For the US… Are the Insults Worth the Money We Pay?
The international directive of the United Nations, when established over 50 years ago as a direct result of WWII, was to maintain international peace and security, to develop friendly relations among nations, to achieve international cooperation in solving humanitarian problems and in promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
On one of the occasions I have had to testify before the UN General Assembly, I challenged their understanding of their original directive and the alternate course that directive has taken in the years . . . not one ambassador stood to refute my claims.
By silence, they were acquiescing to the assumption in America that the United Nations has outlived its usefulness, lived up to its prime directive during the cold war, but is no longer relevant as its original purpose and its continued failures show.
To set the record straight on what the US owes the UN…. The United States charges no money for the UN building to be situated on prime real estate in the heart of Manhattan. They pay no taxes, and all the people who work there pay no taxes, and only 7.1% of the employees are American.
Every single country gets exactly one vote on every issue brought before the general assembly and its various Sub-committees. The United States is democratically bound to countries with a smaller population than Rhode Island, yet we are responsible for over 25% of the total funding for the United Nations.
For example, Fiji’s assessment for 1998 was $47,636, while the United States was billed $297,727,256. And that doesn’t include $901,000,000 to the UN affiliated and international organizations and $210,000,000 or almost 30% of the total cost, for peacekeeping missions. Add to that, $2,972,900,000 that was diverted from the training and readiness of our U.S. armed forces and given to the U.N. Security Council. So we voluntarily gave almost three times as much as we were required to pay.
Additionally, President Clinton approved, in 1998, a reduction in the minimum assessment a country must pay to be a member of the U.N. for .01% to .001% of the regular U.N. budget, yet the U.S. assessment was not reduced at all.
This is about $10,516 for 29 countries for 1998. Forty-one other countries pay between .002 and .009%, or $21,032 to $94,647, four countries pay .01 or $105,163 and 84 other countries, including Communist China, pay less than 1% of the total U.N. budget.
But the American’s continue to pay over 25% of the U.N. budget or 28,312 times more than 29 countries pay. Russia pays 2.8 percent of the budget and Egypt, which received $2.1 billion in foreign aid for the American taxpayers in 1998, pays less than a million dollars to the UN. annually. And they voted against the United States 61% of the time in 1997. India, which received $134,000,000 in foreign aid from the U.S. pays .3% of the regular U.N. budget and they voted against the U.S. 76% of the time in 1997.
Now let’s re-access the question . . . who owes who?
