With Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine in less than a decade, several countries took to the U.N. Security Council to decry Russia’s actions. The Security Council will come back with nothing. That’s because the United Nations is a joke that rewards authoritarian regimes in the service of delusional, out-of-date ideals about global cooperation.
Security Council members trashed Russia on Monday during the emergency meeting called at the request of Ukraine, but that’s all the Security Council is good for. Russia may be waging aggressive war, an international crime that resulted in death sentences for many of those involved in starting World War II, but Russia also holds an automatic veto over anything the Security Council could propose. Russia even holds the presidency of the council all this month!
It’s a perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with the U.N. Russia, as one of the great world powers on the winning side of WWII, is a permanent member of the Security Council with a veto-vote. The same is true for China, a genocidal power that will assume the rotating presidency of the council in August. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the KGB officer-turned-thug dictator, may be assassinating private citizens on foreign soil, and the Chinese Communist Party may be attempting to eradicate a minority ethnicity and culture within its own borders, but each gets a final say on this matter.
How can the U.N. claim to “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person” and promote living “together in peace with one another as good neighbors” while two expansionist regimes with horrible human rights records receive veto power over the council that “has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security”?
Aside from the joke of the Security Council, the U.N. Human Rights Council is filled with despicable regimes that relish abusing human rights, including China, Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela. The U.N. high commissioner for human rights is more concerned about American police in Portland than China’s genocide against the Uyghurs. The World Health Organization allowed China to formulate its health guidance on COVID, which, partly as a result, has killed over 5.9 million people globally.
The U.N. is a useless, bloated, and expensive bureaucracy that lets the world’s worst governments sit on its most important councils and committees. It continues to be a waste of taxpayer money (to the tune of $11 billion in 2019). And so long as countries such as Russia and China get outsize control over U.N. operations and resolutions, it will continue to be a disgraceful and immoral organization to which the United States should be embarrassed to give credibility money.
