Giving the UN Walking Papers

[New York State] Senator Martin Golden offered publicly to allow the U.N.'s building plan to go through if the secretary-general would take such a step. We think Mr. Golden played quite a heroic role in this showdown. In a straightforward way, he expressed the view that many, many New Yorkers hold of a United Nations, a view that sees it as corrupt, wasteful, hostile to Israel, and anti-American.

What we have come to object to is not the individual U.N. officials - many of whom are warm and idealistic individuals and fine neighbors - but the institution of the United Nations itself. It is largely a grouping of undemocratic states that seeks hegemony over democratic ones to protect, all too often, corrupt ends. When one raises this issue, defenders of the United Nations throw up all sorts of chaff about the constituent elements of the world body - the World Health Organization, say, or the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, or the International Labor Organization. What vainglory to suggest that these institutions, to the degree that they have value, cannot carry on either independently or in a new structure. The ILO was founded in 1919, 27 years before the United Nations. It survived the demise of its original host, the League of Nations. Surely it would survive the demise of the United Nations.

Secretary-General Annan took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal last week to denounce the House of Representatives and the chairman of its Committee on International Relations, Henry Hyde. It is Mr. Hyde whose name is on the bill that would halve American dues payments to the world body if the U.N. fails to meet minimal reforms. Mr. Annan seems to think this is a violation of the United Nations Treaty. Well, Mr. Hyde comprehends one thing that Mr. Annan apparently does not, Clause 1 of Section 7 of Article 1 of the Constitution of the United States, which reserves solely to the House the power to initiate American spending.

Senator Bruno suggested last week that had the minority in the U.S. Senate permitted John Bolton to take up his post at the United Nations, there might be some basis for going forward with the plan to expand the U.N. footprint in Turtle Bay. Wishful thinking. From Albany to Washington to New York City, Americans have been trying to send a larger message, one that the world body doesn't want to hear. The U.N. has been in business for 60 years now - it was June 26, 1945, when representatives of 50 countries, meeting at San Francisco, signed the U.N. Charter. The failure of the body since then has come not because of the wrong American ambassador being there or the wrong secretary-general, but because of the inclusion of so many unfree regimes. The right plan now is for the United Nations to set about packing up and getting out of town.

The wrong secretary-general and uncritical ambassadors don't make the situation any better. However, the NY Sun gets it precisely right - it is unfree regimes that have ruined the UN. How else can you explain how Sudan, Libya, and other dictatorial regimes get to sit on a human rights commission when they've committed heinous human rights abuses, including a current genocide in Dafur Sudan?