The Dismantling of UN Peace Operations under the Trump Administration

Those who had hoped for a more auspicious start to the new year for multilateralism were quickly disillusioned by recent developments concerning Venezuela, Greenland and beyond. Simultaneously, the United States (US) President contended that he ‘doesn’t need international law’ but is guided instead by his ‘own morality’. All of this might, at times, appear as a post-postmodern farce, with insecure anti-truth bullies as its central figures, were it not for the severe consequences that their shortsighted and reductionist worldview entails for the world we inhabit. The destructive trajectory of the Trump administration – despite the US President’s repeated reiterations of his alleged ‘support for peace’ (see e.g. here and here) – has also been directed at United Nations (UN) peace operations, which constitute a cornerstone of multilateralism and a central expression of the global commitment to peace. For instance, the US President instructed the withdrawal from 66 ‘international organizations’ and ‘conventions’, including the Peacebuilding Commission and Fund. Paradoxically, at a time when the number of violent conflicts is increasing – aggravated by the effects of climate change (see e.g. here) – peace operations appear all the more indispensable. Recent efforts of the US administration in the UN Security Council (UNSC) have been framed as attempts to ‘reform’ UN peace operations, yet in practice they function to de-legitimize multilateral frameworks and advance their replacement with arrangements aligned with narrowly defined US interests. The following post examines these dynamics by first showing how the US tries to set up UN peace operations up for failure, including by defunding them and narrowing mandates. Second – and more consequential – it traces recent US efforts to discontinue existing mandates prematurely and to redesign the broader peace operation architecture.

Setting UN Peace Operations Up for Failure

Since the 1990s, UN peace operations, in response to growing legitimacy concerns, went through an era of expansion both in terms of number and scope. With the creation of extensive mandates, so-called multidimensional peace operations had the aim of not only monitoring ceasefires, but also supporting post-conflict state-building through political mediation, institution-building, security sector reform, and the promotion of human rights and the rule of law (see here). For this, peace operations increasingly turned to regional and local actors and a bottom-up approach to contribute to a sustainable peace (see here). However, with difficulties in fighting asymmetrical conflicts and organized crime as well as the growing UNSC polarization in the 2010s, already prior to the second Trump Administration some warning signs indicated a shift to more state-centric peace operations, with the UN in a more limited role (see eg ATMIS in Somalia, see in detail here).

This trend has intensified with said Administration, as US engagement with UN peace operations is increasingly framed in the language of reform while in practice amounting to a further disengagement from multilateral and multidimensional peace operations. This is most plainly visible in the politics of financing, where the US has treated its assessed contributions as leverage and has withheld funding to the budget of UN peacekeeping operations. To date, the US has accumulated arrears amounting to over 2.3 billion USD, with 1.4 billion USD accumulating during the first year of the second Trump administration (see here, Chart 11). This has led to a decrease of UN Peacekeeping capabilities by around 25 % (see here). The Trump Administration has justified this by claiming that ‘UN peacekeeping has been fraught with waste and abuse’. 

In parallel, recent mandate negotiations suggest that “reform” has increasingly taken the form of discursive subtraction, which is narrowing how the UN is allowed to frame conflict and, in the process, delegitimising the current multidimensional model of peace operations. With regards to the extension of the mandate of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), the US made this explicit by stating that peace operations ‘should not pursue ideological goals (…) but rather focus on core Chapter VII functions.’ Accordingly, the mandate was streamlined toward a more security-centred interpretation of UN engagement and the US sought to remove reference to electoral assistance. While this was moderated in the final compromise, the renewed mandate ultimately conditions UN electoral assistance. Hence, the transitional government will only receive support if there is continued progress in creating conditions for free and fair elections (see Resolution 2779 (2025) para 3(c)).

Moreover, the US, as penholder, tried to remove previously agreed thematic language and normative standards with regard to women, peace and security, climate change and human rights. For instance, attempts were made to replace references to sexual and gender-based violence with ‘violence against women and girls’ and the term ‘climate change’ with ‘environmental change’ or ‘natural disasters’ (see eg here). The latter follows US remarks according to which the UN has gotten ‘wildly off track, exaggerating climate change into the world’s greatest threat’ and ‘obsessed with the green new scam, gender insanity, and other terrible ideas.’

