Sure, this is a good point:
[Nikki Haley] has made it clear that the U.N. needs America more than America needs the U.N. This is not just because the U.S. hosts the body's headquarters. It's because the U.S. remains the indispensable member of the organization. It contributes 23 percent of the U.N. annual budget. The U.S. provides nearly 30 percent of the budget to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA. That's the agency that runs Palestinian schools and medical facilities and has often turned a blind eye to the participation of outlaws like Hamas. The U.S. provides the logistics for moving troops and material for peace-keeping missions and disaster relief. There is no U.N. without the U.S.
The body is corrupt and often hostile to America. But it isn't worthless. Having a forum where foreign diplomats can publicly rail against America--or anybody--as a substitute for acting against America is very useful. Do not discount that.
And it does do useful things like occasionally backing American action and helping to gather coalitions of the willing on thankless peacekeeping missions that keep the number of military problems America has to focus on reduced to a dull roar.
For example, notwithstanding the wailing and rending of garments by pundits about how America alienated the world with the embassy to Israel decision, "the world" backed America on North Korea hours from our so-called outrage:
The U.N. Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Friday for its Nov. 29 intercontinental ballistic missile test, seeking to limit its access to refined petroleum products and crude oil and its earnings from workers abroad.
And when the UN opposes America? Well, it is so corrupt and hostile that it is easy to reject its authority and legitimacy. So win-win. (That's why I ultimately rejected a League of Democracies as an alternative to the UN--it would have actual moral weight to oppose our actions.)
And there are plenty of health, social, and scientific roles apart from the horrible political bodies that are worthy of support. It is the political bodies that are the worst.
If I was Lord of what to do about the UN, I'd support it but cut support for specific entities within the UN that don't support American policy and redirect the funds to bodies that do actual good for the people of the world. I'd certainly oppose efforts to increase UN authority as a sort of proto-global government. The EU is bad enough on that score regionally.
More importantly, I'd support building a UN complex outside of New York City. I assume selling that property for private development would raise a fortune that would go a long way toward building a massive UN village complete with a perimeter wall and a UN Town to live in if it was located somewhere in the Third World.
Put the UN General Assembly in Zaire, I say. Or Zimbabwe or Libya. Or maybe in Bengladesh.
Maybe if diplomats were in less glamorous surroundings where chronic double parking gets your car stolen the UN could get to work to do things that benefit people, starting with improving the location of the GA in some poor place that will see plenty of money coming in to build the new UN buildings.
Imagine the savings in counter-espionage spending alone for America!
The UN has value as annoying as it is to be on the receiving end of BS resolutions. Work the problem.
And part of working the problem should be shifting what the UN does and where it sits. Use our money better rather than cutting off the UN.
