By\u00a0Thalif Deen<\/p>\n\n\n\n
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 29 2024 (IPS) <\/strong>– John Bolton a former US ambassador to the United Nations (2005-2006) once infamously declared that if the 39-storeyed UN Secretariat building in New York \u201clost 10 stories, it wouldn\u2019t make a bit of difference.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That statement triggered a sarcastic response from a New York Times columnist who said Bolton would have done better as an urban planner than a US diplomat \u2013while another newspaper described him as \u201ca human wrecking ball\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Similarly, one of his successors Niki Haley told a Republican National Convention that the \u201cUN was a place where dictators, murderers and thieves denounce America, and demand that we pay their bills.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And now comes President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s nominee \u2014 House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York\u2014who has condemned the United Nations as \u201ccorrupt and antisemitic\u201d \u2014 to be his next ambassador to the world body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She has threatened to cut funding for the UN, including a UN agency providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and denounced the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what else is new?<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to a November 11 report in Politico, a Washington-based digital newspaper, Trump is elevating a fierce critic of the U.N. as his emissary to the world body \u2014 the latest sign that he plans to make good on pledges to strongly support Israel on the world stage and play hardball with international organizations and alliances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a 25 September article in the Washington Examiner titled \u201cIf the United Nations continues its antisemitism, the US must withdraw support\u201d, Stefanik said the U.N. \u201chas proven again and again that it is a cesspool of antisemitism that has completely turned against Israel in its darkest hour.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But her hard-hitting comments have triggered equally strong condemnations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kul Gautam, a former UN assistant Secretary-General, told IPS Trump\u2019s proposed new appointment is \u201ca frightening prospect for the UN\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cStefanik seems to represent the antithesis of the UN ideals, multilateralism, and respect for international laws \u2014 all in the interest of blanket US support for Israel,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, all of Trump\u2019s national security nominees seem to fit what Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council characterizes as: Israel-First, America-Second, Humanity-Last ethos, said Gautam, a former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the US Congressional Research Service (CRS), the approved regular budget for U.N. is $3.6 billion for FY 2024. The General Assembly determines a regular budget scale of assessments every three years based on a country\u2019s capacity to pay. The Assembly will likely adopt new assessment rates for the 2025-2027 period in December 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The United States is currently assessed 22%, the highest of any U.N. member, followed by China (15.25%) and Japan (8.03%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n But this may change under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Stefanik warned: \u201cWe must strive for a U.N. in which no one nation is expected to foot the bill but receive no accountability or transparency in return, in which no despot or dictator can sit in judgment of others while deflecting attention away from their own human rights abuses, and in which no organization corrupted by the likes of the Chinese Communist Party can dictate sweeping conventions and international standards across its membership\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ian Williams, President of the New York-based Foreign Press Association told IPS the vultures are fluttering home to roost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen Elise Stefanik launches off at the UN, interpreters should program their ChatGB with the translation \u201cyada yada yada\u201d for her message.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Delegates and media should deride, rebut or mock her. There is no upside to pandering to her nor even to trying to reason with here, said Williams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the Balkan Wars, he pointed out, many young State Department professionals struck the board and cried \u201cno more!\u201d at the shameless double standards. The current generation appears either to be opportunistically complaisant in the face of Netanyahu\u2019s genocide, or worse, true believers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cObservers often wonder whether the UN could survive without the United States. Time to reverse the query- how can the UN survive in any meaningful way with the US as a malignant metastasizing tumor at its core\u201d said Williams, a former President of the UN Correspondents\u2019 Association (UNCA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his last days, Obama let through a conscience-easing resolution against Israel resolution: there is little or no chance of a significant gesture from the Biden administration in its dying days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In contrast, Biden and Harris forfeited their chances of power with their shameless abasement to indicted war criminal Netanyahu- who had spent his term as Israeli PM campaigning against their re-election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe have been here before. John Bolton\u2019s initiative to punish member states that failed to explicitly pre-amnesty American troops brought the US into more disrepute than the UN and not just its \u201cmoral\u201d standing. It was simply shrugged off and forgotten by most members. This time, the organization\u2019s members would get their retaliation in first. It is pointless to try creative engagement with bigots\u201d, declared Williams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Norman Solomon, executive director, Institute for Public Accuracy and national director, RootsAction.org, told IPS for many decades, the U.S. government has viewed the United Nations as either a legitimizing rubber stamp or a recalcitrant dissenter to be ignored and belittled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the leadup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for instance, the George W. Bush administration sought UN approval and never got it. But when the Security Council approved aggressive military actions led by the United States, as with the 1991 Gulf War, officials in Washington were glad to trumpet the UN\u2019s importance, he pointed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cStefanik is a jingoistic politician who gladly asserts the U.S. prerogative to run as much of the world as possible. To the extent that the Trump administration sees the United Nations as useful in that pursuit, her stint at the UN will go smoothly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And to the extent that many of the countries, with the other 95 percent of the planet\u2019s population seem to be getting in the way, \u201cwe can expect chauvinistic bombast from Stefanik, and Trump, reviling such countries and the UN as retrograde impediments to the glorious supreme virtues and power of the United States of America\u201d, said Solomon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mandeep S. Tiwana, Interim Co-Secretary General, CIVICUS<\/a>, told IPS the United States played a key role in the establishment of the UN in 1945.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBy choosing someone who clearly despises the UN and what it stands for as a candidate for Ambassador, Donald Trump and his advisors are repudiating the legacy of Late President Franklin Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who put in significant efforts to help set up the UN as a world body committed to international law and determined to save future generations from the scourge of war,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Disdain for human rights and the rules based international order brought untold suffering to humanity in the 20th century through two world wars. It would be extremely unwise for the incoming presidential administration in the United States to ignore these lessons from history,\u201d declared Tiwana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Solomon argued what was sometimes a more subtle attitude of a leader, such as president Joe Biden, providing king-of-the-world messages tinged with condescension and noblesse oblige, will be transformed into a harsher and more vicious approach beginning next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stefanik as a personality will be largely beside the point. The underlying imperial approach to the world will be a no-holds-barred assault in rhetorical, economic and \u2013 when seen as needed \u2013 military terms, he said<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor domestic consumption, the message from the Trump presidency will be the equivalent of no-more-mister-nice-guy, asserting that it\u2019s time to insist on fairness to Uncle Sam at last.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Posturing as the victim will, perhaps more than ever, be the effect of the U.S. government in foreign policy, at once claiming to be a victim while the United States renews efforts to dominate as much of the world as possible, said Solomon, author of \u201cWar Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n