Similarly, in the context of the recent mandate renewal of the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA), the US – acting as penholder – insisted on the inclusion of a set of clearly defined benchmarks on which future extensions would be conditioned to demonstrable progress by Sudan and South Sudan. This concerns issues such as the withdrawal of unauthorized armed forces, joint security mechanisms, and the establishment of a joint police service (see Resolution 2802 (2025) paras 1-4). While this shift was defended by the US as a way to ‘track progress’ and hold host governments accountable, several UNSC members expressed concern that such performance conditions are unrealistic in the current political and security environment and could be used as a basis to limit or even end the mission prematurely (see here).

In sum, these developments amount to setting UN peace operations up to fail. Definancing reduces missions’ operational capacity, while discursive subtraction in mandate negotiations narrows the multidimensional model and makes sustainable peacebuilding harder. In UNISFA, the insistence on benchmarks that are difficult to meet in the current environment also enables the US to obstruct future renewals by invoking non-achievement as justification and undermines long-term mission planning. This, in turn, creates a vicious cycle, in which the resulting inefficiencies are weaponised to further delegitimise multidimensional peace operations and to build the case for replacing them with US-led alternatives.

Discontinuing and Replacing UN Peace Operations

The Trump Administration is increasingly pursuing an approach aimed at the active discontinuation of UN peace operations. For instance, one of the biggest and longest running UN peace operations, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), was given one final extension against the backdrop of US diplomatic pressure to end the mission immediately, citing its failure to curb Hezbollah’s influence in South Lebanon (which was not part of its mission goals, see here, see also here). According to reports from inside the UNSC, the US was the only member who was committed to ending the mission (here).

Furthermore, there is a push to replace classic UN (led and authorized) peace operations, championed by the US Administration: Resolution 2793 (2025) on Haiti, co-penned by the US, replaced the Multinational Security Force (MSF) with the Gang Suppression Force (GSF). This is a more severe change to the UN peace operation architecture than the mandate changes or the inclusion of specific benchmarks described above: In essence, it institutionalizes a shift away from UN leadership in peace operations toward greater control by the states involved in the mission. The preceding MSF – created by Resolution 2599 (2023) – already laid the groundwork, allowing the involved states and the Haitian government large discretion in how to achieve the broadly defined mission mandate and relying solely on voluntary funding (see Resolution 2599 (2023) para 1 and here). The GSF expands on this structure by explicitly stating that the involved states will have ‘strategic direction, oversight and political decision-making’ – or, as Ahmed puts it, it will lead to ‘U.N. authorization but not U.N. control’. These types of missions are basically relegating the UN from an actively involved and influential player to a mere bystander granting permission.

The third, and most egregious example of the US ‘plan’ to replace UN peace operations, is Resolution 2803 (2025) regarding Gaza (penned by the US), which establishes the Board of Peace (BoP) – headed by the US President – and the International Stabilization Force (ISF). The ISF, as with the GSF, is largely independent from the UN in its operations. Furthermore, in its material legal design, it does not follow any of the three basic principles of UN peace operations (namely consent, impartiality, limited use of force), as Moitra and Mukherjee have already argued: While consent of Palestine is questionable, impartiality is not guaranteed since one of the conflict parties (Israel) is asked to have ‘close consultation and cooperation with’ with the ISF, including in their operational activities (see here). Moreover, while ‘robust’ peacekeeping has already allowed for the use of force beyond self-defence to protect civilians, the mandate in this case authorizes the use of force to destroy and prevent the building of dangerous infrastructure, thereby enabling the ISF to employ force proactively (see here). The supervisor of the ISF, the BoP, is a clear departure from previous UN authorised territorial administrations (namely UNMIK and UNTAET, as argued by Southey). The UN is not part of the administration itself and lacks a supervisory role to the autonomous BoP. Additionally, unlike with UNTAET (where a referendum was held in approval of the mission, see here), the Palestinian population was entirely excluded from the process.

Conclusion

Recent US engagement framed in terms of ‘reform’ has contributed to a subtraction and discontinuing of mandates of UN peace operations while privileging state-led operations and limiting missions selectively to contexts which align with US interests, such as in Haiti and Gaza. Multidimensional peace operations did not come out of the blue, but have served to achieve a more sustainable and lasting peace. The “back to basics” paradigm carries the risk of reversing progress achieved in this area. UN peace operations as traditionally understood appear to be approaching an end, as the US conduct described above has contributed to the unilateral instrumentalization of an institution originally conceived as multilateral. Particularly, at a moment where global challenges such as climate change demand stronger multilateral responses, the weakening of UN peace operations leaves the future of collective conflict management and peace building alarmingly uncertain. This was made even more evident by the Trump Administrations’ decision to expand the scope of the BoP, effectively aiming at creating a parallel, in particular to the UNSC, under the personal control of Donald Trump – and the post-postmodern farce continues.