The United Nations Organization

By Bruce Herschensohn

Imagine that you and your family move to a new home in a neighborhood of 190 other residences. As you carry in some of your possessions, you are welcomed outside your front door by the Chairman of the Neighborhood Community Services Organization. He extends his hand and introduces himself. "Welcome! We have 190 members in our Neighborhood Community Services and we would like to have you in our organization as our 191^st member! We had a meeting yesterday and all of your neighbors would like you to join."

"How nice. Is it a kind of Homeowner’s Association?" you ask.

"You could say that."

"I’m sure that would be fine," you nod. "It sounds good."

The chairman smiles. "It is good. And because you have such a nice home — really the nicest in the neighborhood — our members expect you to pay 22% of our budget."

There would be some silence, and then your response: "You have 190 members and I would have to pay 22%?"

"Your home shows that you can afford it."

"Isn’t that a little on the high side? After all, I worked for what I have."

"Of course you did. That‘s wonderful. Maybe you could be a good influence on your neighbors — if you know what I mean." And he laughs.

"I don’t know anything about my neighbors. You’re the first one I’ve met. Tell me a little about them."

The chairman nods. "Our members are diverse. You’ll like them. Oh, sure, we have some who may give you some difficulties. You see, some of them are murderers, kidnappers, rapists, hostage-takers and slave-masters. But not all of them!"

You have yet to sign up. Would you join? Would you want to be in a club with those members? Would you want to regularly sit next to those guys?

Whether you know it or not, we all regularly sit next to those guys. It isn’t called the Neighborhood Community Services Organization. It’s called the United Nations Organization.

It was in the middle of the 1970s that the late Daniel Moynihan entered and exited as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Upon his leaving he gave three definitions of that organization: "A theater of the absurd, a decomposing corpse, and an insane asylum." Then, giving his remarks support, he quoted a leading British journalist of the time who said that the U.N. was among "the most corrupt and corrupting creations in the whole history of human institutions."

In the 1980s, another U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick said, "Rather frequently, what goes on in the U.N. actually exacerbates conflicts rather than tending to resolve them."

Those were the days when the U.N. debated the threat posed not by 14 concurrent Soviet proxy wars, and not by Fidel Castro's 40,000 troops on the African Continent, but by U.S. forces in the U.S. Virgin Islands since 14 U.S. Coast Guardsmen were stationed there.

Even the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), financed in large part by U.S. purchasers of UNICEF's Christmas Cards, had sent millions of dollars in aid to North Vietnam during the last year of its war against South Vietnam. UNICEF's spokesman said, "UNICEF has no way to make sure the supplies got to the children. They were dropped off at the airports and docks and we assume they were used as we intended." But what UNICEF had dropped off at the airports and docks were not crayolas, dolls, and lollipops. They dropped off trucks, bulldozers, and heavy construction material.

That fit a pattern of the United Nations Organization throughout the Cold War years.

But time has passed, and the Soviet Union is gone, its empire has been dismembered, and the Cold War was won, no thanks to the U.N. that supported what the organization called Wars of National Liberation.

During the last full year before the Berlin Wall came down, the U.N. was the last to give up. That was when the majority of the General Assembly voted with the Soviet Union 95.16% of the time. On economic development and international regulation questions, the ratio was even more pronounced. It isn’t that the United States was completely disregarded: after all, the positions of the United States were embraced 2.71% of the time, while the positions of the Soviet Union were supported 96.62% of the time.

Perhaps the U.N. should have been buried with the Soviet Union but it survived, looking in new directions. The military expansion of the U.N. increased from its 1990 level of 11,550 troops under its command to 80,000 troops two years later.

What were called "peacekeeping operations," which cost $230 million in 1988, were raised to $3.6 billion by 1994. The difficulty, of course, was that peace was not kept despite the increasing funds.

When the horror of genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia became evident, the U.N. looked the other way. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali warned the United States that under existing Security Council resolutions only he had the power to launch air strikes against the Serbian aggressors fighting Bosnians, and the United States would be in violation of the U.N. Charter if the U.S. acted on its own.

Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali made a plea in his book, "Agenda for Peace," that it’s the task of leaders of states to understand that the time of absolute and exclusive sovereignty had passed.

From 1990 to 1998, the U.N.’s staff grew from 23,000 to 53,000. (There were also $4.1 million owed in New York City parking tickets.) In 1995, the U.N. sponsored over 7,000 conferences in Geneva alone while the quest as articulated by its Secretary General was "empowerment" with a U.N. standing army and the ability to collect direct taxes. That quest did not stop when Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s term of office was done, but continues to this day while Kofi Annan occupies the office of Secretary General.

Under Kofi Annan’s leadership, the U.N. had its Millennium Summit in the year 2000 with the attendance of 152 World Leaders, which is the largest gathering of world leaders ever held. Its stated purpose was "to make the 21st Century free of war, poverty, ignorance, and disease." Notice no mention of making the 21^st Century free of oppression, totalitarianism, dependence, persecution, and dictatorships.

The next year, 2001, the United States was kicked out of the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

Being ejected from the U.N. Human Rights Commission was thought by some in the United States to be an outrage. But it should have been thought of as a blessing. Admittedly, expulsion from the U.N. Human Rights Commission is not the highest honor a nation can receive: the highest honor would be expulsion from the entire U.N. Organization. That has only been achieved by the Republic of China on Taiwan in 1971 when it was expelled to make room for the membership of the non-democratic human rights violators of the People’s Republic of China. Maybe some day we, too, can have the privilege that was accorded Taiwan.

Then came September the 11^th of 2001.

Statements of condolences were extended to the United States by the United Nations Organization, but nothing had changed. When it came to fighting Al Qaeda and its hosts, the Taliban Government of Afghanistan, and when it came to fighting Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the second battlefield of the War Against Terrorism, the U.N. was less than impotent. It became an impediment to the United States and even ignored its own previously passed resolutions that had warned Iraq. When it counted, the U.N. insured its resolutions were toothless.

As the United States put together a coalition of nations willing to fight against Saddam Hussein’s government independent of the U.N., the U.N. continued its Oil for Food program for Iraq that began in 1995. Through the years, the perception of the United States and most of the world was that the program was worthwhile. It allowed Iraq to sell a limited amount of oil in order to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods for the people of Iraq. What was not known by the United States until this year, 2004, was that some estimated $10.1 billion was used for Saddam Hussein‘s own purposes. The General Accounting Office of the United States charged that evidence shows that Saddam Hussein’s government levied surcharges against oil purchasers, including commissions of 5 to 10 percent against the suppliers of humanitarian aid. All of this indicates the U.N. was not the best overseer of funds to members of that organization.

The U.N. Charter starts with a bit of plagiarism from the United States Constitution. Instead of "We the people of the United States," it reads, "We the peoples of the United Nations." If they meant it, it would have been to the credit of the organization, but the United Nations Organization has nothing to do with "we the peoples," but rather "we the governments, whether or not the governments are chosen by the people of the nations."

The prime purpose of the U.N. has been itemized in Article One of its Charter: "To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace."

That prime purpose is part of the problem. The accent is on peace, rather than on liberty. But peace without liberty is surrender. With a substitution of the word "liberty" for "peace" the organization might have had real worth: "To maintain international liberty and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the people's liberties, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the people's liberties, and to bring about, in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of liberty, which is this organization's highest aspiration." But the word "liberty" was not used. The lack of that word served as an invitation to totalitarian governments. To this day there are over 70 governments represented in the U.N. that do not believe in liberty.

This coming October, the United Nations Organization will celebrate its 59th birthday. One year after its founding, its first Secretary General, Trigvie Lie, praised that organization as "a fire-station ready with a hose on the world-stage."

At the time, he didn't know that the fire station would be controlled by arsonists and financed by the residents who lived in the best house in the neighborhood.

Bruce Herschensohn teaches public policy at Pepperdine University and is a member of the Center for Individual Freedom's Board of Directors.

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