A Speech On the United Nations

Note: Speech given in November 2011

To classify the actions of the UN as fatally flawed would suddenly render those words airy and meaningless. Hopefully, most of us are already aware of the headline corruption of the UN, from Oil-for-Food to rampant abuse in the Congo, the coddling of rogue regimes to its shameless human rights laurels to despots.  This goes beyond the talking points.

We cannot simply shake our heads at the UN’s obvious faults, nor dismiss its transgressions as non-indicative of the body as a whole. As serious as these charges may be, these shortcomings of the UN are not outliers: They are an outgrowth of its total institutional failure.

Leaving the United Nations is not a legitimate course for the United States to take. What is imperative for the US role in the United Nations is a proactive, multifaceted policy of reform necessitated by the many failings of the UN.

The UN has long served as a haven for authoritarian regimes to shelter themselves from accusations of human rights abuses. It is devoid of any qualifications for its members, which has allowed for countries with deplorable records on human rights, such as Libya and Iran, to join the Council without but the meekest protest.

While the UN Charter has a strong focus on civil and political rights as barometers of freedom, the UN today would rather bide its time creating new rights, new norms, and new demands for a global governance structure to deal with the contrived new assault on rights. The continued promotion of economic, social, cultural rights over the most basic of political and economic freedoms creates a crude moral equivalence, where the right to leisure time is now equitable to the rights of life, liberty, and property. In this lack of hierarchy, both Ireland and Iran have equally imperfect records. It fails to grasp the uncontested connection between political freedom and human rights, preferring instead to pay lip service to new rights that do not jeopardize authoritarianism.

One need only ask the Kashmiris, the Cypriots, the Kurds, or dozens of others to show its complete failure in conflict resolution. Ironically, the UN often incentivizes conflict by providing an excuse to continue disengagement, as that would then mandate more UN funds.

With these failures in mind, the US must present bold, stark reforms to the UN that preserve American interest and investment. The US must strongly encourage the UN to move to a system of voluntary funding. By assessment, the US foots a quarter of both the GA and peacekeeping budgets, and helplessly watches while its investments are mismanaged and abused. Since the UN budget can be ratified by a 2/3 vote, the 128 countries that pay less than 1% of the UN bill can as a bloc decide 99% of its budget.

Voluntary contributions would create a powerful market incentive for programs to achieve their goals and keep their budgets. After all, a bureaucracy that does not pinch the purse of its members is not easily removed. Many UN-affiliated groups, like the UN Joint Program on HIV/AIDS already implement this system.

The US should both seek strong levels of reform in the HRC as well as consider the creation of an alternative human rights body. Without any requirement from its members, the HRC will continue to be a hypocritical and ineffective organization.  The alternative group would break the false monopoly of the UN as a propagator of human rights by actually having standards for membership, including a proven track record of human rights.

The US should consider using its large contribution as a bargaining chip in seeking these reforms. Bipartisan, rational attempts at this in the past have been successful in attaining some successes, and should be vigorously pursued.

The overarching failures of the UN call for the US to play a role in which it seeks stringent and meaningful reform while retaining its commitment to the UN as a treaty body, not an organ of global governance.