How have successive US administrations engaged with United Nations (UN) peacekeeping amid growing transformation and contestation of the international order? Focusing on the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, it analyses speeches, strategy documents, budget submissions, and UN interventions to compare patterns of financial support, mandate engagement, capacity-building, and strategic leverage. The article argues that US engagement with UN peacekeeping has shifted from norm promotion to norm management, as successive administrations respond to multipolarity, institutional constraints, and domestic political pressures. Peacekeeping thus operates not merely as a tool of burden-sharing or conflict management, but as an arena through which the United States (US) renegotiates the boundaries of legitimacy, responsibility, and leadership within a contested liberal international order. The analysis shows that US peacekeeping policy shifted from Obama’s selective, reform-oriented engagement, to Trump’s cost-driven, sovereignty-focused approach, and then to Biden’s partial multilateral reengagement. Across administrations, persistent gaps between rhetoric, funding, and practice highlight both the limits and continued leverage of US influence in UN peacekeeping.
Maria do Céu Pinto Arena (Mon,) studied this question.