THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VII, Issue # 96, April 27, 2005
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE UNITED NATIONS AT AGE SIXTY: WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT
By Daniel Mandel
REASONS FOR THE UNITED NATIONS' COLOSSAL FAILURE AS A COUNCIL OF NATIONS ESTABLISHED TO PREVENT THE WORST
EXCESSES OF INTERNATIONAL CONDUCT -- WHY BLAMING THE COLD WAR FOR STUNTING THE WORLD BODY ONLY CONFUSES
SYMPTOM WITH CAUSE
FULL STORY:
On April 26, 1945, diplomats convened in San Francisco, California, to establish the United Nations. Sixty years later, it has never
looked a bigger failure. Its founders would be amazed at the Frankenstein creation that now sits on Manhattan's East River.
The horrors of World War II had led statesmen from countries great and small to devise a council of nations to prevent the worst
excesses of international conduct. An admirable ideal, but it has not worked out that way.
Many blame the Cold War for stunting the world body, but that confuses symptom with cause. With the anniversary and the raging
debate about John Bolton's fitness to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, here are some reasons for the UN's delinquency:
THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC BODY.
Members of the General Assembly represent not people, but governments, many squalid dictatorships. In U.S. terms, imagine a
presidential ballot with every state represented by an equal number of electoral votes, and the voting in many states determined by
cliques of gangsters, not the people, and the fraud on constitutional democracy is obvious.
THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL IS SUBECT TO THE VETO POWER FIVE VERY DIFFERENT PERMANENT MEMBERS.
Undoubtedly, this prevents the UN from doing much that's wicked, but also most that's decent. The rare occasions on which the
UN came to anyone's rescue -- South Korea in 1950 and Kuwait in 1991 -- were made possible by a Soviet boycott (never repeated)
in one case and a rare abstention by China in the other.
BLOCKS OF NATIONS CONNIVE TO RENDER THE UNITED NATIONS IMPOTENT.
For example, no discussions are held, resolutions passed, or action taken on China's obliteration of life and culture in Tibet.
For another, France, Russia, and China were able, for self-interested reasons, to prevent the Security Council from enforcing its
own resolutions on Iraq, leading the U.S.A. and its allies to do so on their own.
A third example: the 56-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference effectively vetoes any definition of terrorism that does not
exempt the Palestinians.
LACK OF CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY & HUMAN RIGHTS GUARANTEES IS NO BARRIER TO UN MEMBERSHIP &
PARTICILATION.
Thus, the UN's Human Rights Commission has lately included six of the world's most politically repressive regimes (Cuba, Saudi
Arabia, Sudan, Libya, China, Vietnam), one of which (Libya) recently presided over the Commission. The committee overseeing
women's rights was recently headed by Iran, a country known for socalled "honor-killings" of wives and daughters. And while
Saddam Hussein ruled in Baghdad, the Committee on Disarmament was presided over by Iraq.
And fatal structural flaws have rendered the UN ineffective and corrupt. Thus, the oil-for-food scandal, whereby providing
humanitarian aid for Iraq degenerated into a network of graft that enriched Saddam Hussein and a host of middlemen, including
UN officials. In the tsunami disaster, it was the U.S. and Australian navies that swiftly deployed forces to assist the millions of
survivors. The best the UN could dispatch in that time were a group of concerned bureaucrats.
U.N. peace-keeping operations have also been conspicuously ineffective. Thus, the disarming of Muslims in Srebrenica, leading
to their slaughter and expulsion, while their authorized protectors stood by. Or the enforced passivity of UN forces at the vital
moment in Rwanda, permitting the massacre of up to 800,000 Hutus, for which failure responsibility lies credibly at the door of the
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
A satirist could scarcely conceive so perverse a record. Embroiled in multiple crises (UN personnel raping women and minors in
African countries is another), Annan has made a beeline for the drawing board and returned with a package of proposed reforms --
a new panel to critically assess UN performance, new procedures for staff misdemeanors, etc. Less-well publicized is the fact that
these ideas and others are a rehash of measures already proposed and supposedly implemented by Annan years ago.
In short, there is little to celebrate sixty years on, and even less reason to expect positive change. The U.S.A., which provides a
quarter of the UN budget, should consider new ways to spend taxpayer money, holding the UN to performance standards before
disbursing funds, backing a new caucus of constitutional democratic nations and reallocating funds to external initiatives that do
some good, to name a few.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The United Nations & Its Agencies
Daniel Mandel is Associate Director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia and author of H.V. Evatt and the Establishment of
Israel: The Undercover Zionist (London: Routledge, 2004).
The foregoing article by Daniel Mandel was originally published in the Philadelphia Daily News, April 26, 2005, and can be
found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
April 26, 2005
Return to Top of Page
Go to the WEBSITE INDEX
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Public Issues & Political Controversies
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
Most Recent Articles
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Volume VII, 2005
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Subject Matter Highlights
Return to POLITICAL EDUCATION Homepage
CONTACT & ACCESS INFORMATION
This is not a commercial website. The sole purpose of the website is to share with interested persons information regarding civics,
civic and social education, political science, government, politics, law, constitutional law and history, public policy, and political
philosophy and history, as well as current and recent political developments, public issues, and political controversies.
POLITICAL EDUCATION, CONSERVATIVE ANALYSIS
POLITICS, SOCIETY, & THE SOVEREIGN STATE
Website of Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr.
Government, Politics, Public Policy, Legal Issues, Constitutional Law, Government & the Economy, Cultural Values, Foreign Affairs,
International Relations, Military Defense & National Security, Geopolitics, Terrorism & Homeland Security, American National Interests,
Political Systems & Processes, Political Institutions, Political Ideologies, & Political Philosophy
INDEX FOR THE ENTIRE WEBSITE
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic,
Cultural, Military, International, Strategic, & Geopolitical Issues