SIPRI's latest figures—78,633 international personnel deployed by end-2025, a 17% year-on-year drop and 49% decline since 2016—mark more than a funding crunch. They quantify the deliberate erosion of multilateral norms that mainstream reporting treats as episodic budget disputes rather than structural decay. The $2 billion UN shortfall and $5.38 billion approved budget, the lowest in a decade, stem directly from U.S. withdrawal actions under Trump targeting missions like UNIFIL, yet SIPRI understates how this accelerates a shift from collective security to spheres-of-influence management. Sub-Saharan Africa, hosting 70% of remaining forces, now sees Russian Africa Corps deployments and Chinese commercial-security pacts filling voids left by reduced MINUSCA and UNMISS mandates. Regional organizations, managing 34 of 52 operations, lack integrated civilian-military tools and face their own donor fatigue, creating a gap that bilateral deals exploit. This pattern echoes the post-2016 drawdown after peak UN deployments, but now coincides with active great-power competition in the Sahel, Red Sea, and Eastern Europe. The top troop contributors—Uganda, Nepal, Bangladesh, India—remain Global South states whose leverage grows even as Western political will evaporates. Without course correction, the result is not merely more conflicts but conflicts insulated from external restraint, raising civilian casualty thresholds and shortening windows for negotiated settlements.