Brian:

Translation: the UN cannot work for good because it has no power. It has no power because each nation, or bloc of nations, is out to further its own agenda, irrespective of fairness or good.

Naturally each nation is out to further its own agenda, including the US; what else would you expect? Your issue is that you believe that not enough of these agendas are “good”, but please would you like to define “good” in the geopolitical context? And can you also define what you mean by the “UN”, because I think that what you’re referring to is, in fact, the General Assembly. (I’ll assume that this is the case in the rest of my response.)

All of which raises 2 interesting questions: if the UN is broken in the way Filippo and I believe it is, what is the logic behind complying with UN resolutions when they are ineffectual at best, and at worst bolster tyrants, breed corruption and victimize the weak, all the while opposing US interests?

To be more precise your question is, what is the logic of the US complying with UN resolutions? I assume that Saddam Hussein would have used similar logic; why should Iraq have complied with the UN resolutions against it, when they were so clearly ineffectual?

My answer would be that the world is better off with some form of mediation between states, and the UN provides a vehicle for a significant part of that mediation. When you say that UN resolutions “bolster tyrants, breed corruption and victimize the weak”, can you be more specific about which resolutions you have in mind?

And what is the argument in favor of continuing the extravagant funding we’ve so generously provided the UN… I’m still left wondering what argument one could muster to justify the huge amount of funding the US contributes to the UN each year.

“Extravagant funding”? The US budget for fiscal year 2007 is $2.8 trillion; the US contribution to the regular UN budget (not including the operational agencies) is $422.7 million, or 0.015% of the national budget.

The US also contributes a huge amount to the operational agencies as well, for which we should all be thankful. The biggest US contribution is to peacekeeping operations ($1.13 billion), but if you think peacekeeping is a waste of money, fair enough. At this point, you may wish to point out the failure of some peacekeeping operations, while ignoring those that those that might be considered successful.

The argument for continuing that funding is that it’s a membership fee. You may wish to argue that the US should withdraw its UN membership, but clearly your elected representatives generally disagree with you. I guess their reasons are pretty simple: they believe that the UN can achieve things that the US is either unable or unwilling to do itself.

The issue isn’t whether individuals of both organizations — the US and the UN — engage in criminal acts. The issue is: i) whether or not both have the power to enforce their edicts; and ii) whether or not they exercise that power.

The UN doesn’t have the power to “enforce its edicts” because it wasn’t set up that way, since member states – including the US – wouldn’t and won’t allow infringements of their national sovereignty. I assume you would agree that this should be the case?

The US has the power to bring wrongdoers to justice and the US exercises it.

Really? I didn’t realise that the janjaweed had been stopped in Darfur, and I must have missed the coverage of the trials of Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic. I’m glad to see that the US is going to be trying the murderers of Rafik Hariri; and surely we’ll see North Korea disarming before Christmas.

Of course the US should and does support all these things, but its chosen vehicles are often the United Nations and its various bodies. Perhaps I’m being a little unfair, but I hope you get my point. There are limits to power, some things are better done collectively than individually, and some feel that the United Nations, however flawed, offers the best means for many of those actions.

None of which, of course, has anything to do with an apartment that the UN Secretary-General previously occupied. Given the scale of the problems that the world faces right now, I find it hard to care much about Kofi’s apartment, particularly as the article offers no evidence of any “wrongdoing” on the part of Kofi Annan himself – only the suggestion of inappropriate behaviour.