush's U.N. ambassador before briefly serving as Trump's National Security Advisor in 2018 — laid out his proposal for what he hopes Stefanik and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is Trump's secretary of state-designate, accomplish at the U.N. over the next four years. Bolton is particularly hoping Stefanik, Rubio and Trump will do away with a U.N. funding mechanism that he likened to "taxation of America by other U.N. members."

"Funding for U.N. components falls into two categories: mandatory 'assessed' contributions and voluntary contributions. Assessments are calculated by opaque 'capacity to pay' formulas, which have historically made America the largest contributor," Bolton wrote. "A majority of member governments tells us what we owe, on pain of losing our vote in U.N. governing bodies if we don’t pay up. That alone is sufficient reason to reject the concept of assessments, since it isn’t our votes in these bodies that matter... This approach rests on the revolutionary assumption that we fund the U.N. based on its performance, paying only for what we want and insisting that we get what we pay for."

Bolton elaborated that because the U.S. has a vote and veto on the vaunted Security Council that's written into the U.N. charter, it will effectively face zero consequences for doing away with assessed contributions. He also argued that "U.N. bureaucrats, U.S. officials and nongovernmental organizations" claiming that that the U.S. gets "enormous credit" for its U.N. funding commitment is "false."

"Special-interest advocates simply take our current level of funding for granted, complain that it’s inadequate and demand more," Bolton wrote. "It’s time they get their comeuppance."

The former U.N. ambassador went on to applaud Trump's previous withdrawal of the U.S. from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which President Joe Biden rejoined in 2021. Bolton predicted that Trump would again withdraw the U.S. from UNESCO (which leads U.N. efforts to fight poverty, increase literacy and build "a culture of peace") and other U.N. agencies that "prove unreformable." He also hoped that the U.S. would redirect funding previously appropriated for the U.N. to the military budget, which is currently the largest in the world at $916 billion in 2023 and accounts for 40% of all global military spending combined.

"Using America’s money as an existential threat will rock the U.N. system," he wrote. "While many other reforms are possible, they won’t match the power of unilaterally controlling our contributions."

Click here to read Bolton's full op-ed in the Journal (subscription required).

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