How a US Government Shutdown Impacts the United Nations

Plus, the latest from the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis, and other stuff I am working on.

Photo by Mathias Reding on Unsplash

The US government came perilously close to shutting down. Again. But at the last minute a compromise was struck to keep the government funded for the next 45 days. Congress now has until mid-November to pass a budget or face a shutdown.

A shutdown would have sparked a major crisis at the United Nations. That’s been averted for now — but the UN is not out of the woods just yet.

Why a US Government shut down would have been terrible for the United Nations

The UN relies on dues payments from its members to fund its operations. The precise amount each country pays in membership dues is negotiated every two years between UN member states themselves, and is roughly pegged to the relative size of a country’s economy. The United States is the largest funder of the United Nations, followed by China and Japan.

Most countries make their dues payments early in the year. But because of a quirk in the US budgeting process, the United States typically does not pay i…