Republicans Advance Bill to Slash Funding for U.N.

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By Jim Lobe*WASHINGTON, Oct 13, 2011 (IPS) - One day after a nation-wide poll found strong popular support for the United Nations, Republicans on a key Congressional foreign policy committee Thursday voted to cut U.S. funding for the world body if it did not implement major changes.

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives voted 23-15 for the United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act.

It would require Washington, among other provisions, to cut 50 percent of funding for the U.N. unless it converted to a voluntary contribution system permitting Washington to fund only those agencies and programmes "that advance U.S. interests and values".

The bill would also require Washington to quit the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC); withhold contributions to any U.N. agency or programme that upgrades the current "observer" status of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO); and end U.S. contributions to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the U.N. body charged with aiding Palestinian refugees since 1949.

The bill's future is uncertain. A vote on the floor of the Republican-controlled House has not yet been scheduled. Even if it passed there, it is unlikely to be approved by the Senate, where Democrats are in the majority, and if in the unlikely event that it passed both houses, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she would press President Barack Obama to veto it.

"This bill mandates actions that would severely limit the United States' participation in the United Nations, damaging longstanding treaty commitments under the United Nations Charter and gravely harming U.S. national interests, those of our allies, and the security of Americans at home and abroad," Clinton warned in a letter to the Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman and the bill's chief sponsor, Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Wednesday, as well as the committee's ranking Democrat, California Representative Howard Berman.

Despite its uncertain future, a number of analysts say it requires attention. "Even though this bill will likely not become law this year, it has to be taken seriously now because it sets the Republican agenda," said Don Kraus, CEO of Citizens for Global Solutions (CGS), a national grassroots group.

"It could well reappear in 2013, when control of Congress and the White House may change and enactment of this bill will be more likely," he added.

The bill is one part of a multi-pronged assault by Republicans on the U.N. and some of its specialised agencies.

Just last week, for example, the Foreign Affairs Committee approved a measure to ban U.S. funding next year for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), which the Republican right has long accused of promoting abortion and China's strict birth-control policies.

The ban will likely have to be reconciled with the Senate's approval of 40 million dollars for the agency in a general appropriations bill.

In August, a key Republican-led House appropriations committee sliced a total of 600 million dollars from the administration's 2012 request of 3.5 billion dollars for the U.N. and its peacekeeping operations. It also zeroed out U.S. contributions to UNHRC.

In addition, Republican lawmakers are pressing the Obama administration to oppose U.N. plans to build a new office building at Turtle Bay in New York.

Since the U.N.'s founding in the last days of World War II, the U.S. has been its single biggest contributor. Washington currently funds 22 percent of the U.N.'s regular budget and some 27 percent of its peacekeeping budget. The U.N.'s total budget this year is 22.3 billion dollars, of which Washington has paid 6.4 billion dollars.

Opinion polls have shown substantial public support for the world body over many decades.

On the eve of Thursday's committee vote, a new survey of 900 registered voters released by the Better World Campaign found that nearly nine in ten (86 percent) said it was important that the U.S. maintain an active role within the U.N.

About two out of three said Washington should pay its dues to the U.N. (64 percent) and to U.N. peacekeeping operations on time and in full. It found that majorities of Republicans, as well as Democrats and independents, agreed with all three propositions.

Asked about legislation that would cut U.S. funding to the U.N., respondents in the survey, which was co-conducted by a Democratic and a Republican polling firm, found significant partisan differences. While 67 percent of Democrats said they would oppose cuts, Republicans and independents were more evenly split.

Half of Republicans said they would support such cuts, while 44 percent said they would oppose them. Among independents, 41 percent said they would support cuts, while a 51 percent majority opposed them.

"This polling once again shows that Americans do not want to see the United States go back into debt at the United Nations," said Timothy Wirth, a former senator and current president of the U.N. Foundation.

"While misguided legislation in Congress would cause America to forfeit our leadership at the U.N., we see time and time again that the majority of voters across the political spectrum believe the U.S. should have an active role within the U.N.," he added.

Last week, a group of 30 formerly top-ranking U.S. diplomats, military officers, and lawmakers – both Democrats and Republicans – also released a strong statement in support of the U.N. and in thinly veiled opposition to the pending bill.

