“It’s a lot like the Star Wars Galactic Republic, right? — where it’s a bunch of ‘greedy, squabbling delegates’ and nothing gets done,” said Red Alert Politics Editor Ron Meyer this morning on Fox News’ Fox and Friends.
The United Nations, similar to the Galactic Senate in Star Wars, is far too big and far too bureaucratic to truly be effective at their mission. Like in Stars Wars, the U.N. empowers and shelters bad actors because of alliances that form to protect those bad actors.
Or, like in recent days, the U.N. gangs up on one of our allies (Israel) while doing nothing to stop the genocide in Syria. After all, stopping genocide and war crimes is supposed to be one of the U.N.’s primary goals.
Now, unlike in Star Wars, the answer isn’t to replace it with a universal empire — the answer may actually be the opposite: dissolve the U.N. and don’t replace it with anything.
It opens up an important question for the United States: why keep funding an organization that acts against your interests and jeopardizes world security? Is the U.N. a waste of taxpayer dollars?
The cases of U.N. waste are too large to count, and some have been very public and embarrassing — even considering their budget is small compared to the U.S. budget (and even smaller than our own foreign aid budget). The cold truth is that we could do all the good things the U.N. does, like food and education aid, for much less money.
U.N. salaries are 32% higher than U.S. government workers in comparable jobs — so we would save almost a third of the cost to do it ourselves. Reports show U.N. orgs are poorly run and often filled with corruption, including rampant sexual exploitation. One report by the U.N.’s own Procurement Task Force (PTF) showed $700 million in waste and abuse.
The U.N. continuously fails its duty to ‘protect people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.’ A 2014 study showed the U.N. “did not report responding to 406 (80%) of [the 570] incidents where civilians were attacked.”
The U.S. funds around one-fourth of the U.N. budget, more than 182 other countries combined — nearly $3 billion. In truth with voluntary contributions, it may be higher than $8 billion. China pays just 8 percent.
The U.S. spends $50 billion on foreign aid annually (probably too much), and we already do more than the U.N. We could add their responsibilities and do them better and in America’s interest. It’s a waste to fund U.N. aid programs to corrupt countries that hate us and our allies.
Now, can we pull out entirely? Maybe not, but President-elect Trump should threaten to leave in order to demand reform (less waste, more accountability) and a smaller contribution (our fair share of population/wealth). Trump needs to use his deal skills, save America some money, and renegotiate our funding to the U.N. If the U.N. won’t do it, why stay?
