[September 24, 2016] Driving through New York City yesterday I saw numerous warnings about driving into Manhattan because of traffic congestion created by the United Nations General Assembly meetings; another typical day for a New Yorker. Yet, with the heightened visibility of those meetings we get another flurry of those who predict the end of the UN’s usefulness and those who believe it’s not worth the cost.
Ten years ago my graduate thesis for the U.S. Army War College had the same title: The United Nations: Is It Worth the Cost? At the time, I thought I’d made a cogent argument that it was NOT worth the cost in money spent. The senior Flag officer who evaluated my paper gave me an acceptable passing grade but disagreed with my argument. Last year I wrote a short blog with a similar idea; that the UN has strayed from its original mission and has an unfortunate history of weak leadership, bureaucratic bumbling, and is infested with special interest groups.1
UN Secretary-General candidate Vuk Jeremic recently spoke about the institution’s rampant corruption, incompetence, and bureaucratic inertia.2 He was being kind compared to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who, during his speech at the UN, called the international body “a disgrace” and “a moral farce.” He also called the UN Human Rights Council a “joke” and UNESCO a “circus.”3 Both comments coming from men who have vast experience with the UN.
Others have a different view. U.S. President Barak Obama recently praised the UN especially for preventing “a third world war.”4 Measured by the standard of its original mission, Obama is correct. Yet the UN long ago supplanted its prevention of world war with more current issues like promoting human rights, fostering social and economic development, preventing climate change, etc. In that respect, we can say that the UN has failed and spent unimaginable sums of wealth doing just that.
The consensus is that the United Nations is no longer worth the costs paid by nations of the world. On the one hand, that does not mean it should be eliminated, however, because there is no other world organization that has its global reach. On the other hand, it is plain to see that major reforms – which everyone admits are needed – will not be undertaken anytime soon.
The UN will continue to muddle along doing what it does best … nothing worthwhile. Until strong leadership from within and from the outside in its major supporting countries in the West, the UN will remain not worth the cost.
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- https://www.theleadermaker.com/the-united-nations-is-born/
- http://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-journal-the-end-of-the-united-nations/B1D723D4-2AE2-4801-BA66-718A8D66FA84.html
- http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Benjamin-Netanyahu/Netanyahu-We-wont-accept-any-attempt-by-UN-to-dictate-terms-to-Israel-468464
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/28/remarks-president-obama-united-nations-general-assembly
Nope