"No doubt, U.S. contributions to the U.N. must be judicious and prudent: accountability, transparency and effectiveness for any organisation, including the U.N.," declared the letter, which was signed by a number of top Republicans, including former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Defence Secretary William Cohen, and half a dozen former senior Republican senators.

"At the same time, our ability to burden share with other nations helps defray costs, promote stability, and enhance the impact of our resources. Withholding U.S. funding weakens both our influence and support for our national priorities, while strengthening the hands of our adversaries," they warned.

But Ros-Lehtinen pressed ahead with her bill, introducing it with a litany of complaints about pending U.N. budget increases, its alleged anti-Israel bias and lack of transparency.

"We will never achieve lasting, sweeping reforms if the U.S. keeps paying in full what the U.N. dictates to us, with no consequences for the U.N.'s failures," she declared, noting that the main thrust of the bill would be to force the world body to shift 80 percent of its funding basis from mandatory dues to voluntary contributions within two years.

Failure to meet that deadline, according to the bill, would result in the U.S. withholding half of its annual contribution and continuing to do so until the 80 percent mark is achieved.

The bill would also impose new reporting requirements by the U.N. to ensure, among other things, that U.S. contributions are used "for the specific purposes for which (they were) made available by Congress".

*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

General Disassembly

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To hear Republican politicians tell it, the failure of the United States to stop the Palestinians' headlong drive for member-state status at the U.N. Security Council was the result of employing too many carrots and not enough sticks. That line of reasoning was on full display this week, as Congressfroze $200 million in assistance earmarked for the Palestinian Authority in retaliation for its statehood bid. But a number of GOP figures are thinking even bigger -- or smaller, as it turns out: Seeking a tougher U.S. line on a U.N. system that they say allows rogue states to operate with diplomatic impunity, they are rallying support for measures that would fundamentally transform the U.S. relationship with the world's preeminent international body.

With the 2012 presidential campaign focused elsewhere, Republican candidates have been less explicit about their views of the U.N. system, though Rick Perry and Mitt Romney have both called for the United States to reassess its sizable contributions to the organization if the Palestinians gain any sort of recognition at the U.N. General Assembly. Both GOP front-runners should be easy converts to the anti-U.N. cause: Romney called the United Nations "an extraordinary failure" in his previous campaign for president, and Perry refused to honor United Nations Day as Texas governor in 2004.

Meanwhile, House Republicans are pushing a slew of legislation that would do everything from block funding to certain U.N. bodies to withdraw the United States from the United Nations entirely. The most high-profile GOP proposal, a piece of legislation introduced by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), would completely restructure how -- and how much -- the United States contributes to the international organization.

While none of the bills has any chance of becoming law during this Congress, thanks to opposition from Senate Democrats, the growing Republican antipathy to the United Nations has the potential to transform U.S. involvement with the world's premier international institution in the years ahead. For that reason, U.N. officials and their defenders in U.S. officialdom aren't taking any chances.

Several pro-U.N. advocacy groups had their rapid-response operations firing after Ros-Lehtinen's first hearing as House Foreign Affairs chair -- in a session titled "The United Nations: Urgent Problems That Need Congressional Action" -- back in January. And when her bill was introduced in late August, they countered with a grassroots and media campaign opposing the legislation. The State Department's International Organization Affairs Bureau has also stepped up its media outreach considerably ever since Ros-Lehtinen took office.

This week, a bipartisan policy group, Partnership for a Secure America, is running a one-day, full-page ad in Capitol Hill publications Politico, Roll Call, the Hill, and Congressional Quarterly stating that withholding funds to the United Nations hurts U.S. national security interests. The statement is signed by 30 former lawmakers and administration officials from both parties, as well as retired military generals.

From a congressional vantage point, the palpable level of concern over a bill that at this point amounts to little more than routine political posturing seems overblown. But in Turtle Bay, where every turn of phrase is freighted with meaning, Washington's rhetoric is taken very seriously, especially when coming from the government that foots the largest proportion of the U.N. bill. The United States each year contributes 22 percent of the U.N.'s regular budget, which amounted to $583 million this year. Japan is the next largest contributor, funding 16.6 percent of the budget, followed by Germany at 8.6 percent.

