What would happen if the United Nations ran out of money? Will unpaid translators show up to work at the Security Council? Will Con Edison simply turn the lights off at First Avenue and 42nd Street? More importantly: Will peacekeeping troops across the globe have to pack up and go home?
We may soon find out. The U.N.'s operating budget is on pace to expire this summer, when a spending cap on the U.N.'s two-year budget is reached. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton sought the cap to pressure the developing world into acceding to a set of reforms that would streamline U.N. bureaucracy. So far, however, that tactic has backfired. And in the process, it has fostered a strategic realignment in Turtle Bay, in which the global south acts as an increasingly muscular foil to reform.
