#WTH is wrong with the United Nations?
Anti-American, anti-Israel, antisemitic. And eye-wateringly expensive too.
Sure, hating on the United Nations is like shooting fish in a barrel. Anti-American? Check. Anti-capitalism? Check. Soft on dictators? Check. In China’s thrall? Check. Rapists among the peacekeepers? Check. Rampant sexual harassment? Check. But sometimes, you get a “whole of institution” picture of the pervasive rot in a body nominally devoted to international peace and security, and you realize, it’s not just parts of the UN that are corrupted. It’s the whole damn thing.
Our buddy Brett Schaefer, arguably Washington’s best UN analyst, joined the podcast to talk about:
What the Biden administration is getting wrong
Why everyone at the UN hates Israel
How we should assess it and fix it
Former ambassador to the United Nations Jon Bolton famously quipped that, “the [UN] Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.” He was wrong. The world might be a better place without large sections of the United Nations.
Consider that one of the released Israeli hostages from Gaza reported that they were imprisoned in the attic of an UNRWA teacher. (UNRWA is the UN agency devoted solely to the question of Palestinian “refugees".”) Of course, no one should be surprised, as UNRWA employees openly celebrated Hamas’ vile October 7 attack; some examples collated by UN Watch:
o UNRWA Gaza teacher Osama Ahmed posted “Allah is Great, Allah is Great, reality surpasses our wildest dreams.”
o UNRWA principal Iman Hassan justified the massacre as “restoring rights” and “redressing” Palestinian “grievances.”
o Rawia Helles, Director of the Khan Younis Training Center and featured in an UNRWA video, glorified one of the terrorists as a “hero,” “raider,” and “prince of Khan Younis.”
o English Teacher Asmaa Rafiq Kuheil excitedly called to “sculpture the date” adding a heart emoji.
o School Administrator Hmada Ahmed posted “welcome the great October.”
But it’s not just the rampant Israel and Jew hatred that permeates the entire UN system. It’s the Chinese dominations of major specialized agencies, like the World Health Organization. It’s the failure to condemn the Uyghur genocide. The North Korean nuclear program. The Russian invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, for an organization created to end war and uphold dignity and human rights, it’s done shockingly little to, er, end war or uphold dignity or human rights.
Worse yet, for an organization that remains a darling of the left worldwide, the left appears completely uninterested in whether the United Nations in all its forms is actually performing. The reverse. As Brett explains, for the Biden administration, the $18 billion (you read that right) poured into the UN last year is really just for a “seat at the table.” What does a seat at the table get you? In a word: Zip.
For all his sins, Donald Trump pulled the US out of the WHO and the Human Rights Council, arguing correctly that the WHO was in China’s pocket and did nothing effective against Covid, and that the HRC appeared to exist solely for the purpose of excoriating Israel. Biden, in his first month in office, returned the US to both agencies without exacting a single concession from either. That’s just bad business.
And it gets worse. You won’t believe how much we pay UNRWA. How much we shovel in to the United Nations that isn’t required. Just, you know, out of the goodness of our hearts. Listen to the whole thing or check out the highlights. It’ll make your blood boil.
HIGHLIGHTS
Best thing you can say about the United Nations?
BS: I think that one of the best things that can be said about the UN is that it's better than the League of Nations.
What’s happened to the place? Was it always this bad?
BS: The first 45 years of the organization during the Cold War, the organization was basically a backwater. It addressed issues of tertiary concern, and it did so with varying degrees of success over the years. But after the Cold War with the “end of history” phase, we got used to thinking that the UN was front and center for addressing international problems. That's not the case. It's an organization that's not well suited for doing that. And we're starting to see a regression back to the norm.
Why is the UN so relentlessly anti-Israel?
BS: This is not just a recent problem. This is something that is deeply embedded into the UN system, deeply ingrained into the statements of the organization over the years. If you look back historically, when the UN Security Council first passed a resolution that partitioned the British mandate of Palestine and established and recognized a state of Israel, and then Israel was admitted to the organization. Most of the Arab world at that time resented that decision and they objected to it.