Over the past 30 years, both U.S. funding and leadership at the United Nations have ebbed and flowed. Under President Barack Obama, the United States has paid up and anted up at the United Nations, reinvigorating American participation in the body and conducting aggressive diplomacy at the Security Council and in a range of U.N. bodies with which it had only limited involvement during George W. Bush's administration. But the nexus of spending pressures at home, doubts about interventionism overseas, and a rising conservative corps in Congress could presage another downturn.

Those defending a strong U.S. role at the United Nations have American public opinion on their side. A survey this spring conducted by a nonpartisan polling outfit for the pro-U.N. advocacy group the Better World Campaign found that 85 percent of voters think the United States should play an active role within the United Nations, and 60 percent of Americans say the country should pay its U.N. dues on time and in full.

Of course, the United Nations has long been criticized for offering a platform for Israel-bashing and anti-U.S. initiatives. That is perhaps the reason that a Gallup poll this year found that, though Americans did not want to withdraw from the body, only 31 percent of respondents answered that the United Nations was doing a good job in trying to solve the world's problems, while 62 percent said it was doing a poor job.

The Palestinian statehood bid will only exacerbate these divisions. If the United States is forced to veto the resolution to grant the Palestinians' member-state status at the Security Council, the Palestinians will likely appeal to the General Assembly -- providing an even larger forum for countries to criticize Israeli and U.S. policies. This in turn will allow Republican critics of the United Nations to paint their cause as a necessary step to advance Israel's security, thereby gaining further momentum in Congress.

U.N. supporters in Washington are thus, for good reason, on the defensive. But in much the same way Ros-Lehtinen and her allies in Congress sense a political opening from the intense reaction to the Palestinian statehood debate in New York, U.N. supporters say the recent spotlight on the organization can also be an opportunity.

"We have to use it as a moment to educate members about the economic and security and political interests of the United States," that the United Nations serves, says Peter Yeo, executive director of the Better World Campaign, which is funded by billionaire CNN founder Ted Turner.

Groups like Yeo's are aiming to reinforce to lawmakers just how much more there is to the organization than the anti-Israel demagoguery and peacekeeper abuses that make the news. Their point: Ros-Lehtinen's bill -- what Yeo calls "the most drastic U.N. reform measure ever introduced" -- would not only go after what is dysfunctional about the organization, but also weaken its very foundations.

Whereas past measures in the 1980s and 1990s were narrowly targeted -- withholding funding proportional to the cost of various controversial programs or blocking money until certain reform measures were taken -- Ros-Lehtinen's legislation would transform how the entire organization is funded.

"It would be problematic for the organization because its funding would not be predictable," said Abiodun Williams, a onetime advisor to U.N. Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon who's now at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Ros-Lehtinen and her Republican allies say making country-by-country contributions 80 percent voluntary, rather than letting the body assign annual dues to each country as it does now, would make the United Nations more responsive. Critics say it would be unworkable -- destroying consensus and making anything other than short-term planning impossible.

It's a possibility that has made even some fire-breathing hawks queasy. Former Vice President Dick Cheney told conservative Pajamas Media in September that he did not think defunding the organization is "necessarily the right response here."

Bush's administration -- no cheerleader for the United Nations -- also resisted a similar House Republican effort in 2005. A bill sponsored by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) would have withheld 50 percent of U.S. dues unless a long list of reforms were made. Although the bill passed the House, it never made it through the Senate, in part due to intense White House pressure.

Other GOP proposals could also gain traction if Republicans captured the Senate or the White House in 2012. The Republicans' funding proposal for the United Nations in the coming fiscal year is a particularly useful blueprint for how a GOP Congress might attempt to curtail U.S. involvement in the United Nations.

This House funding measure, which will need to be reconciled with the Senate version to become law, would slice more than $276 million in contributions to international organizations -- more than three-quarters of which goes to the United Nations -- and another $229 million from the administration's request for U.N. peacekeeping operations. If enacted, those funding levels would put the United States back in the red on its U.N. dues.

The spending bill would also withhold 70 percent of the funds for any U.N. organization or agency --until the State Department certifies that the United States has access to its financial and performance audits. And it bars funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, a controversial arm that assists Palestinian refugees, to which the United States has made voluntary contributions under both Obama and Bush.

