The best part is “the United States is a big reason why.”
“The United States owes roughly $2 billion to the organization’s regular budget on top of another $2.2 billion for peacekeeping missions, a portion of which has accrued over decades – far and away more than any other country that is in arrears,” reports Politico.
And what has the U.S. gained, as the largest contributor — the American taxpayer generously provides 70% of the U.N.’s budget — from the criminal-infested organization? Headaches … and worse.
More than six decades ago, American historian and journalist William Henry Chamberlin noted that the U.N., then not even 20 years old, had “a distinctly bad influence on American foreign policy,” with member states drawing the U.S. “into vendettas and one-sided positions which conform neither with principles of elementary justice nor with America’s own interests.”
Two decades later, the U.S. U.S. was “constantly under siege at the United Nations and reluctantly” had “come to regard it as hostile terrain,” said the Heritage Foundation. At the same time, the U.N. seemed “to work quite satisfactorily for the Soviet Union,” with the organization’s New York City building serving as a “base for Soviet espionage and propaganda.”
Today, the U.N. is in China’s thrall, is still anti-capitalism, still anti-American. U.N Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, whose title strips naked any pretense that the U.N. isn’t antisemitic, calls the U.S. “a nation founded upon genocide.”
After last year’s airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, intended to lessen the risk that the maniacal regime would become an atomic weapons threat, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said he was “gravely alarmed by the use of force.” In his twisted mind, the mission was “a direct threat to international peace and security,” as if the mullahs in Tehran are peace-loving lambs who merely want to get along with everyone.
If possible, the U.N. is more anti-American than it ever has been, with the hated Donald Trump having been sent once again to the White House by a majority of voters and a landslide tally from the Electoral College.
On the global level, the U.N. is simply incompetent. Has it ever prevented or stopped a famine? What wars has it averted or cut short? Has the supposedly august body ended, or even made a dent, in slavery, genocide or any number of crimes against humanity?
No. But it does have rapists among its peacekeepers and some of its employees celebrated Hamas‘ cold-blooded torture and murder of 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7.
If somehow the U.N. does survive its budget crisis, the U.S. should pull out entirely, force the organization to vacate its First Avenue headquarters and push it into the East River so that prime piece of Manhattan real estate can be converted to productive use. Go broke, United Nations, and then go away.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
I & I Editorial Board
The Issues and Insights Editorial Board has decades of experience in journalism, commentary and public policy.