Donald Trump’s outings against theUN Who is celebrating his 80th birthday this year invite you to think about this new crisis crossed by this institution: what is Donald Trump’s agenda for international organizations ? What does this liberal international international agenda tell us that this health agenda founded in 1945 ?
80 years ago, on June 26, 1945, 51 states at the forefront of which appeared the United States adopted the United Nations Charter in San Francisco, which would come into force a few months later, on October 24, 1945.
This text abundantly commented and to the famous preamble: “ We, peoples of the United Nations, resolved to preserve the future generations of the scourge of war which twice in the space of a human life has inflicted humanity with unspeakable suffering … », Obviously has enough to leave skeptical when theUN is about to enter its ninth decade.
The irony of history wants theUN celebrated this anniversary when she was attacked by the Trump administration, which plans to radically reform its functioning, while announcing its withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the Council for Human Rights and by invecting the ineffectiveness and politicization of its administration.
If the outings – in the double sense of the term – of Donald Trump constituted the starting point of this file, the concomitance with the 80th anniversary of the organization also offers an opportunity to reflect on this new crisis crossed by theUNby articulating two dimensions of reflection. First, on the short time of the news of multilateralism: what is Donald Trump’s agenda for international organizations ? Then, on the longer time of the transformations of multilateralism: what this agenda of the liberal international order (re) founded in 1945 and its health tells us ?
This file, carried by the drafting of The life of ideas and the research group on multilateral action (Gram,, Cnrs) and of his observatory addresses these questions within four different angles head -on, and tries to bring an analysis grid which is often lacking, due to a parcel and superficial media treatment which international organizations are too often the subject.
The test of Camille Bayet, Mathilde Leloup, Marieke Louis and Anaëlle Vergonjeanne analyzes the springs of the project of a “ DOGE »(The name of the new department of government efficiency carried by Elon Musk) applied to theUN in order to make it more “ transparent ” And “ effective “, Taking advantage of the institutional complexity of the organization, reforms encysted for decades and scandals in which theUN has been taken, a fortiori since October 7. Considering several scenarios to leave the crisis, the test shows that, far from proposing any rationalization of international public action, the “ DOGE–A Above all, reactivates the scapegoat strategy. Under cover of false promises and reasoning as attractive as it is fallacious, are Trump’s United States always volunteers to continue to assume their original leader position ?
The interview with Tim Heinkelmann-Wild aims precisely to explore these leadership dynamics and to reflect on the alternatives that this new period of crisis opens. He first returns to the longer history of the ambivalent commitment of the United States within international organizations and by decrypting the strategy of the scapegoat. But in the reverse of the Trumpist project, it is according to him the combination of new European leaders and a strengthening of the UN administration which will allow multilateralism to resist.
Mélanie Albaret and Auriane Guilbaud also return to the logic of Trumpist disengagement, since her first mandate, at theWHO and the Human Rights Council. This comparison makes it possible to examine the variety of criticisms that affect the United Nations bodies (instrumentalization, partiality, politicization, etc.), but also the potential of a more global delegitimation of multilateral institutions if the United States is really defection and that no other power comes to take over.
Finally, Frédéric Ramel and Simon Tordjman offer a portrait of the American academic John Gerard Ruggie (1944-2021), author of a major work on theUN and in particular a seminal work, Multilateralism matters: the theory and praxis of an institutional formpublished in 1993, before becoming himself a special rapporteur on the issue of multinational companies and human rights.
By proposing an analysis of the multilateral form as a place of balance and mesh between actors of a diverse nature, the scientific and political work of ruggie makes it possible to understand the weaknesses and the levers of renewal of multilateral cooperation between states, market and civil societies.
International relations and multilateralism specialists are familiar with criticism of international organizations, to the point of having to defend its assessment or to recall the reason for being as much as they explain the nature of dysfunctions and challenges of international cooperation. But if this committed posture is sometimes necessary, it is also because too often, despite an abundant literature on the subject, the knowledge on theUN and the functioning of international organizations in general “ do not pass. »»
Without giving in or the alarmism of a “ it’s unheard of “Nor to the indifference of” L’UN saw others », This file aims above all to show that subject to good diagnoses, another reform of theUN is possible, and more than ever necessary. Each text of this dossier thus highlights the emphasis on the avenues that this reform could take, which requires putting the question of legitimacy at the center of the debate, assuming that multilateralism is above all a political project and that, in reverse of the Trumpist project, the strengthening of bureaucratic capacities and the autonomy of international organizations does not mean a break with companies, but must on the contrary allow us to expand our democratic horizon beyond the state.