I rarely quote posts in their entirety (why take up the bandwidth when you can read it elsewhere), but the PS to my buddy Nelson Ascher’s already superb roundup of 2004… [I thought you hated roundups.-ed. I know. I know.]… is so on point, I just had to reprint it completely:
PS: Let me insist again on one point. Who profits from the existence of the UN? Let’s take the five member of its Security Council.
The US? Hardly. It pays the bills while the UN has become an mechanism to try and contain its power.
Russia? It doesn’t care much for it, nor does China.
The Brits? They, probably, least of all. The UK being a honest country, follows the rules, doesn’t use nor abuse of its position which is frequently used by its internal and external enemies to actually reduce its legitimate influence.
Thus we’re back to the usual suspect: France. The UN is an institution the function of which nowadays is to potentialize France’s declining influence in the world. They know how to deal with bureaucrats in general and with Third World bureaucrats in particular, the French. They also know how to set up and how to manipulate already established NGOs. They know how to make rules that are advantageous to themselves and how to bend them when needed. The UN is basically France’s megaphone nowadays.
Who else profits from it? The Muslim coutries who actually act as a bloc and have a little less than 1/3 of the General Assembly’s vote. If we take into consideration that the EU foreign policy is more or less ruled by the French and that their main goal is to implement the anti-American Eurabian project, then we’ll see that the two most important blocs, the Euro and the Islamic one, actually run the whole show.
And what’s the role of the rest of the Third World? Well, thanks to the Eurabian bloc, their diplomats and elites get attention, jobs, positions and so on and, thus, vote along with the Euros and Muslims. What do they have to lose?
Now, let’s see: did the League of Nations have the post of Secretary General? If it did, can anyone remember who used to fill it? Well, that’s where the UN is headed. But it cannot be dismantled before it is unveiled and unmasked. For all the MSM have been doing to prove the opposite, the invasion of Iraq has actually been pivotal in the process of demoralizing the UN, of proving its impotence. The tsunamis will, in a similar way, prove its incompetence. If last year’s main target of the blogosphere was the MSM, this year’s central target will be the UN. I don’t envy Kofi Annan.
(hat tip: Rick Ballard)
Chirac gambled the UN away. He must have understood that the US was serious when George Bush appeared before the General Assembly and said either enforce the sanctions or the UN will become irrelevent. Chirac went to the mat with the veto assuming the US invasion would falter. He thought the drive to Baghdad would be costly, and that the capture of Baghdad would dwarf the disaster of Grozny. I’m sure he envisioned the US having to crawl back to his UN for an exit strategy from Iraq. Who knows, in his more fevered dreams, he probably imagined blue helmeted American troops doing his bidding from that day forward.
Oh well, the best laid plans of mice and French Presidents… he lost the gamble and increasingly, as in the American coalition to manage the tsunami relief, the US has turned away from the UN. I imagine a gradual winding down of the amount US funds the UN is on the near horizon. Yes, France has considerable influence in the UN. However, in the world of real politics the UN is morphing into a sort of zombie — the League of Nations risen up from the grave to stumble about ineffectually. Some prize.
And yes, the MSM has lost the keys to the gates. The pounding the UN will take is only going to get worse.
Today Pat Buchanan has an excellent column on the UN: ‘Stingy’ Americans & the charity racket http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42211
I particularly like these bits: “What do Egeland and the United Nations contribute? And the answer is … nothing. For the United Nations creates no wealth and has nothing to contribute, other than what member nations provide it. And the most generous of those nations ñ which pays a fourth of all U.N. dues and a third of all peacekeeping costs, and has made U.N. officers like Egeland the highest-paid and pensioned bureaucrats on earth ñ is the United States of America.
Thus, what Egeland does for a living is to preside over the distribution of aid and money conscripted from Americans, while denouncing them as “stingy” and preening as a great humanitarian. He is a dispensable parasite who insults the nation responsible for his exalted lifestyle…
“One day, Americans will grow weary of this… For the present, President Bush might solve Ian Egeland’s moral problem by being more generous with the suffering people of South Asia, and taking the money, dollar for dollar, out of this year’s contribution to the United Nations.”
Somehow I doubt that last suggestion would go over well with either the UN or the Europeans. But to me it sounds like a good place to start.
ambisinistral:
Oh well, the best laid plans of mice and French Presidents…
Yes. I have been thinking that 2005 will be the year of the amazing shrinking France. Where this leaves the Germans is an open question, but not one I lose any sleep over.
coisty:
As a gneral rule I refuse to agree with anything Pat B has to say, but I have to admit he is on to something here.
I don’t think Europeans [or for that matter American liberals] realize how distrustful most Americans have become of the UN.
I heard some guy today complaining that Bush was trying to reinvent the wheel by creating a coalition with Australia, Japan and India, and I thought “No, he just does not want to get stuck in the mud again.”
This is what I wrote while drunkblogging the other night:
http://coonassintexas.blogspot.com/
“The whole situation is horrifying enough, with so many dead, that you’d think that there wouldn’t have been an immediate leap to make political hay out of it, with UN people calling us stingy, and various people sniping at the president. Who are these people? Why are we giving them money? The US should spend the money for a quadruple wide mobile home that the UN can use as a headquarters, to be parked wherever the trouble is greatest in the world.
Good luck to them and good riddance.
Maybe that will be the final warning this Tsunami will give us. The UN is just a layer of Bureacracy that soaks up money, provides little service and much anti-US invective. It is time for the UN to be set free to go somewhere else and do good.”
Funny, but I make more sense drunk than sober.
The UN is just a layer of Bureacracy that soaks up money
LOL. The B looked like an E and I misread that as Eureaucracy. Sounds like the right word, actually.
Terrye – “I heard some guy today complaining that Bush was trying to reinvent the wheel by creating a coalition with Australia, Japan and India”
Don’t know about Japan but I do know that within 48 hours the Aussies and Indians (themselves badly impacted by the tragedy) were providing aid to various countries in the region. On the other hand the UN bigwigs were still doing TV appearances and forming committees and working out the logistics. If the UN can’t handle disaster relief then I don’t see the point of the organisation. Perhaps the UN should concentrate entirely on aid and forget about politics.
Coisty:
I agree. This is such an awful tragedy it will take years and a lot of effort to deal with it.
Coisty:
I don’t know. They’re not very good at either. Maybe they could specialize in forming committees.
Morgan:
Don’t forget that the UN is great at writing resolutions that everyone ignores. They have so few talents that you can’t forget to mention the few that they have.
Kevin P:
Oh no, the UN is good at lots of things. Grandstanding. Pouting. Sneering. Looking gift horses in the mouth. Disposing of evidence. Demanding apologies. Blustering.
And making US tax dollars go poof.
And to think that “new Europe” is lining up to join the EU so France and Germany can suck them dry while their long term liabilities like paying off their pensioners of “old Europe” for the next 50 years.
Such a deal.