Also included in this proposal was endnotes, a well written conclusion, related academic articles, statistics to strengthen their argument, and the following opening. The total report was 35 pages in length.
March 29, 2003
North Davidson High School
Formal United States Proposal for withdrawal from the United Nations
It has become evident through the course of recent events that the political motivations of voting members in the United Nations Security Council have rendered the authority and legitimacy of the UN to enforce and dictate resolutions inside of its member countries ineffective and obsolete. The importance of dealing with the problem of ineffectiveness inside of the United Nations can not be underestimated. Every year the United States contributes over 200 million dollars in UN dues. It is of no logical purpose for the U.S. to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars in our citizens' money to an organization that does not represent the economic and moral goals and aspirations of the majority of Americans.
It is our intent to ask this representative assembly to in no uncertain terms sever all membership ties between the United States of America and the United Nations. It is also our hope that the United Nations will redirect its energies and find once again its original purpose which was to promote real peace, repress unjust governments, and make the world a more equitable place for all peoples. Should that happen, perhaps then the United States will feel that the United Nations is once again worth joining.
Implementation for such a proposal is not difficult.
Costs for this legislation would be no more than what it costs to debate and vote on the yearly budget in the Senate. In fact if this proposal passes we will save over 200 million dollars a year in revenue unused from United Nations dues.
It is important to weigh all of the facts when debating a matter such as this, and looking at the whole picture is an absolute necessity. That is why we have not just limited our search of inability to effectively govern to the present. The United Nations history for enforcing its mandates has been poor. For example: in 1967 the UN mandated that Israeli forces must withdraw from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Today they are still there, in direct defiance to the UN resolution.
Stefan Halper, a former White House and State Department official, is a nationally syndicated columnist.
1. There is no reliable way to determine whether the various and often competing specialized agencies are doing their job
2. An American withdrawal would almost certainly mean the collapse of the United Nations. Without the generous, if unwilling, support of U.S. taxpayers, the UN would face imminent financial ruin.
3. Recent and expensive peacekeeping failures in Angola, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Somalia have greatly fueled the discontent. Even the relatively successful operations in Mozambique demonstrated that various UN agencies are often shockingly incompetent. For example, the Office for Humanitarian Affairs Coordination managed to interfere with the work of other groups, with delayed unnecessarily the removal of land mines.
4. Any prescriptions for measured reform may well be much too little and much, much too late. After all, as members of Congress on both sides of the aisle well know, previous attempts at correcting the United Nations' many failings have come largely to naught. The most significant congressional effort at overhaul was the so-called Kassebaum-Solomon amendment passed in 1985. That measure required the United States to reduce its twenty-five percent share of the general UN budget to twenty percent unless a weighted system of voting on budget matters was introduced in the General Assembly. The legislation did spark some attempts at cutting spending and reducing the number of top administrators, but in general the United Nations has ignored or evaded the clear purpose of Kassebaum-Solomon.
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