Sunday Times 2
New US envoy threatens UN even before taking office
View(s):By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS (IPS)— John Bolton a former US ambassador to the United Nations (2005-2006) once infamously proclaimed that if the 39-storeyed UN Secretariat building in New York “lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”
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.
Similarly, one of his successors Niki Haley told a Republican National Convention that the “UN was a place where dictators, murderers and thieves denounce America, and demand that we pay their bills.”
Elise Stefanik: A fierce critic of the UN
And now comes President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee—House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York—who has condemned the United Nations as “corrupt and anti-Semitic”—to be his next ambassador to the world body.
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.
According to a November 11 report in Politico, a Washington-based political digital newspaper, Trump is elevating a fierce critic of the UN as his emissary—the latest sign that he plans to make good on pledges to strongly support Israel on the world stage and play hardball with international organisations and alliances.
In a September 25 Washington Examiner article titled “If the United Nations continues its antisemitism, the US must withdraw support”, Stefanik said the UN had proven again and again that it was a cesspool of anti-Semitism that had completely turned against Israel in its darkest hour.
But her hard-hitting comments have triggered equally vociferous condemnations.
Kul Gautam, a former UN assistant Secretary-General, told IPS that Trump’s proposed new appointment was “a frightening prospect for the UN”.
“Stefanik seems to represent the antithesis of the UN ideals, multilateralism, and respect for international laws—all in the interest of blanket US support for Israel,” he said. Indeed, all of Trump’s national security nominees seem to fit what Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council characterises as: Israel-First, America-Second, Humanity-Last ethos, said Gautam, a former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF.
According to the US Congressional Research Service (CRS), the approved regular budget for the UN is $3.6 billion for FY 2024. The General Assembly determines a regular budget scale of assessments every three years based on a country’s capacity to pay. The Assembly will likely adopt new assessment rates for the 2025-2027 period in December 2024.
The United States is currently assessed at 22%, the highest of any UN member, followed by China (15.25%) and Japan (8.03%).
But this may change under the Trump administration.
As Stefanik warned: “We must strive for a UN 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 organisation corrupted by the likes of the Chinese Communist Party can dictate sweeping conventions and international standards across its membership”.
Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and national director, RootsAction.org told IPS that for many decades, the US government has viewed the United Nations as either a legitimising rubber stamp or a recalcitrant dissenter to be ignored and belittled.
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’s importance, he pointed out.
“Stefanik is a jingoistic politician who gladly asserts the US 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.”
And to the extent that many of the countries, with the other 95 percent of the planet’s population seem to be getting in the way, “we 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”, said Solomon.
Mandeep S. Tiwana, Interim Co-Secretary General, CIVICUS, told IPS the United States played a key role in the establishment of the UN in 1945.
“By 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,” he said.
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,” declared Tiwana.
Stefanik has also been critical of “the absurdly misnamed “Human Rights Council,” composed of some of the world’s worst human rights abusers, which has a standing anti-Semitic agenda item related to Israel and adopted a resolution stating that Israel should be held responsible for war crimes, all while failing to condemn the atrocities committed by Hamas”.