By J.P. Sottile
President Trump opened
his big United Nations week … and his famous mouth … with a predictable plug
for one of his properties and some playful
glad-handing with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Trump also scolded
the U.N.’s unwieldy scrum for “not living up to its potential.” He made a
passing reference to the U.N.’s wasteful use of American money. And he called
for “reform” of the much-maligned
international forum.
It was a stolid prelude to
what will no doubt be “must-see” TV when he speaks to the UN General
Assembly on Tuesday about North Korea and Iran. And it was a far cry
from the way America’s leading “America Firster” spent the campaign lamenting how
unfair the U.N. is to the poor schlemiel we call Uncle Sam.
He is likely to use
his speech to throw a little bit of that same red meat to his base, but his
call for reform falls well short of what his supporters
want … which is an abrupt end of U.S. involvement in the
international body. They are motivated by a grab-bag of reasons that point to
the U.N. being a threat to their guns, their bank accounts and their God-given
freedom.
Oddly enough, these
conspiratorial narratives have been around for decades and they mostly center
on a grand plan by U.N. elites to abscond American sovereignty and dissolve the
U.S. into a U.N.-led world government. And the evidence of this is the way the
U.N. harasses and restricts Uncle Sam while siphoning-off America’s wealth. At
least, that’s what some think.
Most ominously, many
object to the way U.N. funds are being used to quietly deploy gun-grabbing
U.N. soldiers in advance of the big takeover.
But like so much of Trump’s intoxicating
irredentism … this is a grievance more likely rooted in a three-day
meth bender in a Tallahassee trailer park than it is from shocking evidence
gathered from well-traveled observation. It’s paranoia. But really, it’s worse
than that.
Why? Because the U.N.
has basically been the complete opposite of what its angriest critics claim. It
is not out to get the U.S. Rather, it has largely been America’s tool since its
inception and, in particular, it has repeatedly covered Uncle Sam’s
overly-exposed butt as he (a.k.a. “the royal we”) has gone around the world on
a three decade-long military bender since the end of the Cold War.
Yes, the Gulf War was
U.N. approved and the whole world got behind it because (April Glaspie’s
backstory notwithstanding) the prima facie case was strong
and it was a fairly clear-cut example of unwarranted aggression. That was an
easy call.
Global Violence
But since then, the
calls have been nothing short of murky as the U.S. has bombed and droned and
deployed and invaded and covertly-acted and regime-changed all around the
globe. And the unspoken truth is that the United Nations has been America’s
all-too silent partner as Uncle Sam traipsed around the planet with a loaded
gun, remote control assassination machines and paper-thin rationales for
intervention.
Although the U.N.
occasionally puts a bug up Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s ass on
the issue of the slow-motion ethnic cleansing in the West Bank … what other
issue is there where the U.N. has taken a real stand against the U.S. or U.S.
policy objectives?
Where is the U.N.’s
punishment for being lied to by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell? And
where is the punishment for destroying a bystander nation under false
pretenses? Where is the punishment for Abu Ghraib or Gitmo?
Where is the
punishment for America’s summary execution of “suspected militants” around the
Muslim world simply because they are of “military age” and in the wrong place
at the right time … and for the CIA, it is always the right time to kill a
suspect no matter how wrong the place many be. And where is the condemnation of
America’s destabilizing role as the world’s leading
supermarket of military hardware?
How about mounting
civilian causalities from an ever-widening widening bombing campaign? The U.N.
can say the killings are “unacceptable,”
but does it really matter if there is no sanction? There haven’t been any
sanctions after children were killed in a “U.S.-backed raid”
in Somalia. Go figure, right?
Or what about
America’s complicity in the catastrophe of Yemen? Where are those sanctions?
And what exactly has the U.N. done to punish any number of extra-legal maneuver
by a succession of American presidents over the course of the “Global War on
Terror”? The simple answer is nothing.
Instead, the Secretary
General is largely beholden to the disproportionate influence of the United
States. The Security Council’s agenda is basically set by the United States …
and that’s particularly true since the Soviet Union collapsed. At the same
time, the U.N.’s occasionally contentious debates do little more than offer the
imprimatur of international approbation or well-noted disdain despite the
functionally inconsequential nature of those debates.
A Fig Leaf for Empire
Either way it is a win
for Uncle Sam because the presence of a neutered United Nations provides the
United States with a fig leaf just big enough to cover the dangly parts of
America’s otherwise naked empire.
The money that does go
from the U.S. Treasury into the minutia around the margins … like UNESCO
programs and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the World Health
Organization (WHO) and all the other little crumbs that get thrown around the
world … these are payoffs. This is what the world gets for mostly keeping its
mouth shut in the face of America’s globe-spanning empire. The tiny amount of
aid that trickles down past the bureaucracy … much like the bureaucracy itself
… is not an example of America “getting played” by wasteful foreigners with
hidden agendas. This is America paying to play the world like organ grinder
with a hurdy-gurdy monkey.
Frankly, the “28.5% of the overall
peacekeeping bill” that Trump calls “unfair” (about $2.2
billion of the $3.3 billion the U.S. gives to the UN annually) is a
pittance … particularly if you want the unchecked right to tell Persians what
they can and cannot do in the Persian Gulf, to tell the Chinese what they can
and cannot build in the South China Sea, and to tell every other power on the
face of the earth why they cannot have the same nuclear capability America not only
has … but is currently “upgrading” to the tune of
$1.5 trillion.
Even more amazingly,
the U.S. wants to deny these nations the only real insurance policy against
U.S.-led regime change. And why is that? Because there ain’t a Curveball’s
chance in Hell that the U.N. will ever be able to stop Uncle Sam from marching
where he wants, when he wants and for whatever reason he wants to cook-up.
That’s a historically
provable fact.
The only real check on
U.S. power is the ability of an asymmetrical power to go nuclear. And let’s
admit it, they are ALL asymmetrical powers when compared to America’s
gargantuan, trillion-dollar
national security beast. And this is why the U.N.’s
“partnership” with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is the only
U.N.-associated agency that really matters. They can’t do much, but they can
throw a wrench into another WMD snipe hunt … like they are
doing now with the Iran Nuclear Deal.
But like it was tested
by Team Bush, the IAEA is going to be tested again as Trump and Netanyahu make their bogus
case … without a hint of irony … that Iran is the world’s greatest
threat. But that’s really just par for a course that’s riddled with falsified
flags haphazardly stuck into the shallow holes of a back nine that’s actually
been built by and for a club-wielding Uncle Sam.
A Cult of Grievance
And therein lies the
truly pernicious part of the Trumped-up case against the U.N. … because, like
so much of America’s growing cult of grievance, it reflects an ever-widening
gap between America’s stated ideals and its self-serving behavior around the world.
As we are learning
almost daily, Americans tried to square that circle by electing a profligate
liar who fully embodies America’s insatiable desire to take credit,
particularly where none is due … and to outsource the blame to scapegoats like
the U.N., particularly when the only alternative is a long look into the
mirror.
And in the case of the
U.N., that projected guilt is in spite of the fact that it is often tasked with
quietly cleaning up some of the collateral damage wrought by their main accuser.
They just have to do so without any real power or the funds to do the job.
That’s the simple truth you won’t hear in Trump’s speech … or any speech, for
that matter.
It’s the fact that the
U.N.’s meager amount of “wasteful spending” doesn’t even begin to cover the
cost of doing business when your business depends of paying the world to look
the other way while you get away with murder.
