Justin Stoker
Tacoma, Wash.
For the past couple of days I have been reading about the U.N. in the Reader Forum. All I have seen are shots from the two extremes, the marvelous U.N. and the evil U.N. I think there is a modest middle to it all. I have followed the U.N. closely during the past five years. I participated in Model U.N. in Europe and have written several papers on the effectiveness on the U.N. Now let me tell you how I feel.
First, I agree that the U.N. is helpful supervising elections in newly-democratic nations and maintaining a high standard of the world exports, working conditions, and airline safety, but there is a part of the U.N. that thinks that it is more than it should be. Every year the U.S. puts the U.S. military into the hands of foreign commanders to serve the interests that don't necessarily belong to the U.S. Second, the U.S. spends an extreme amount of money on the U.N. related operations. According to the U.N. Administrative Committee on Coordination Statistical Report the U.N. received $1.836 billion dollars from the U.S. government in 1995. A lot of this money went to 'the regular U.N. budget,' 'specialized agencies,' and other 'programs' (Bureaus of International Organization Affairs and Public Affairs). This doesn't include the billions of dollars that the U.S. spends for U.N. sponsored activities. Who knows how much of the U.S. taxpayer dollars actually went to humanitarian work. On top of all this, the U.S. is more than a billion dollars in debt to the U.N. By the same statistical report I mentioned before we are giving almost three times the amount of money to the U.N. than any other nation besides Japan, who can't provide military assistance.
Are the U.S. interests being represented or are they at risk. President Washington stated in his farewell address to the nation, that we should 'avoid entangling alliances.' I agree that there needs to be an organization keeping the world safely together, but we can't let the U.N. turn into a powerful world government everybody loses.