As the richest and most powerful nation in the world, the United States should be the natural leader in meeting global challenges.
Yet our relations with our friends and allies have been severely strained by the ugly repercussions of the Iraq war, and other nations have been very reluctant to follow our lead.
But there is one easy step we can take to repair some of the damage: Let’s pay our dues at the United Nations.
This suggestion may surprise you because many people have the mistaken impression that the U.S. supplies the lion’s share of U.N. revenue.
This is far from the case. If we scale contributions by ability to pay (Gross Domestic Product), the U.S. ranks far down the list of contributors.
We are assessed only 22% of the regular budget and 27% of the peacekeeping budget, both far below our share of the world economy.
And yet we refuse to pay even this. Congress has capped our share of peacekeeping contributions at 25%. We won’t pay our full assessment, and what we do pay is late.
Our persistent refusal to pay on time is a source of constant irritation to the other member states, which rightly resent the attitude of condescension it implies.
We act like the spoiled rich kid on the playground, who wants to take his ball and go home because the other kids won’t play by his rules.
And why do we do this? The official explanation is that we are trying to encourage U.N. reform. This is not very convincing because our enthusiasm for reform can charitably be described as selective. Take the new Human Rights Council, which replaced the old and discredited Human Rights Commission.
Since its inception the U.S. has declined to run for a seat on the council. Rather than leading the charge for reform, we have opted to stay on the sidelines and criticize the efforts of others.
And in any case, we are ignoring the old adage that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Encouraging other U.N. member states to participate in reform efforts is futile if we simultaneously cause affront by our arrogant refusal to pay our share.
Our total arrears at the U.N. (as of the end of last year) is less than $2 billion if we lump together the regular and peacekeeping assessments. That may sound like a lot, but we spend more than that in one week in Iraq.
Our recalcitrant attitude is self-defeating in that it gains us little monetarily but comes at a dreadful price in terms of our relations with other nations.
We can hardly lead others by example when we fail in the most basic responsibility of U.N. membership, the simple duty to pay our fair share.
Imagine the effect if we were to bite the bullet and pay our U.N. dues, in full and on time. It would immediately signal to the world community that we are serious about playing a leading role in confronting challenges like nuclear proliferation, global warming, and terrorism.
No single nation, no matter how powerful, can go it alone in today’s world. This is why the U.N. can be such a powerful vehicle to confront these problems.
The actions of the U.N. carry a unique moral authority because they express the collective will of the nations of the world. What better way to secure the cooperation of other nations than to stop dragging our feet?
Congress is now working on an emergency supplemental spending bill that will cover our U.N. contributions. To reclaim our world leadership we need to turn over a new leaf and forget the divisive quarrels of the past. Let’s encourage our legislators to promptly pay our fair share at the U.N. and start acting like the good neighbors we aspire to be.
James J. Amato is a retired physicist and president of the Pikes Peak chapter of the United Nations Association. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
