This year’s United Nations General Assembly in New York City has refocused attention on the chronic and lamentable fact that the international body is sclerotic, corrupt, and almost useless.
A Wall Street Journal headline, “World Leaders Nearly All Agree That United Nations is Failing,” put the matter straightforwardly. But those leaders’ complaints referred narrowly to the U.N.’s inability to prevent wars, its raison d’être, and the U.N. structure which allows the United States, China, Russia, Britain, and France to veto any initiative. Its failures are much greater than that, for example, as President Donald Trump pointed out, in being ostensibly dedicated to preserving diverse cultures yet aiding mass illegal migration.
The economic power and authority of Britain, France, and Russia have declined irretrievably since the U.N. was founded in 1945, and it’s reasonable to ask 81 years later why 193 member-nations should still be required to live by decisions from the unserious Prime Minister Andy Burnham or stuffed-shirt President Emmanuel Macron, let alone the tyrant Vladimir Putin.
“The Security Council must absolutely be reformed in accordance with the principle that the world is bigger than five,” said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But giving more say to him — a power-hungry supporter of Middle Eastern jihad — or any of the many other windy and hypocritical despots pontificating on the East River, would hasten the U.N.’s collapse into irrelevance.
Argentine President Javier Milei got to the core problem when he tore into the U.N. by saying, the General Assembly “has become a useless organization, serving only to feed a caste of fatally arrogant parasites disguised as well-intentioned bureaucrats” who allow “chaos, violence, and international terrorism” to flourish.
Milei is right, and as if to prove him so, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres spoke with characteristically sly dishonesty from the podium, saying Israel’s defensive war against Hamas produced a “scale of killing and destruction in Gaza unlike anything I’ve witnessed in my years as Secretary General.” The weasel couching allows him casuistically to ignore far greater numbers killed in Syria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen, and Ukraine during his term, by saying he referred to “killing and destruction” so it’s really a matter of opinion.” Like so many others, he implies that buildings lying in rubble are evidence of genocide, when in fact they are evidence of terroristist hiding among civilians.
For a few years after the U.N.’s founding, the General Assembly was useful because its members could be relied upon to support the U.S. in its quest for a stable, rules-based international order, and was thus a counterweight to recalcitrant members of the Security Council, especially those of the communist international led by Moscow. But by the 1960s, the General Assembly had become a conclave of cutthroats, which is what it has remained ever since.
The problem with asking the germane question of whether the U.N. is worth keeping, or if the U.S. should keep paying $760 million a year, 26% of the $3.45 billion budget, is that there is a good answer: “Well, it’s the only U.N. we have.”
MILITARY FORCE? DEMOCRATS LOVE IT IF IT’S AIMED AT TRUMP
If the world didn’t have the U.N., it would be necessary to set one up. It is necessary to have an international forum to try to resolve crises. The U.N. is not good at doing that. It certainly needs massive reform, but without handing more authority to the world’s bad guys.
It’s a conundrum.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
