I’ll cut to the chase: Because of some funding decisions out of our control, UN Dispatch is pivoting to a crowdfunding model. We are moving to Substack and I need your help to keep our coverage of the United Nations alive and thriving. To that end, we are running a massive promotion.
Use this button to unlock a 40% discount to receive our dedicated coverage of the United Nations.
When I started my career as a journalist covering the UN in the early 2000s, the big story of the day was the Bush administration’s ill-fated invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Security Council did not support the Bush administration’s drive to war, and then–UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke out eloquently about the follies of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Soon thereafter, an ecosystem of right-wing think tanks and media outlets began relentlessly attacking the UN.
It was around this time that blogs became an important force in political debate in the United States. So, I teamed up with the United Nations Foundation to help start UN Dispatch, a blog dedicated to covering the UN from the viewpoint that there is a certain set of global challenges that require global solutions, and the UN can be a useful platform for coming together to find those solutions. This perspective was completely lacking in the media at the time, which mostly viewed the UN as a punching bag. But UN Dispatch helped set a different narrative, one that helped establish the value of the UN to American national interests and the global good.
As when I started UN Dispatch 20 years ago, the UN is once again facing a barrage of attacks from right-wing forces. President Trump may yet pull out of the UN altogether—Project 2025 envisions as much. His Day One decision to pull the U.S. out of the WHO and freeze foreign aid certainly signals a hostile approach to the UN and multilateralism.
But the UN still matters. It still makes a difference. Albeit imperfect, the UN still advances both the global good and American interests.
From my perspective, a publication that routinely and deliberately pushes back against unfair attacks on the UN and tells the story of how global cooperation has solved some of our great global challenges is needed now more than ever.
However, our funding landscape has changed, and we now need to rely on you—the caring and interested reader—to rescue UN Dispatch.
I need your help.
If you want to see UN Dispatch survive and thrive in this new era, please consider supporting us. If you’ve learned from UN Dispatch over the years and believe that the media should be covering the UN, multilateralism, and how Trump’s policies undermine international cooperation, please show your support with a paid subscription.
Because I need to show some momentum toward this pivot to crowdfunding, I’m offering a 40% discount for new subscribers. So, please get your paid subscription and help UN Dispatch help you make sense of this new era!
UN Dispatch will be a section of Global Dispatches, dedicated to reporting and analysis of all things UN. Your paid subscription to Global Dispatches gets you full access to UN Dispatch and everything else from Global Dispatches, including full episodes of our podcast about the UN, To Save Us From Hell. This is the only podcast dedicated to news and analysis of all things United Nations, and we’ve already garnered tens of thousands of downloads in just our first few months.
With your paid subscription, you can expect regular reporting and analysis on the damage Trump is inflicting on the UN—and how to stop it. But as always, I won’t just cover the UN through an American perspective. It’s an organization of 193 member states, all with an equal vote at the General Assembly. Those perspectives deserve to be heard, as do the perspectives of international civil servants, Blue Helmets, and the broader UN community of NGOs and advocacy groups working to leverage international cooperation to solve our common global challenges.
More broadly, we are in an era of great geopolitical shifts, and how we do international cooperation—call it “global governance”—needs to change with the times. This can include reforms to the UN itself and also the advent of other platforms for international cooperation. This is one of the most important stories for securing a safer future for all, and it’s one that I intend to cover.
Last year, Politico called me “The uncrowned king of UN-nerdom.” It’s a moniker I proudly embrace. But I suddenly need your help to secure the realm. As a community, we can nurture the only independent media outlet dedicated to covering the United Nations. So, please, support our work with a paid subscription.
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