Policy Spotlight: The United Nations

Following the Obama administration’s recent colluding to ensure an anti-Israel resolution passed the U.N. Security Council unanimously, all the old complaints from the Right about the United Nations began bubbling up once again. They should by now be familiar—systemic anti-Israel and anti-American bias within the membership and leadership; the amount of dues paid by the United States every year, with little to show for it; the joke that is the U.N. Human Rights Council, which counts such noted defenders of liberty as Cuba, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia as members; and the framework for international law and government that U.N. leadership seems insistent on setting up, at the expense of national sovereignty.

The question must be asked, and indeed has been asked with increasing frequency: What, exactly, does America gain by continuing its affiliation with the U.N.? Would it be a better use of both taxpayer money and national influence to simply withdraw entirely, and simply let the rest of the nations introduce an increasing number of useless resolutions?

It’s a valid point. But even though withdrawing from the U.N. entirely would feel good in the short term, in the longer run it would only harm American interests. We would lose the ability to exert any meaningful influence over the international community. For instance, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham recently introduced a bill to bar federal funding of the U.N. until the anti-Israel Security Council resolution is revoked—no small threat, as the U.S. currently provides over 20% of the overall U.N. budget, the largest single contribution by far. If we withdrew from the organization we would no longer have any leverage to stop or reverse bad decisions.

Plus, the U.S. has veto power over any Security Council resolution. It depends on a brave American representative and administration to exert it, and there’s no doubt that with Nikki Haley as U.N. ambassador, things will be much different in New York than they have been over the past eight years.

Or take another example—the effort by Iran, several years ago, to name as it’s U.N. envoy a former member of the Iranian radical group that sparked the Tehran hostage crisis in 1979. Ted Cruz sponsored a bill that put a stop to the effort, but if America were to withdraw from the U.N., the group could well decide to relocate from New York, rendering future legislative remedies to similar issues impossible.

The U.N. is a flawed organization, no doubt about it—seriously flawed. But a total withdrawal would only make it worse.