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On February 28, the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran. The US-Israeli attacks came without prior warning or approval by the United Nations and targeted and killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Just two months earlier, the US launched another attack, on Venezuela, in which its special forces kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from his residence in Caracas and transferred him to New York, where he faces criminal charges in federal court.
In between these two violent attacks, US President Donald Trump withdrew from 66 international organisations, including 31 UN entities, and launched the Board of Peace, a new institution he chairs personally that he suggested might replace the UN.
These and other developments in recent years demonstrate that the world order the US helped establish in 1945 no longer serves its interests.
For eight decades, US treasure, diplomacy and military power sustained this architecture. Whatever one’s criticisms of how that power was exercised, the scale of the commitment was remarkable, and the US did not have to do this. It chose to.
The world of 2026 bears little resemblance to 1945. Europe has rebuilt. China has risen. Canada, Japan, South Korea and many Gulf States are rich. and Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, India, Vietnam and other countries are on the rise.
Today’s threats – climate change, pandemics, terrorism and others – were barely imaginable when the UN Charter was drafted. It is not unreasonable for Americans to ask why they should continue bearing a disproportionate burden for a system designed for a world that no longer exists.
The question is what the rest of the world intends to do. For too long, multilateralism has been something the US provided and others consumed. European nations sheltered under American security guarantees while criticising US foreign policy. Developing nations demanded institutional reforms while relying on American funding. Small states like those of the Caribbean invoked international law as our shield while contributing little to enforce it.
If we truly value this system, we must now demonstrate that value with resources, not merely rhetoric.
A powerful first step would be relocating the UN headquarters from New York as an acknowledgment of reality. Why should the world body remain in a nation that is withdrawing from so many of its parts and building alternatives?
Relocation would signal that the international community intends to preserve multilateralism regardless of American participation and that we are prepared to bear the costs of doing so. And there are many options for where the UN can be based. Geneva and Vienna can offer neutrality. Nairobi and Rio de Janeiro would centre the organisation in the Global South.
An island nation is also an option: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Jamaica or Mauritius. Such a choice would underscore that this is now an institution for the vulnerable, not the powerful.
If the world can mobilise trillions for wars and bailouts, it can fund a headquarters move.
More fundamentally, the UN requires a new funding model. The US has provided roughly 22 percent of the regular budget and far more for peacekeeping. This dependency gave Washington outsized influence and made the organisation hostage to US domestic politics.
If we value multilateralism, we must fill the gap. The European Union, China, Japan, the Gulf states and emerging economies must contribute commensurate with their stake in a functioning international order. A diversified funding base would ensure survival and democratise global governance in ways long overdue.
The urgency of these reforms is underscored by the crises now unfolding. The attacks on Iran risk a wider regional conflagration that could draw in the Gulf states, disrupt global energy supplies and tip fragile economies into recession. The abduction of Venezuela’s president has destabilised Latin America and set a precedent that no sovereign leader is beyond the reach of unilateral force.
Meanwhile, the wars in Gaza and Sudan grind on, the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo remains engulfed in conflict and millions of displaced people strain the capacity of neighbouring states. In each case, the UN Security Council has proven unable or unwilling to act, paralysed by the very veto structure that privileges the powerful over the vulnerable.
A relocated and revitalised United Nations, funded broadly and no longer beholden to a single patron, would not resolve these crises overnight. But it could act with greater legitimacy and less selective morality.
It could authorise humanitarian corridors without fear that one member’s geopolitical interests will block action. It could convene emergency sessions on energy price stabilisation, coordinate debt relief for nations pushed to the brink by conflict-driven commodity shocks and deploy peacekeeping missions that are not contingent on one country’s budgetary politics. The point is not that a reformed UN would be perfect. It is that the current one is structurally incapable of responding to the very emergencies that demand collective action.
Every month of inaction widens the gap between what the institution promises and what it delivers, eroding the faith of the most vulnerable nations that multilateralism is worth defending at all.
Climate architecture also requires particular urgency of action. The American withdrawal from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change threatens the Green Climate Fund, the Adaptation Fund, and Loss and Damage mechanisms. For Small Island Developing States and other climate-vulnerable countries, these are lifelines, not abstractions.
The window for building climate finance independent of US participation is narrow, but it exists. Europe must demonstrate its climate leadership with resources. China, the world’s largest emitter, has the capacity to become a major contributor if it wishes to claim moral leadership.
For the Caribbean, this transformation demands both humility and ambition. Humility because we have long relied on frameworks we did little to fund. Ambition because we have 14 UN General Assembly votes, moral authority from the front lines of climate change and a tradition of punching above our weight.
The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) should propose a resolution on headquarters relocation and funding reform, convene like-minded states and strengthen the Caribbean Court of Justice as a regional anchor when global mechanisms falter. The blocs representing Small Island Developing States, Africa and other parts of the developing world have the numbers to reshape governance if they act in concert.
The US remains the world’s largest economy, its most powerful military force, and home to many of the institutions, universities, corporations and civil society organisations that drive global progress. Americans who believe in multilateralism remain numerous and influential. The door to renewed American engagement should always remain open.
But the rest of the world cannot wait indefinitely for US domestic politics to resolve itself. We must build institutions resilient enough to function with or without American participation.
In 1945, a war-weary and generous America chose to build rather than retreat, and that choice shaped the world we inherited. In 2026, a different America has made a different choice. We should accept it without rancour and recognise it for what it is, an invitation to finally take ownership of the international order we claim to value.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