The Obama administration points to the progress it has made on an array of issues at the United Nations as evidence that the country can accomplish much more working from within the system than from withdrawing.

"The goal of reform is one we are working to pursue every day of the week," U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice recently told reporters, "but we believe very strongly the way to do that is from the vantage point of a member in good standing that meets its obligation and is viewed as a constructive player where we influence as much as we can, rather than as a laggard and a debtor."

The U.N. reforms that Obama officials have hailed have not been significant enough for critics like Ros-Lehtinen, however. The U.N.'s problems "aren't anomalies, and they can't be swept under the rug," Ros-Lehtinen said recently in a statement. "Continuing to send the UN big checks with no strings attached doesn't help anyone: not the U.S., not our allies, and not anyone else who seeks a UN that upholds its founding principles."

Ros-Lehtinen's legislation faces a long, challenging road to becoming law, even if Republicans seize control of the Senate and White House in 2012. In part because of her agitation, however, the question of U.N. funding is now back on the U.S. political agenda. And should one of the Republican presidential challengers manage to unseat Obama next year, the United Nations is likely to find few friendly American faces around Turtle Bay.

Obama says: " United Nations Vienna treaty should apply over Texas laws and a rapist who brutally murdered a 16 yrs. old should not be executed"

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President Obama, the State Department and Mexico ask Texas to halt the impending execution of a Mexican national convicted of rape and murder, citing a U.N. (United Nations) - enforced treaty.

“Texas is not bound by a foreign court’s ruling,” Katherine Cesinger, press secretary for Gov. Perry's office said in a statement. “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the treaty was not binding on the states and that the president does not have the authority to order states to review cases of the then 51 foreign nationals on death row in the U.S.”

UN's Ban to Combat U.S. Republican Critics as Funding Questioned

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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he will try to blunt a threat by Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives to withhold financial support for the world body by meeting with them to defend his record.

Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, new head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, last July called the UN a “stew of corruption, mismanagement and negligence.”

Ros-Lehtinen is holding a hearing featuring UN critics on Jan. 25. She plans legislation to increase congressional scrutiny and to make the U.S. financial commitment voluntary, rather than an annual amount stipulated by a formula based on national economic output.

“I am sure I will be able to talk with Republicans in Congress and try to explain my priorities,” Ban said in an interview yesterday at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. “I think their priorities and my priorities are the same. The only complaint they may have is the lack of much faster progress than they might have expected.”

Ban, 66, is seeking to make the case for his efforts to improve UN management and provide protection of civilians in conflict-ridden countries as he enters the final year of his five-year term in office. He declined to declare that he is seeking a second term.

UN Image

The former South Korean foreign minister said he is struggling to overcome what he called a “fixed, framed image” of the UN as ineffective and mismanaged over the course of its six decades of existence.

“I am also sometimes frustrated by a lack of progress, but if you look at my four years as secretary-general, we have made quite significant progress in terms of transparent work, accountability, more efficiency and mobility,” Ban said. “It was me who for the first time in UN history had all senior advisers disclose their financial assets.”

Ros-Lehtinen was elevated to chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee following the election of a Republican majority in the House last November. Ban has had good relations with President Barack Obama’s Democratic administration, which moved in June 2009 to erase all U.S. debts to the UN for the first time since 1999.

“I’ve met with Secretary Ban in the past and I look forward to meeting with him again to discuss what I believe is a critical need to bring sweeping reform to the UN,” Ros-Lehtinen said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. “Not nearly enough has been done to address the across-the-board lack of transparency, accountability, and resistance to reform that is seen throughout the sprawling UN apparatus.”

Ban said he has met Ros-Lehtinen many times, knows her “very well” and will travel toWashington soon to meet with congressional leaders of both parties.

Punishing the UN

Asked about the threat to withhold U.S. funding, Ban said that “rather than try to punish by cutting the budget, continuing with robust and proper financial support will be better for the long-term interests of the U.S.”

The U.S. last year contributed $517 million to the UN’s operating budget of $2.17 billion and $2.68 billion of the $9.67 billion peacekeeping budget, the most of any nation.

