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The United States was not alone in its failure to keep up with its dues and other contributions to the UN. By early 1997 members owed the UN more than $3 billion, with roughly half of that owed by the United States alone. The financial crisis had actually started years earlier, in the 1980s, when countries started falling behind in their payments. Some of the reasons were political, reflecting the unhappiness of the United States and other Western countries over how the UN was managing some of its programs, including its peacekeeping missions.

At the same time financial support declined, the UN’s expenses grew. In the preceding decade, the UN had greatly expanded its peacekeeping operations and increased other programs. In 1996 the UN came perilously close to having to shut down its operations. It was forced to scale back or terminate its peacekeeping operations, and the creation of new peacekeeping efforts became almost impossible. The UN had reached the biggest funding crisis in its history.

By the time Annan took office in January 1997, he faced an organization that was on the brink of bankruptcy and the target of severe criticism from the United States. The new secretary general pushed through a series of reforms to consolidate some major UN offices, in part to encourage the United States to pay its back dues. In the late 1990s the UN’s financial health improved because of lower peacekeeping expenses and larger payments from the United States. In 1999 Congress agreed to pay nearly $1 billion of back dues, but only on the condition that the UN decrease the U.S. share of the administrative budget from 25 to 22 percent and its share of the peacekeeping budget from 31 to 25 percent. In 2000 the General Assembly satisfied these terms by overhauling its system of financing. It set a ceiling of 22 percent as the maximum amount any country would pay toward the administrative budget. It also replaced its ad hoc system of funding peacekeeping operations with a sliding scale of dues based on a country’s per capita income. As a result, the U.S. contribution to peacekeeping operations was expected to decline gradually to close to 25 percent by 2004, and more than two dozen countries accepted increases in their peacekeeping contributions.

Since its creation in 1945, the UN has done much to promote international cooperation in economic and social goals, and to a lesser extent, world peace. The end of the Cold War and new possibilities for cooperation among the world’s major powers has given the UN an opportunity to realize the original vision of its founders. The UN now has a chance to become an international organization that can effectively maintain world peace within the limits of a system where individual nations maintain their own authority and independence. Despite the challenges it faces, the UN will likely play an increasingly central role in international politics in the coming decades.