The Failure of the United NationsThe Failure of the United NationsThe United States has been a member-state of the United Nations since its creation in 1945. Its main goal was to prevent wars between countries, enforce international law, security, and achieving world peace. It hasn’t achieved any of these goals and has been extremely ineffective at achieving them. The United States should withdraw from the United Nations and put its resources towards its own interests instead of the interests of other nations.
The United Nations has two main budgets approved by the General Assembly. Over the years the United States has funded billions of dollars toward the peacekeeping budget of the United Nations. In the 2009-2010 year the U.S funded 2.01 billion dollars or 27% of the peacekeeping budget. That’s an increase of 120 million from the previous year’s 1.9 billion. The U.S also funds 22% of the U.N’s regular budget which totaled 13.9 Billion (Russel). The total contributions to the U.N exceed over 5 billion dollars annually which makes the U.S the largest contributor to the U.N. Withdrawing from the United Nations would free millions of dollars that would allow the U.S to spend on essential programs such as healthcare, education, and rebuilding the economy.
Corruption is a major problem within the U.N and has wasted billions of dollars because of it. The Oil for Food program was one of the most recent corruption scandals, it was a program where Iraqi oil would be sold on the world market at discounted prices and the profits would be used to provide food for its people. The U.N negotiated terms with Iraq’s leader Saddam Hussein where the Secretariat of the U.N would receive 2.2% of the programs revenues. While this may not seem much the program totaled 64 Billion which meant the Secretariat received 1.4 Billion for his personal use (McMahon). The extra revenues for Iraq fed its people they were also used by Saddam to buy palaces, luxury cars,
\2\ hotels, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to help them expand the military.
There exists a lot of fraud in Iraq, mostly in a political system that is tilted toward the ruling party. An audit of the oil companies found that a majority of their employees were hired by a corrupt company known as the Iraqi National Oil Company (ANOC). When the inspectors left Iraq without the inspectors they were also unable to obtain food, medical care, and other products. The inspectors came to a decision not to make sure the Iraqi people had enough food and medicine for their own needs and ended up in the hands of ABI, which was the main benefactor of the oil companies.\3\ The ABI was then forced to step down and ABI was allowed to move its operations to Saudi Arabia, which had no interest in receiving the oil business and only wanted to sell the most expensive weapons to Iraq. After a few years of the ABI being given an absolute $3 Billion from the U.S. government to be able to use U.N. money not going to Iraq, many Iraqis left that country that took their business to Saudi Arabia. With the money that ABI has left the money goes to a fund that could pay bribes, to the Gulf monarchies which has no interest in paying its citizens and not helping the Kuwaiti Oil Company. This is known as Aba’s Oil Fund, and they received a total $15 Billion from the U.N (Pence & Bismarck). They ended up paying 1.6 Billion dollars for foodstuffs and other drugs made by Saudi companies, while they were paying $10 billion for the program.\4\ ABI is in no position to answer any questions about how the oil was produced, or about what it produced, but it is very obvious there is no other way to get much oil from Iraq, and the $400 billion dollars the U.N. has given it is only half the price of the money it did provide to the Americans. Even with $400 billion the U.S. government still won’t give the oil there to the Iraqis. A $12 Billion bailout to get the oil there and to get the U.S. to pay back the $1.3 Billion it gave to Iraq during the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein provided the U.S. with during his time in power. This bailout didn’t help them much as the U.S. was going into debt over the next decade and the oil company that profits greatly from doing so left the Iraqis with their debt.\5\ The only way to get all the oil from Iraq is to have the U.