They expressed that in various conflicts over the years. But those states also joined the organization and they expressed their opposition to the existence of Israel, the establishment of Israel, the recognition of Israel through the actions of the organization. Whether that's resolutions, whether that's statements on the floor, whether that's attempts to get the Security Council to act in a certain way. And this inclination grew over time as more Arab states, more Islamic states joined the organization.
This position became more popular, but they also were smart in that they linked the situation that they cared about to a situation that a lot of newly independent states, former colonies that were then joining the UN also cared about, which is decolonialization, Western imperialism. And so what they did is they said, "Israel is also a colonial power. Israel is also a repressive state. Our situation is very analogous to what your situation is as a former colony and your situation should be aligned with ours."
And as the membership of the organization grew, this position became a majority position in the UN system. Obviously, it culminated in a disgraceful resolution equating Zionism with racism in 1975. And this was the outward expression of this resentment and hostility toward Israel, but it's also embedded in the system, right? They have a number of committees, they have a number of bodies in the UN that meet regularly, and they also pass resolutions. They also make reports talking about Israel's crimes, Israel's repression of the Palestinians, the unfairness of the situation. So this becomes embedded in the system. It's regularized, right?
But why has it persisted and worsened?
So you have the Secretary General, you have UN officials commenting on these reports, commenting on these resolutions, making statements saying that Israel is doing this bad, the Palestinians are victims in this, that, or the other. So it becomes a sort of inertia inside the UN system. And then later resolutions refer to these earlier resolutions, and it becomes sort of embedded in the intellectual approach to the situation inside the UN. So it's not even really conscious thought. It's a reflexive repetition of earlier statements and perspectives. So when you see the Secretary General Guterres' awful statement did equate the situation on October 7th and said, well, “this did not occur in a vacuum,” essentially excusing these barbaric actions saying that they can't be held responsible for their acts because of this historical context. Would you have been surprised if that would've been said five years earlier, or 10 years earlier, or 15 years earlier? Of course not, because this is the way that UN talks about it, because this has been inculcated into the system that this is not the fault of the Palestinians, it's the fault of Israel. So you see this occur again.
Will the world’s reaction to the outrageous statements by the SecGen and the outrageous role of UNRWA effect a change?
BS: Now, I think that [Gutteres] was shocked at the reaction of Israel and the reaction of the United States and the reaction of many Western countries to his statement because that would've not raised a single eyebrow five years ago, or 10 years ago, or 15 years ago. But this situation is different. And I hope that this situation will force a reassessment of the organization in fundamental ways about those organizations you're talking about, about UNWRA, about how UNIFIL is not meeting its mandate in Lebanon to disarm the border with Israel, to disarm Hezbollah in that area, and on and so forth. So that the UN will again take seriously what the principles are in his charter, which is to address threats to international peace and security, because it's clearly not doing so right now.
Are we the only ones to see the UN disgrace?
BS: As much as we criticize the UN, the people that really should be criticized in the UN are the developing countries, the people in these places that depend on the organization to help them out, and yet oftentimes are let down in very tragic ways. I mean, look at the principles of the organization. It's that you're supposed to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. You're supposed to reaffirm the faith and the fundamental human rights and the dignity or worth of the human person, equal rights of men and women, to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations are arising for treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.
Those are the principles of the UN as outlined in the UN charter. Over and over again, you see the UN not doing that. Dany mentioned threats to international peace and security, Russia, the situation in Israel, but we can look further abroad than that. During the Cold War, there were hundreds of wars. The UN only had about 20 peacekeeping operations during the Cold War. It wasn't really substantially involved in many of the wars that beset the globe. You can look at around the globe today. Where are the biggest source of violations of human rights in the world today? China. The Human Rights Council has never condemned China in its entire history. The UN General Assembly has never condemned China for its human rights practices. Historically, Cuba has been a terrible abuser of human rights. The UN Human Rights Council has never condemned Cuba. The UN General Assembly has never condemned Cuba. Instead, they condemned the United States for its sanctions against Cuba
Why do liberals consistently excuse the UN’s failings?
