Protection racket? The UN can barely stop anyone from doing anything. Membership is not required to be a sovereign nation. They don't break your legs for leaving. They don't, as a policy, make war on non-member states.
If the job of the UN is for world governments to try and form a consensus in policy matters (like, you know, identifying who cares the least about indiscriminately killing children in their wars), and deploy peacekeeping forces, to me that's the same as funding your fire department, your police or your local government.
No one's tax money is really their own?
Because as American citizens we really have so much control over what our tax dollars do now, right? I'm not saying "let the UN levy a 7% sales tax on the world."
But consider that the US currently provides
28.38% of the UN's $8.27 billion dollar budget. That alone is an insane number when you see the next largest contributor is
Japan at 10%. We already prop up the UN, so it's no surprise they took Israel off the list at our demand. (Israel, btw, doesn't even make the list at less than 2.97% of the UN's budget.)
With everyone required to pay their dues to be part of the UN, a) the US burden could lessen marginally (we would probably set the high watermark for what you'd pay in), b) nations do not have the option of pulling their funding and damaging the UN while still being allowed to manipulate it and c) it actually gives the UNs decisions weight. It gains negotiating power because your money isn't the ax you hold over its neck. When the US or Russia decide they're going to do whatever they please, they would have to literally give the finger to the entire world and leave the UN, rather than just going "We're going to do it. Oh and....we won't be contributing to the UN for the next couple years. Things get tight on a war time budget. You know how it is."
It's the same social contract that exists in every modern society, except on a global scale. Which is partly the reason I don't think the UN is effective in its current state, or any state: it doesn't actually function like a global society.
My reasoning is why I personally decided not to get into journalism and media after college. After realizing that advertising revenue meant more to most papers/websites than what they report, how they report or how they frame their reporting, I decided I didn't want to work in an industry that was basically beholden, on a daily basis, to someone else's purse strings. That you'd end up being forced to do something you didn't want to do....like invalidating a list of war crimes by ignoring the truth.
The UN is a like a broke-ass waiter dealing with a table of rowdy jerks who have been coming there for years, and when he asks them to keep it quiet and civil they go "You want your tip or not? Then shaddap!"
editLol, that link, it's even right there.
Every Member State is legally obligated to pay their respective share towards peacekeeping. This is in accordance with the provisions of Article 17 of the Charter of the United Nations.
The General Assembly apportions peacekeeping expenses based on a special scale of assessments under a complex formula that Member States themselves have established. This formula takes into account, among other things, the relative economic wealth of Member States, with the five permanent members of the Security Council required to pay a larger share because of their special responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.
Now, maybe the US wasn't talking about revoking its share of the peacekeeping budget, but I think the principle is largely the same.
Author
Topic: United Nations related nonsense thread (Read 7189 times)