American Conservative Union Foundation

Unraveled UN?
By Larry L. Eastland

Nothing deflates ego like repudiation. Just ask Kofi & Co. The re-election of George W. Bush produced first shock, and then fear among the elitists at the United Nations. Fear of accountability. Fear of lost jobs. Fear of lost prestige and perks. Fear of retribution. Fear of irrelevancy.

The United Nations has unraveled. It has foundered on its own inflated sense of self-importance and arrogance. It has forgotten its predecessor, The League of Nations, and is sliding toward the same fate: irrelevancy and eventual dissolution. Always known as the elites' debating society, the UN has proven ineffective in even meaning, let alone enforcing, its own resolutions. Worse, its duplicity has been beamed into the homes and consciousness of the American public, without whose support the United Nations is doomed. Far from bringing down the pre-eminence of the United States of America in the world, it is bringing down itself.

The United Nations has become more than a functionary body for the member nations, it now is recognized as a full-fledged, separate international interest group with its own with agendas, interests, alliances and financial resources. Its permanent bureaucracy -- churning out thousands of reports – has become just like any other interest group. And, just like any other interest group, its primary mission is to perpetuate its own existence, and to insure its bureaucrats' permanent employment. Let's face it: for most of the employees, life as an international diplomat in New York beats being a functionary in Namibia or Bangladesh.

U.S. resolve, demonstrated by the 2004 General Election, has changed all that. Of all the international questions facing the U.S. leadership in the next four years, what to do about U.S. participation in the United Nations is one of the most visible. The decision by the leadership of the UN to insert itself into the U.S. Presidential Election of 2004, coupled with the blatant corruption and cover-up of the so-called Oil for Food Program, has cost the United Nations its moral authority in the eyes of the American public. And, if that is not enough the reprehensible situation uncovered in the Congo is.

If, in the words of the Harvard scholar Richard Neusadt in his seminal work Presidential Power half a century ago, "presidential power is the power to persuade," this applies doubly to the officials of the United Nations whose only power is the power to persuade. Three specific conscious actions by UN officials may have irreversibly damaged any ability on their part to persuade.

The Secretary General, Mr. Kofi Annan, publicly rebuked the USA. In an interview with the BBC on September 16, 2004, it was reported that "The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the BBC the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter. He said the decision to take action in Iraq should have been made by the Security Council, not unilaterally." Not only is this outrageous for someone whose amnesia about murder extends to terrorist states across the globe, but further it insults the only world power in history without imperial ambitions. This, strategically said during the closing weeks of the 2004 Presidential campaign, is something unthinkable just a few years ago. As correctly noted by Randy Scheunemann (a former advisor to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) in the same article "it is outrageous for the Secretary-General, who ultimately works for the member states, to try and supplant his judgment for the judgment of the member states." He followed this up by adding "to do this 51 days before an American election reeks of political interference." Then, just a few days later, Mr. Annan has followed this up by "warning Mr. Allawi, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair that an offensive on Fallujah will alienate Iraqis . . . . ‘The threat or actual use of force not only risks deepening the sense of alienation of certain communities, but would also reinforce perceptions among the Iraqi population of a continued military occupation,' Mr. Annan wrote in the letter to the leaders."
Another UN functionary – they're all functionaries for hire, after all -- Mohammed ElBaradi of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN body, apparently conspired to turn the election against the President in the last few days by leaking or allowing to be leaked a document of dubious authenticity regarding alleged missing explosives in Iraq, to be used by the New York Times and CBS News as an "October Surprise" against the President.
The corruption in the ranks of UN officials may have surprised many casual observers of United Nations, but it doesn't surprise those who have watched the Iraqi "Oil for Food Program" (better named "The Oil for Spoil Program") squirm under the light of American media – even as they claimed privilege over the very records that would establish just who is innocent and who is guilty. That money, apparently a private slush fund for the well-connected, is still being shielded from public accountability.