BS: As a conservative, I look at the UN, I see it as a tool or as a box of tools. We should be using the tools to accomplish ends. Liberals, on the other hand, see this not as a tool, but as the end itself, that the organization and US participation in these organizations are, in and of themselves, are something that should be cheered just by ... Blinken says this over and over again. He's so proud to have a seat at the table, as if the seat at the table in itself is something to be proud of. Well, no, you have a seat at the table to accomplish something, and we need to take a step back and realize that these organizations don't have intrinsic value in and of themselves. They have value because of what they do or they don't do, and we need to look at them individually. I mean, the UN is not a monolith. It's an organization made up of many organizations, the UN system. And there are specialized agencies like the International Telecommunications Union, the World Health Organization, which you mentioned earlier, the United Nations, the UN Security council, the UN General Assembly. There's lots of different parts of the UN. The United States needs to be looking at all these different parts of it and saying, "Okay, are you doing something as advancing our national interests?" If so, okay, let's support it. Is it potentially supporting US interests? Okay, but it's not? Well, let's go ahead and try and make it better toward meeting those ends, right?
How do we fix it?
BS: We need to use our financial leverage. We need to use our diplomacy. We need to use our engagement with other countries to try and make it better and improve it. If this is an organization that has no value whatsoever to our national interests, we need to get out of it and stop funding it because it's a waste of our time and a waste of our resources. So we need to have a very practical approach to international organizations that is based on US national interests and working with other countries to accomplish common ends. We shouldn't be there just to have a seat at the table.
How much is this “seat at the table” costing America?
BS: So the UN numbers are actual numbers that they have received into the UN system. And last year, in 2022, the most recent year that those numbers were reported, the UN Chief Executives Board, which is the organization that tracks all this, reported record contributions by the United States to the UN system' over 18 billion last year. That's roughly $6 billion more than 2021. So a huge increase under the Congress and under the presidency of Joe Biden.
A lot of this had to do with the fact that the Biden administration was paying arrears that accumulated when Trump announced that he was suspending payments to the World Health Organization. But not all of it. A lot of this is additional money to organizations of very questionable value.
You mentioned the UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. The Biden administration has given over a billion dollars to UNRWA since it came into office.
This is an organization that Donald Trump had stopped providing funding to because this was an organization that was extraordinarily compromised. It was promoting extremism, celebrating terrorism through its school books and school materials. It was allowing Hamas members to join it as an organization, as employees of the organization. It allowed Hamas, without complaint, to put tunnels and military facilities in close proximity to their schools and their hospitals so that they would be protected by the presence of UNRWA and UN facilities.
This is an organization that is deeply, deeply compromised and is, if not supportive of terrorism, certainly okay with having terrorists among its membership in terms of employment and allowing terrorism extremism to be promoted within its activities, whether those are education or whether those are the social media posts of its employees.
Joe Biden says, "Okay, we're going to go ahead and resume US funding for this very troubled organization. We've reached a new agreement with the organization that says it's not going to be doing this anymore." You have numerous news reports, NGO reports, other sources, including the European Union, by the way, who says that these activities are continuing despite the fact that the US reached this new agreement. Well, guess what? They're going to go ahead and continue funding it anyway.
Is Biden’s effort working?
BS: It's emblematic of the Biden administration's approach to international organizations, which is, if we go in there, our presence, our character, our diplomatic efforts are going to be enough to turn these organizations around and fix the problems that are evident in there. And that is not happening. Over and over again, they delude themselves into thinking that, "If we only pay the amount that they're asking for and then provide more voluntary funding on top of that, we're going to change the nature of these organizations." That is not true.
