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The United
Nations-United for What?
I became hooked on
politics in High School in the early ‘60s. My
favorite bumper sticker was in support of Communist
China. It read: “Admit Red China to the U.N. –
Give Them Our Seat”. I’d suggest such a trade
today, but I think every despotic regime is already a
member.
With an annual budget of nearly $1.5 billion ($363
million or 25% of this is paid by the United States), it
is not surpris-ing that the U.N. does some good. While I
am sure there are legitimate criticisms, the three
largest U.N. humanitarian agencies (U.N. Development
Programme, U.N. Relief Agency, and UNICEF) certainly
provide assistance to many who are desperately in need.
Does that mean the U.S. should continue as a U.N.
member?
The answer is an emphatic NO, for one simple reason: The
U.N. is not an effective mechanism for achieving our
goals. Which begs the question: What are our
goals? Or: What should be our goals? Let’s
start with a few goals that almost every reader can
embrace: * Promote world peace
* Reduce poverty and promote
economic prosperity
* Promote individual freedom (both political and
economic).
Hopefully we are all on the same page. There may be a
fourth and fifth objective, but they must pale in
comparison to these three. Assuming we agree on
these goals, the next questions are “What is the
long term strategy for achieving these goals?” and
“Does the U.N. support this strategy?”
When considering their immediate, short-term effects, the
three goals are listed in their order of importance.
It is hard to worry about your next meal or
getting your needed prescription for medicine when bombs
are exploding in your front yard or soldiers are about to
execute your family, rape your women, or weld shackles
around your ankles. World peace (and especially peace for
our communities and families) comes first.
Given a reasonable level of peace, then adequate food,
clothing, shelter, and healthcare (i.e., rising above the
poverty level) come next. When you are starving,
shivering, or deathly ill, only the horrors of war are
more dreaded. Finally, if we are safe from war and
our most basic needs are being met, we want to be free to
employ our talents and expend our perspiration to improve
the course of our lives and the lives of our families.
While critically important, individual freedom may seem
to be an abstract notion when death or starvation is at
our doorstep.
Although this is the order of importance when considering
immediate conse-quences, oddly, the order of importance
of these goals must be reversed if we want to address the
issues over the longer term. Freedom eliminates poverty,
gives people hope, and removes the incentives for war.
If we want to eliminate war and poverty, we need
to advance human political and economic freedom. And that
is where the U.N. is a grotesque failure.
Each year the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal
rank the world’s 161 countries by their degree of
economic freedom. As it turns out, for countries whose
economic freedom scores have been consistent for several
decdes, their Economic Freedom Index is a very good
predictor of their prosperity. Where repressed countries
have recently become free (e.g., Eastern Europe) or for
countries whose economic freedom scores have
substantially changed, the annual rate of economic growth
(i.e., prosperity increases) correlates strongly with the
degree of economic freedom they have adopted.
Over 6 billion experiments (the current world population)
can’t be wrong. The data is crystal clear: If you
want prosperity and want to eliminate poverty, you should
support economic freedom (free markets, property rights,
low levels of taxes and regulation, and political
freedom). If you like grinding poverty and the vacant
stare of starving children, then autocratic government
and repression of human freedoms are the way to go.
Similar analyses have traced the relationship between
government repression and both war and genocide. The
record is amazingly con-sistent. Of 353 wars fought
between 1816 and 1991, at most one was fought between two
democracies (that one, between France and republican Rome
in 1849, is a borderline case). 154 wars were fought
between democracies and non-democracies and 198 were
fought between two non-democracies. Here are the
top eight genocides of the Twentieth Century: Soviet
Union (USSR), Communist China, Nazi Germany, Imperial
Japan (WWII era), Communist Cambodia, Turkey (Armenian
genocide), Vietnam, and North Korea. Total deaths are on
the order of 100 million. Could the record be any
clearer?
What does the U.N. do to advance human freedom so that
the world can enter a new era of prosperity and peace?
Essentially nothing.
Look at the current membership of the U.N. Commission on
Human Rights. Of the 53 Commission members in 2004, 56%
(30 countries) are either ranked “Mostly
Un-free” (24) or “Repressive” (2) or are
too unstable politically to be ranked (4). Bhutan, China,
Cuba, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Nepal,
Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Zimbabwe … great role
models for Human Rights! Every one of these countries
ranked near the bottom of the Reporters Without Borders
ranking of Press Freedom (Out of 139 countries ranked,
these 30 countries on the Human Rights Commission all
scored worse than 100. Even Uganda ranked 52nd !)
The Sudan is particularly qualified for membership. It
knows genocide when it sees it. In fact, as you read
this, Sudan is actively promoting genocide in its Darfur
region.
As previously noted, the U.N. does conduct some useful
humanitarian missions. But short-term and shortsighted
humanitarian relief efforts are not adequate substitutes
for a meaningful strategy to achieve the goals of world
peace and prosperity. They may make us feel good and help
us sleep at night, but they will never succeed. The U.N.
never attempts to address the underlying root causes of
poverty, genocide, or war.
If we are serious about achieving our goals, the U.N. is,
at best, a distraction. At worst, it is a major part of
the problem. It is corrupt at its core. It protects and
en-courages the very practices that perpetuate poverty,
genocide, and war. The Oil-For-Food scandal is just the
latest dismal example.
We need a new international organization. One that is
made up of member countries that understand the role of
individual freedom (political and economic) in advancing
the well being of all humans.
No nations get perfect scores on the human freedom scale.
That being acknowledged, we should invite the freest
countries to join the U. S. in a new Freedom Consortium
whose goal would be to encourage as rapid an expansion of
human rights around the world as possible. Mem-bership
would require countries to have basic functioning
democratic institutions and to meet a minimum standard
for economic freedom (possibly with a time table for
meeting even higher standards).
Free-trade agreements would auto-matically be executed
between all member countries. Humanitarian and financial
aid pooled from member countries along with trade
agreements would be leveraged to encourage/reward
non-member countries to expand freedoms. Military aid
could be extended to freedom fighters in countries that
insist on repression. The message needs to be sent: We
mean it! It may take decades, but eventually, our
goals could be largely achieved. We just have to follow a
strategy that is designed to achieve them.
*Send your comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
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