The debate about what the United States should do about the United Nations goes beyond the question of whether the U.S. ought to pursue bilateral relationships or multilateral relationships, although this deserves serious discussion. And, it goes beyond the question of whether the UN ought to be moved off U.S. territory to Europe where such an organization naturally belongs. ("Go where you are wanted.") Every one of these questions is an appropriate topic for serious investigation. But, today we must ask ourselves:

What does the UN do that benefits the U.S.?
Why should we be in the UN?
Why do we pay the largest share of the UN bills?
Has the UN ever made -- in the last decade -- a major, substantive decision that benefited the U.S.? A decision that really mattered?
How can we support a body that puts Libya, Cuba and other countries whose human rights and religious freedom policies are reprehensible, on the UN Human Rights Commission, and turns the U.S. out?

Fundamentally, the old American adage of ‘if it ain't broke, don't fix it" has to be turned around in this case to ask: what if it is broke? Can or should it be fixed?

U.S. View of Itself and the UN
Because of years of the United Nations' thumbing its collective nose at the United States, Americans finally have grown weary of the UN. We simply do not take it seriously anymore. From unpaid parking tickets to crimes gone unpunished under cover of diplomatic immunity, Americans are tired of a body that talks, spends and does nothing. As noted in Gallup Polls over the past three years, Americans have resigned themselves to the failure of the United Nations to solve anything. On job performance (Table 1) the UN gets an "F" on its report card, declining from 54 percent to 36 percent "good job" – a very consistent decline of about 25 percent in just three years.

It should be obvious that the breaking point for Americans was the same month (March 2003) as the member nations of the UN abandoned any pretense of meaning what its resolutions said over the past decade about Iraq compliance, and their refusal to support any action at all to enforce its high sounding directives with concrete action. In that month U.S. support dropped from an average of 51.25 percent support to an average of 36.6 percent support. No longer is it viewed as a sacred, selfless institution. It has become an interest group like any other whose job performance positive rating – already hovering at 50 percent -- has dropped by a quarter, and whose negative ratings have gone up even faster.

Table 2 U.S. View of the UN and Terrorism
And, on terrorism, the most important international issue of the past decade – and probably the next decade -- Americans have an even worse opinion of the United Nations (Table 2). In a recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, barely one quarter of Americans agreed that the United Nations is an effective partner with the USA – and with good cause. International bodies do not fight terrorism by passing resolution after resolution condemning one nation protecting itself (Israel) against terrorist attacks, while championing the rights of its enemies in the face of wave after wave of homicide murder. Nor do they fight terrorism by running away when it becomes threatening as they did in Baghdad. Some people would call that cowardly.

More telling, however, is that two thirds of Americans believe the United Nations is not an effective partner in fighting the war against terrorism. This view of the UN abdicating one of its most basic responsibilities is reinforced by the UN's total ignoring of the wretched, state-sponsored terrorism going on in countries from Zimbabwe to Burma. Americans are hurt and frustrated by what they see as the UN condemning America for taking the lead on the one hand, and the member nations' glee at the painful cost on the other.

Table 3 U.S. Values and the UN
Most importantly, Americans see the values of the nations of the world, reflected in the United Nations, as directly at odds with those of the U.S. Beginning with the President of the United States, we believe we're right. It is a fundamental tenet of the American creed that one of the responsibilities of WE THE PEOPLE is to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity." We believe (64%) American society is fair (Table 3), and that the world would be better (62%) if the nations of the world were more like America. And, not only are these values honored in our veneration of "America's Greatest Generation," there is nothing in the history or current policies of the Old World powers of continental Europe that suggests they have anything positive to teach us about freedom, respect for individual rights, integrity, loyalty to friends and allies, or moral courage.