So what do we need to do?
BS: We need to do what Senator Helms, you mentioned Senator Helm's approach here, and use the tools that are available to the United States to apply pressure on them to fix themselves, whether that's using financial levers through withholding, whether making future contributions contingent on reforms, such as what Congress did ... Senator Leahy is actually responsible for this. They passed the UN Accountability and Transparency Act, which withheld 15% of US contributions to organizations until the Secretary of State certified that they were enacting the highest possible standards for whistleblower protections and other conditions to improve transparency and accountability.
So there are tools available that the US can use to pressure these organizations to change and improve. Congress needs to do that because the administration currently won't.
Lay out the U.S. role at the UN?
BS: The fundamental point here is that the US is the largest financier of the UN system. We provide more resources by far than any other member state.
There are essentially two different categories of contributions to the UN; assessed and voluntary. In terms of the voluntary contributions of the US, the US paid 3.1 billion in assessed contributions to the UN, and other organizations like the World Health Organization, in 2022. That's about 24% of all assessed contributions into the UN system. So roughly a quarter of all assessed contributions come from the United States.
But if you look at the voluntary contributions, the US provided almost 15 billion dollars in voluntary contributions to the UN system in 2022. And that's over 38% of the UN contributions by UN member states in voluntary contributions. We provide over 50% of the contributions to the World Food Program, over 36% of contributions to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, over 34% to UNRWA, 32% of contributions to International Organization for Migration.
These are all humanitarian organizations. And what I want to highlight here is these are voluntary. What I mean by voluntary is we don't have to provide a single dime of that to the organization. This is out of the generosity of the American people, the American Congress, and we don't have to provide any of it.
Talk about the Human Rights Council?
BS: You have, in essence, member states inside the UN system that don't believe in the rules and the principles that the UN was founded on. And this has a very corrosive effect on the organization. We mentioned earlier the Human Rights Council. Well, the Human Rights Council is supposed to examine and address human rights situations around the world. Well, they're obsessed with one country. Not going to surprise anybody here. It's Israel. Out of all the condemnatory resolutions that were adopted by the UN Human Rights Council since it was founded in 2006, 104, or 36%, of all UN Human Rights Council condemnatory resolutions were focused on Israel. By comparison, Syria's got only 43. North Korea's got 16, Iran's got 14, Russia's got seven. China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia have zero
But it just shows you how the presence of these countries distorts the work of the organization because of their presence in the organization, their efforts to try and deflect attention from their own flaws and foibles to other countries like Israel or the United States. And China's been very effective in doing this, particularly over the last 15 years or so. It wasn't so long ago that everybody, there was a Washington consensus across the political spectrum that China, if we just brought them into the system, then they would become more like us. Well, we brought them into the system, and China has made the system more like China.
Full transcript here.
SHOWNOTES
House Republicans Are Drawing a Bright Line on U.N. Reform (Brett Shaefer, Heritage, July 27 2023)
The Uselessness of the U.N. Has Been on Full Display Since October 7 (Danielle Pletka, National Review, November 27 2023)
UN Officials and Bodies React to October 2023 Hamas Massacre & Aftermath (UN Watch as of November 14, 2023)
The United Nations’ Treatment of Israel Is Shameful (Eli Cohen, WSJ, November 26 2023)
Danielle Haas’ farewell email to her colleagues at HRW: https://twitter.com/HillelNeuer/status/1727452511408152934
Report: U.N. Teachers Celebrated Hamas Massacre (UN Watch, November 2023)
Pattern of response: UNRWA 2022 response to criticisms
United Nations’ Bigotry Towards Israel: UNRWA Antisemitism Poisons Palestinian Youth (Jonathan Schanzer hearing, FDD, November 8 2023)
Reps. Eli Crane & Andy Biggs call for WHO withdrawal:
What the World Health Organization Must Do to Earn Back US Support (Brett Schaefer and Dany Pletka, Heritage, August 2020)