First of all, the “unparalleled generosity” of the United States over the past century has generally been the result less of humanitarian motives than blatant self-interest and kowtowing to the economic priorities of large multinational corporations. The Marshall Plan, while indeed providing considerable help to get Europe back on the rails after WWII, was motivated to a considerable extent by the desire to expand the market for US production during a period where there were many here worried that the high output of American factories would suffer from a lack of a ready market - of course, the postwar boom in American consumer spending largely quelled these fears. Loans to the former Soviet Union have been similarly motivated by a desire to promote so-called “free trade”, and the immiseration of much of the Russian population over the past decade (levels of poverty, hunger and homelessness are orders of magnitude greater than they ever were under Communism) speaks volumes to the “generosity” of the US. Of course, Russia’s problems are also the result of huge inefficiencies and corruption within the country, but many of the culprits are those who have the closest ties to western business. Nor was Communism perfect - far from it - but its decline has seen many Russians become much worse off.
Also, there are plenty of other areas where American intervention has been even more devestating for the locals, whether that intervention has involved direct military force or covert aid to local insurgents. The populations of Guatemala, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Chile, Panama, Grenada, and the republics of former Jugoslavia, to name the most obvious examples, have little to thank America for.
Now regarding the UN debt. The US has been behind in the payments required to make to help keep the body functioning for about the last fifteen years. The US has some rather sound grievances to make against the UN payment schedule, given that its share of the UN administrative budget was, until December 23 last year, 25% of the $1.1 billion required to run the UN annually, and 30.4% of the UN peacekeeping budget of $3.0 billion. The reason the US fell behind in its pasyments was that Congress (which has many members hostile to the UN anyway, led by Sen. Jesse Helms) decided that the US was being asked to pay too much compared to other nations. On the aforementioned date in December, the UN General Assembly voted to reduce the US share of the admin budget to 22% (which is what Congress wanted) and to reduce its share of the peacekeeping budget to 26% by 2003 (just a bit more than the 25% demanded by Congress). At the time:
“Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), the ranking minority member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said today he is confident Congress will approve the deal if the Bush administration embraces it. ‘It’s a very good deal,’ Biden said. ‘I can’t imagine them not embracing it.’”
(Washington Post, 24 December 2000)
So in December everything seemed to be coming along, and it looked like the US was about to relinquish its deadbeat status. But early this year, the US lost its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission, and there was much gnashing of teeth in Washington, with many people pointing out the injustice of the US being barred entry to a commission that included countries like Sudan and Libya. What these critics failed to note is that the US is part of the Western Group, which is allowed three members on the HRC, and it was replaced not by some third world dictatorship, but by Sweden. This idea that the US, by simple virtue of its size, economic power and military strength, has the right to sit of every UN commission, especially when it doesn’t pay its dues, is the sort of unilateral thinking the world body was designed to overcome. Also, as the Baltimore Sun pointed out on May 13 this year:
“The Europeans, and others at the United Nations, know something most Americans don’t know - that despite lots of high-sounding human rights rhetoric, the United States routinely refuses to sign or ratify important human rights agreements,”
including the Convention on the Rights of the Child,the Convention on the Rights of Women, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the treaty against the use of anti-personnel land mines. Anyway, after the US lost its seat on the HRC, Congressional Republicans threatened to continue to withhold about $240 million in the dues that had been approved by Congress after the UN’s December changes to US payment obligations.
Fast-forward to early this month (August), and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was wondering why the US still had not paid its dues, despite promises to do so back in December and the final authorization for a $582 million payment as part of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act in May this year. The Senate has signed off on this, as had the House, but the loss of the HRC seat led to a House amendment to withhold the aforementioned $240 million unless the US regains its HRC seat next year.
So there you have it. Whatever your take on America’s “unparalleled generosity” to the world, the UN, like most “clubs”, prefers that its members pay their dues, no matter how important they are to the team.
michael.
