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.