Republican control of the House will “create difficulty for the UN in a way that Ban has been spared,” Jeff Laurenti, a UN analyst at the New York-based Century Foundation research group, said in an interview.

Republican President George W. Bush “became a little more reliant on the UN as he was bogged down in Iraq, Obama got the arrears paid off and Ban has had two years of a free ride,” Laurenti said. “Now there is the question of whether Ban is capable of defending the UN in the U.S. public debate when its enemies have power to wield against it.”

UN Reform Act

The first significant push for improvements in UN management came during the administration of President Bill Clinton, who signed the Helms-Biden United Nations Reform Act of 1999. It tied U.S. payments to specified steps to improve management. Republican Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois, a former Foreign Affairs chairman, tried unsuccessfully in 2006 to pass legislation tying payments to UN management changes.

U.S. debts, erased in 1999, began to build up again through late payments and underfunding during the Bush administration.

“Ban is continuing modest incremental steps on transparency and accountability, but nothing substantial,” Mark Lagon, a former aide to Republican Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolinaand now an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said in an interview. “There is sincere concern on the part of Congress and the consistent position that voluntary funding works with agencies such as the World Food Program.”

UN Accomplishments

Ban and senior advisers who attended the interview cited such UN accomplishments as efforts to save lives in Myanmar following the 2008 cyclone there, success in Sudan in deploying a joint UN and African Union peacekeeping mission in the nation’s Darfur region, and assisting with the recent peaceful referendum on Southern Sudan’s independence. Ban also noted work helping Haiti recover from natural disasters and Iraq from the civil war that followed the 2003 U.S. invasion.

“There should be some fair appreciation and understanding of what the UN is doing and has been doing,” Ban said. “The UN is an organization of 192 member states. The U.S. makes the largest financial contribution, but there are many other member states who have different views who have made the work of the UN sometimes very slow.”

Human Rights Council

Referring to Ros-Lehtinen’s criticism of the UN’s Geneva- based Human Rights Council for allowing the membership of China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Libya, all accused of human rights abuses, he said this was an issue of the governments that chose them rather than his responsibility.

“The United States has worked very constructively and productively with this secretary-general,” U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said this week. “We have been grateful for his leadership on a number of important issues, and we continue to talk about the ways we can work together to strengthen this institution, to make it more efficient, more cost effective, and to improve its performance.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Bill Varner at the United Nations atwvarner@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva in Washington atmsilva34@bloomberg.net

US-UN Relations, Foreign Aid to Come Under Fire in New Congress

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Barbara CrossetteWed Dec 15, 12:17 pm ET

The Nation -- While President Obama was just beginning to make headway against the often cynical approach to human rights at the United Nations, and had begun to repair US-UN relations and the image of the United States globally, Republicans were warming up for another chance to bully the world. With a shift in power, arrogant and often ignorant resurgent cold warriors and neo-isolationists could make 2011 a risky year for the UN, where the US is still the dominant voice.

The Republican right, now fortified by a dose of Tea Party patriotism, has a list of targets: international agreements that might dare to constrain the US, money spent on some UN development programs, foreign aid generally and soft diplomacy. The enemies are foreigners who criticize American policies and power. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican from Miami who will chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee, says she’s ready to play “hardball.”

"I plan on using U.S. contributions to international organizations as leverage to press for real reform of those organizations, such as the United Nations,” Ros-Lehtinen, a relentless foe of her native Cuba, among other nations, said in a statement when she was chosen committee chair on December 8. She added that she will “not hesitate to call for withdrawal of U.S. funds to failed entities like the discredited Human Rights Council if improvements are not made.”

She also promised to cut the “fat” from foreign aid. A recent WorldPublicOpinion.org poll from the University of Maryland showed that Americans still wildly overestimate the percentage of the federal budget spent on international assistance. Respondents to the poll said that they thought, on average, that aid accounted for about a quarter of the budget; in reality it is barely 1 percent.

In the Senate, a narrower Democratic majority could make it even more difficult to round up the votes necessary for action on foreign policy steps Republicans oppose.

Threats to the UN, or even American membership in it, are all too familiar in Washington, but no less disturbing, given the recent history of Republican-inspired assaults. Some actions were farcical, others more damaging.

