The US and the UN

   

The UN is funded by its members, with the assessments established according to the best principles of the Communist Manifesto: each member is assessed according to their ability to pay. This ability is determined by the size of the GDP, personal income values and other criteria. The budget is confirmed by the General Assembly.

The top contributors to the UN budget are the following countries:
United States 22.0%
Japan 19.5%
Germany 9.8%
France 6.5%
United Kingdom 5.5%
Italy 5.1%
Canada 2.6%
Spain 2.5%
Brazil 2.4%
Mexico 2.3%
(The above numbers change every year. The top 5 countries remain the same.The most current assessment can be found here)

In other words: the current 192 members decide what to do with money contributed mostly by the above 10 members. But wait. It gets better. The percentages quoted above apply only to the UN budget, excluding peacekeeping missions and other organizations and activities. The number quoted by US supporters of the UN is a measly $516 million per year. The actual number is about $6.347 Billion as explained here and it makes the US contribution much higher than the theoretical 22%.

It seems that the United States (a rich country) is borrowing money from China (a poor country) to pay its UN assessments.

So what do we get for the billions we contribute?
Well, we have the veto power of our Security Council membership. But so do Russia and China each paying a fraction of what we do.

I'm not advocating the abandonment of the UN by the US. It won't happen any time soon and definitely not on President Obama's watch. I am advocating that Congress use its control of the purse to exert influence on the General Assembly and other UN bodies.

In 1989 the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) wanted its status upgraded from an observer to a member of the General Assembly. Both Israel and the US objected but it was clear that the Third World countries, who didn't mind welcoming a terrorist organization into the UN, would vote for the resolution in the General Assembly. The then US Secretary of State George Shultz declared that if the Assembly votes for the PLO's membership he will strongly recommend that President George H.W. Bush stops funding the UN. This threat, along with some additional diplomacy was enough to convince the majority to abandon the idea.

The same tactics could work now, probably better since the US pays more of the UN budget than in 1989.

Congress needs to pass a bill cutting off all payments to the UN if the General Assembly recognizes a unilateral bid by the Palestinians to establish a state. It should also cut off funding to UN organizations that act against our interests. One of these is the Committee for Human Rights that is composed of human rights violators like Iran, (Libya was recently expelled), Syria and their like but finds it necessary to perennially condemn Israeli and US human rights violations.

There is no reason for the US to support an international body that is corrupt, acts against us and our allies and supports terrorist states and entities. To wit: we couldn't push through the UN a meaningful sanctions regime against Iran to stop it's nuclear armaments program. The US would probably do much better in the absence of an international body like the UN by organizing its allies and threatening its foes to cooperate. The UN gave Iran's trading partners Russia and China as well as some Europeans a cover for obstructing any organized action and provided a focal point for a semi-organized opposition to any meaningful sanctions.

One of the root problems with the UN General Assembly is democracy. Not that majority rule is always wrong, but most times it turns into mob rule. This is what happened in the UN. If the United States has one vote as does North Korea or Syria the net result is rule by organized blocks: The Organization of Islamic Conference represents 56 countries and they always vote against Israel and in support of their members no matter what these members do. The Durban Human Rights Conference was, as an example, a festival of Antisemitism and pro terrorism. A number of countries, including the US, chose to withdraw from it but why should we fund these racist terrorist feasts?

The same rule applies to dictatorships, of which there many more than democracies. No resolution can be taken or enforced against even the worst of them, like North Korea or Iran, because the others will oppose and defeat such a resolution.

Democracies that have no restraint on the rule of the majority deteriorate and die fairly quickly. After all a lynch mob is the perfect embodiment of democracy and lynch mobs don't survive for very long. The reason modern democracies survive is that either they are not true democracies but actually representative Republics (like the United States) or have a representative Democratic rule (like Israel, Germany France and others). These mechanisms work only if they are build on top of an established culture of political freedom and tolerance.

The UN has neither a representative body nor a culture appropriate for maintaining a representative democracy. A great majority of its members are dictatorships of one sort or another. This is probably the reason why the democratic UN is becoming less and less relevant and why we should stop funding and supporting them