Table 4 Equally compelling, Americans do not believe that the United Nations (i.e., the nations of the world) reflects the values of the average American (Table 4). Perhaps, that's because they don't. It seems strange and frustrating to the average American (who sees the United States as having freed Europe and much of Asia with the blood of America's finest in World War II, kept the southern Korean peninsula free, stood by Taiwan through the growth of democratic institutions, freely supported democracies in South America, and almost single-handedly won the Cold War) that we should find ourselves and our values so despised across the globe. Americans are hurt and angered by the failures, duplicity and deceit of the United Nations and the leading countries who stride through its halls.

Table 5 The result is further alienation from the community of nations, particularly the Coalition of the Unwilling, whose hidden sins are being exposed by the very documents in Iraq that were designed to keep the world from seeing the underworld of greed that lay beneath the public facade of sanctimonious pronouncements emanating from the capitals of the Continent. These are the real values that Americans see in the United Nations, and we reject them.

Finally, Americans see the UN as decidedly anti-American (Table 5). Not even one third of Americans are convinced that the UN (read: ‘nations of the world') is Pro-American. This is even more fundamental than American values; this is about Americans as a people, as a culture, as a society. It is a view that sees the world as hostile to us, and a view that will react to the world's never ending requests for U.S. dollars, medical advances, technology, educational opportunities, aid and – whenever danger threatens them – the military and nuclear umbrella that protects them.

Table 6 Integrity vs. Self-interest
Unfortunately for the United Nations, it also has given away its most important asset: moral authority. Without moral authority, something seldom recovered once lost, it has become irrelevant as a stage on which the great powers resolve great issues. A charge of corruption, particularly when the evidence supporting that charge is unmistakable, can never be overcome. It is like a neutron bomb; it destroys the institution while leaving the functionaries standing.

The Oil for Food Program, known from the very beginning as a failure, was finally exposed (to the embarrassment of the UN elites) as a fraud, and filled with inside deals for those connected and/or related to those who were supposed to be protecting it. It is the old question of who will guard the guards: only the U.S. discovery of the documents in Baghdad uncovered the stench of rotten transactions with the UN and member countries alike.

Table 7 Nearly one half of American adults – an unbelievably large number – are aware of the issue (Table 6). Nor has any issue so tarnished the UN like this issue. Allegations of payoffs reach right into the Secretariat. It looks like an internationalized version of the Friends and Family Program right up to the top. The denials on American television news by flustered, previously anonymous bureaucrats as they hurry from locked entrances in secure buildings in New York to their chauffeur-driven limousines waiting in NO PARKING zones are ludicrous. The old KGB would have shot them just for looking guilty.

And, of that almost half of American adults who are following this issue, an overwhelming 88 percent believe the charges (Table 7). Perhaps, because they are true. Conversely, no one (2%) finds the charges "not at all believable." Under old Jewish law, if a court found someone guilty by unanimous vote, the individual was let off under the belief that no one was that bad, or that the verdict must have been fixed. What was fixed here was the Oil for Food Program, not the American verdict. And, it continues unabated today, right up to the insider contracts, and the UN use of the funds for its owns kitty.

Table 8 But, this apparently extends beyond the organization of the UN to the leading member states. It does seem odd that they, who "protesteth too much" about U.S. actions in Iraq, should also be those whose names keep appearing as parties to the conspiracy to oil the skids (so to speak) on the story, and are unindicted co-conspirators with greasy palms that benefited to the tune of billions of dollars at the expense of the Iraqi people under Saddam. The dirty little secret is that they are guilty, in their own minds, only of getting caught. For them it is business as usual, and Americans ought to stay out of it.

Nor do we believe the UN will actually make the documents available to investigators, even though we believe they should (Table 8). For all the charges of corruption and dirty dealings by U.S. politicians, the truth is that of whatever political persuasion, most American politicians are men and women of integrity (ever if misguided.) We also fundamentally believe that when corruption is discovered, sunshine and justice should prevail. We ought to get to take a look at it in the light of day, and justice ought to be meted out accordingly. ‘No one is above the law.'