In the 1990s, Congress outlawed the naming of Unesco World Heritage Sites in the US without its approval on the absurd theory that Unesco threatened national sovereignty. In 2001, American contributions to the UN Population Fund were eliminated by a campaign originating in the House that falsely accused the fund of abetting forced abortions in China. At least 200 million women are now thought to be seeking but not finding contraception as world population rises to 7 billion next year—almost all the growth in the poorest countries where maternal deaths rates are high. American contributions were restored by Obama, but another campaign by anti-abortion activists against the Population Fund and progressive, secular nongovernmental agencies supported by USAID cannot be ruled out.

UN officials are often targeted by critics before the facts are in. In 2004, then Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota called in the Wall Street Journal for the resignation of Secretary-General Kofi Annan because of his handling of corruption surrounding the oil-for-food program in Iraq during a period of UN sanctions. The campaign to oust Annan took a physical toll on him, little mitigated when an investigation led by Paul Volcker found that the billions Saddam Hussein reaped from illegal deals were largely bribes from private corporations (some American) or government trading agencies such as the Australian Wheat Board. A former French ambassador to the UN and India’s foreign minister were implicated as recipients of Iraqi financial favors, but not Annan. The US, as a Security Council member with the power to stop the undercover deals, had been turning a blind eye to much of what was going on in order to keep its Iraq sanctions policy in place.

As for the Human Rights Council, a favorite target on Capitol Hill, even the mainstream media has difficulty understanding how it works. The council is a UN body only in the same way the Security Council is—a group of nations making its own rules completely out of the control of the secretary-general or any other UN official. Its rights monitors are independent, pro-bono experts who not infrequently criticize the US or give a pass to nations with far worse records. The Obama team was beginning to demonstrate that the only way to influence this body is to get inside, blow whistles, demand show-your-face votes and reject weasel consensuses. An impatient Congress would argue for the opposite course—just get out, and stay out. That was George W. Bush’s policy.

Certainly doomed next year and beyond will be any action on two generally harmless (to national sovereignty) international conventions on the rights of children (important to those battling global child trafficking and child prostitution) and on the elimination of discrimination against women. Senators, who are responsible for ratifying treaties, are lining up to block the Convention on the Rights of the Child, although the US is virtually alone among UN member nations in refusing to ratify it. The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, generally known as CEDAW, had a half-chance of ratification this year until Republicans seized and complicated the agenda of the lame duck Congressional session.

Also likely to be out of the picture for the foreseeable future are a ratification of US membership in the International Criminal Court, which tries the masterminds of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and probably the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which went down to defeat in the Senate in the late 1990s under a similarly anti-international sentiment on the Hill. And what about the climate change deniers? Will they have the power to keep the US from joining global agreements?

Whether the Republican distaste for the UN, which not a few representatives and senators threaten to quit entirely if it balks at being run by Congress, will create problems for another secretary general is another question. Boutros Boutros-Ghali was denied a second term in the era of Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms. In an interview later he said that one of his sins—apart from being foreign—was that he was critical of Israeli incursions in Lebanon. Annan opposed the war in Iraq and was hounded ever after.

The incumbent, Ban Ki-moon, whose relations with Washington are correct and amiable but not especially warm, has spoken out against Israeli tactics in Gaza. He has also recently warned that the departure of US troops from Iraq will make it difficult for the UN to operate there without a large infusion of money. The US and the UN are not always on the same page in Afghanistan, particularly over the effects on civilians of NATO military tactics.

Curtailing the spread of nuclear weapons, stopping terrorism, managing global migrations, reducing trafficking and other cross-border crimes, managing world resources, developing poor societies, stopping pandemic diseases and advancing human rights—nearly a fifth of UN member nations criminalize homosexuality, and women’s rights are widely abused or nonexistent—all require international cooperation and compromise. Rising powers are challenging American and European assumptions of dominance as never before. In this new world, hardball won’t work, and weakening the UN in the name of “reform” can only be counterproductive. Obama and Hillary Clinton say repeatedly that they understand this and assign an important role to the UN. But atmospherics matter. If the administration of Bill Clinton is any guide, Democrats are willing to throw internationalism overboard if it gets in the way of domestic politics.