Move the UN to Jerusalem.

AuthorHowell, Llewellyn D.
PositionWorldview

"Situated in New York, [the United Nations] resides in the heart of the West, detached on a day-to-day basis from the troubles of the real world."

EVEN ITS MOST ardent defenders agree that the United Nations needs to be fixed, as it faces immense political, financial, and social corruption. The Iraqi Oil for Food scandal merely is a symptom of more endemic bureaucratic dilemmas that have undermined UN efforts for years. The United Nations operates politically as an authoritarian and unegalitarian system. Sexual abuse by its soldiers in the Congo, Bosnia, and elsewhere contradict the very image that non-partisan and benevolent third parties want to present to the global community. Ineffectiveness in much of its development effort undermines the considerable good that the vast organization performs.

The United Nations was formed in the waning days of World War II and came into being on the back of the victorious Allies, a coalition built around the U.S. and its demonstrated military and industrial might. The U.S. essentially determined the UN's structure, center of control, mechanisms for future action, and, ultimately, direction. While the UN has many democratic trappings, at its heart, it is a dictatorship of five the permanent members of the Security Council who have unit vetoes over anything that the UN might effectively do. This political corruption involves the U.S. as much as any other nation.

The Security Council's permanent members--Great Britain, France, Russia, China, and the U.S.--reflect U.S. strength at the end of World War II and the victories of the USSR against Nazi Germany. In the half-century since, there has been a tremendous evolution in international relations. Not only has Nationalist China been replaced by Communist China, and the Soviet Union by its Russian core, but nations outside of that inner circle have grown in size and influence. The international economy has been globalized; that is, it has become highly interdependent. That interdependence involves countries that did not even exist as stand-alone states in 1945.

The Security Council needs to be restructured to reflect a different outlook on the international system, how it has progressed and where it is going. Although the international system may be militarily unipolar, economically, the global system clearly is not. Japan and Germany, villains in the pre-UN age, are powerhouses that should be included in the top level of decisionmaking. If China is a...

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