The NOPE Act: defunding the UN
Here’s a worthwhile effort by some members of the GOP:
U.S. Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today led 24 Senate colleagues in introducing the No Official Palestine Entry (NOPE) Act, legislation to update existing funding prohibitions in law that would cause the United States to cut off assistance to entities that give additional rights and privileges to the Palestinian Authority.
“The Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) are deeply flawed, plagued by corruption, and incite terrorism through the egregious ‘pay for slay’ program. Giving the PLO a voice at the United Nations is preposterous and fails to account for the PLO’s role in inspiring generations of Palestinians to support acts of terror,” said Risch. “This legislation will ensure taxpayer dollars are not used to give the PLO credibility.” …
Current U.S. law prohibits U.S. funding to organizations, such as the UN, which give the PLO full membership or standing as a member state. The NOPE Act updates the existing funding prohibition to organizations that offer the PLO “any status, rights, or privileges beyond observer status.”
Here are the results of the UN vote. No surprise; most countries in the world are dictatorships or otherwise corrupt, and any body that gives each one a vote will be a force for evil:
A total of 143 of the 193 member countries of the United Nations recognized on Friday that Palestine met the necessary criteria to join the organization, and granted it new rights as an observer member. Nine countries, including the US and Israel, voted against, and 25 abstained.
The resolution “determines that the state of Palestine (…) should therefore be admitted to membership” and “recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter favorably.” This resolution “would have a profound impact on the future of the Palestinian people,” even if, in itself, it “does not do justice to the state of Palestine,” which remains an observer, explained Mohamed Abushahab, ambassador of the United Arab Emirates, introducing the text on behalf of the Arab countries.
The vote has no particular effect except as pro-Palestinian pro-terrorist anti-Israel anti-Jewish PR. The US remains – for the moment – against such an attempt in the Security Council, although if Biden were to be re-elected I think the US might end its opposition.
No surprise; most countries in the world are dictatorships or otherwise corrupt, and any body that gives each one a vote will be a force for evil
I’m not a fan of the UN. But in fairness, when you consider what it was founded to be, it can’t be other than giving each country one vote and the biggest countries a veto.
The whole point of the UN is to give nations a place to work out their differences without going to WWIII. Consequently, if it excludes the bad guys, it’s not being what it was intended to be.
The UN has accomplished very little of any good, certainly. But unless you have a magic wand to strip away the military strength of the bad guys, you can’t have a “UN” that only lets the good guys have a vote. Because then you get WWIII: you have the UN vs the not-UN.
Important to remember that the original “UN” was the Allies in WWII, and Churchill and Roosevelt both described them as “the United Nations” in their declaration of January 1, 1942:
Niketas:
But the entire premise is flawed. Giving bad governments an equal vote can only result in bad outcomes when the bad outnumber the less bad.
But the entire premise is flawed.
It’s really worth going back and reading what people said about it at the time. Remember that they knew exactly what the Soviet Union was, and included them anyway, and in fact gave them an extra vote (Ukraine SSR), and consigned all of Eastern Europe to them which also got votes (not to mention stripping away Polish land and packing it into Ukraine), and turned a blind eye to the horrific ethnic cleansing that followed. Remember that they took away Taiwan’s Security Council seat and gave it to the People’s Republic of China, and the US did not stop it.
That’s not evidence of a flawed premise: that’s a result of their emphasizing different premises from yours. It’s not a mistake in logic, it’s a question of what’s valued.
I know you’d prefer to see all power in the hands of the good guys, I don’t think that’s a flawed preference, but we simply don’t live in that world. If the bad guys can’t negotiate peacefully then they’ll go to war to secure their interests. The UN was intended to be a forum for those peaceful negotiations, and it was hoped that the good guys would get their way more often, but it was never intended to shut out the bad guys from sometimes getting their way. Didn’t stop wars either, of course.
The leaders who ended WWII had just got done fighting bad guys, and with eyes open decided to include bad guys in the UN. They were realists, not idealists.
Well alger hiss was in the original us delegation im just saying china under chiang was our lead ally in the east
Of course france and the uk
The decolonization strategy was partially born from cost comsiderations but also ethics
It’s too long to excerpt here but an accessible presentation is in Churchill’s History of WWII, Volume 6, Book I, Ch 14 and Volume 6, Book II, Ch 1 – 4.
The issues you raise were raised at the time and are commented on in these chapters. Long story short, Stalin was not willing to join the UN if there was any possibility that the Western powers could use it to force him to do anything he didn’t want to do, and explicitly said so, referencing the expulsion of the Soviet Union from the League of Nations in 1939 (over their invasion of Finland) and asking what guarantees would prevent such a thing from happening again? The leaders of the Western powers recognized this and were willing to go ahead anyway, and so created a structure that Stalin was willing to join. One leader (Jan Smuts) commented:
The UN was really only intended to prevent WWIII and it has, perhaps in spite of itself, so far succeeded. That it doesn’t accomplish much more is regrettable, and that it’s more or less an expense account scam is disappointing though unsurprising, but the leaders who founded it only intended it to do so much, and probably would be surprised to see it still around so many decades later.
The UN was really only intended to prevent WWIII and it has, perhaps in spite of itself, so far succeeded.
Niketas Choniates;
I enjoyed your comment. Full-bodied. Pithy. 🙂
An Irish friend once explained to me the real purpose of the EU was to prevent Germany from running amuck again.
By that standard the EU has been successful too … so far.
The problem with the UN is not that most (all?) of the members are self-centered asshats. The problem is that it’s often seen as having some form of moral authority, which it most assuredly does not.
Considering that germany has won by fiat but what they couldnt in three wars the franco prussian one might consider
Considering that germany has won by fiat…
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Yeah, man, but it’s a dry heat.
–Bill Paxton, “Aliens”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AapC30kL0yQ
USSR got three votes. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
” defunding the UN”
Nothing I haven’t been saying for literally decades.
@Chases Eagles:USSR got three votes. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Yeah, forgot. They also got the satellite votes too of course, East Germany et al.
“. . . will stand stultified before history.”
History.
The modern god-head. Or what Tocqueville knew as “Providence”. Ah well, a just desert, I suppose.
Reagan got us out as far as unesco then we thought they would reform poppy got us back in to no real benefit