In this case, however, there is more to it:

We pay the UN's bills, or at least the largest portion of them.
It is taking place on U.S. soil.
The U.S., in this case, is the only honest broker.
Therefore, it is our duty to expose it and clean it up. The question of whether we have the will or not, is a very different one.

Table 9 The U.S. Divides Over the UN
Probably more sharply than any other global issue outside the war itself (differences laid bare by the just completed Presidential election), an international fault line between American political parties divides over the UN. The century-old push and pull of America's vision of its future, and its different dreams of what it can be, can be seen through the eyes of its political parties about conduct of U.S. foreign policy: it's Manifest Destiny vs. No Entangling Alliances – except 21st Century style (Table 9).

Democrats, ever the internationalists, seem to think (unbelievably) that America needs the approval of the French to do anything. The French: as if those elitist, imperialist-minded, anti-Semitic, old world, soon to be economically irrelevant narcissists, have anything to teach us.
Republicans, ever the isolationists, face the challenge of an America that alone seems to still believe that the fire of freedom burns in the breast of the peoples of the world, and that only we and a few of our friends, the Coalition of the Willing, have the courage to act upon it.

Conclusion
The American adults, voters and taxpayers have lost faith in the United Nations as an institution. They do not see it as serving the United States' interests, ideals, values or security. They are tired of paying for the privilege of being snubbed and insulted.

In fact, it may be that the remarkable cooperation we are getting from the UN since the U.S. election (Iraq election, Lebanon, Syria, etc.) can be traced directly to the recognition by Kofi & Co. that their very existence as a body is at stake, and that this President has his hand on the sledgehammer. Amazing where all the messages of the American public's reaffirmation of the President have landed.

This is not about Iraq. It is far more fundamental than that. It's about U.S. leadership in the world. About the UN and the EU finding their place inside their diminished importance to world affairs. It's about the nations across the globe, who depend on the U.S. for their very survival, deciding their future. And, it's about whether the hypocrisy displayed by the UN and many of its leading members will be able to coexist with an America that is determined to act like a great power with a great vision of the future, not a relativist nation seeking appeasement with all the Axes of Evil who happen to scare the faint of heart.

Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power , John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1960, Chapter 3.

BBC News , Iraq War Illegal, Annan Says , September 16, 2004.

Rowan Scarborough, “Fallujah Pounded Ahead of Assault,” Washington Times , November 6 2004.

ABC News, IAEA Says Tons of Iraq Explosives Missing , from The Associated Press, VIENNA , Austria Oct 25, 2004.

The Gallup Poll. Feb. 9-12, 2004. N=1,002 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

Following are results from FOX News/Opinion Dynamics polling on the United Nations: from a poll conducted August 24-25, 2004; 1000 registered voters; margin of error is ± 3 percent.

The telephone survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports April 25-26, 2004. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is +/- 3 percentage points, with a 95% level of confidence.

Following are results from FOX News/Opinion Dynamics polling on the United Nations: from a poll conducted August 24-25, 2004; 1000 registered voters; margin of error is ± 3 percent.

Following are results from FOX News/Opinion Dynamics polling on the United Nations and the U.N. Oil-for-Food program. From a poll conducted Sept. 7-8; 1,000 likely voters; margin of error is ± 3 percent.

Following are results from FOX News/Opinion Dynamics polling on the United Nations: from a poll conducted May 4-5, 2004; 900 registered voters; margin of error is ± 3 percent.

Following are results from FOX News/Opinion Dynamics polling on the United Nations: from a poll conducted May 4-5, 2004; 900 registered voters; margin of error is ± 3 percent, unless otherwise noted. (If heard of charges: n=401, ±5%)

Glenn Kessler, Party Split on Policy Widens , washingtonpost.com (Sept.8, 2004). The poll was sponsored by the German Marshall Fund. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/admin/emailfriend?contentId=A6640-2004Sep8&sent=no&referrer=emailarticle .

Email the Editor