By: S. Rowan Wolf, Ph.D., Uncommon Thought Journal
June 17, 2005
This work is under a fair use Creative Commons License
News that the US government is not "happy" with the United Nations is nothing new. Refusing to pay dues to the UN is not new. Attacking UN actions (or lack thereof) is not new. So it is not surprising that the GOP is threatening the U.N. budget. But the current attack may be much different than previous US attacks on the United Nations.
Recent events regarding the UN begin to fall into an overall plan. First, there was the ongoing attempt to unseat Kofi Annan as the head of the United Nations. The most recent efforts have focused on trying to implicate him in the U.N./Iraq food-for-oil scandal. That quieted down briefly when the US was implicated in the scheme, but since that dropped out of the press the attack is back on. Interestingly, the most vocal candidate for the Annan's post has been Bill Clinton (who has been quite chummy with the Bushs of late).
Then we have the nomination of neoconservative, and Bush loyalist, John Bolton to be the US Ambassador to the U.N. Here is a man who (despite his other drawbacks) has been vocally supportive of destroying the UN - or at least reshaping it to fit "US interests."
Six months ago a "task force" was commissioned to evaluate the UN and make recommendations. The chair of that "task force" was Newt Gingrich (the co-chair was former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine}. The task force , working under the auspices of the United States Peace Institute, produced a report - American Interests and UN Reform (pdf). Now there is a focused title for you. Anyhow, this report is purportedly the basis for the U.N. Reform Act of 2005.
Now the pieces are in place and thanks to Ron Paul, Independent Congressman from Texas, the cover is blown. On June 13, 2005, Paul published NeoCon Global Government. In it, he argues that the proposed legislation (Hyde's backed by the Gingrich "task force" report) is an effort to take over the UN. Now Paul, is no supporter of the UN as far as I can tell, so his concern about the UN being a neoconservative tool has a ring of credibility.
Are the neoconservatives, who have so successfully taken over the government of the United States, setting their sights on the United Nations? It rings true with all I can see. This perspective of what-the-heck the Bush administration has been planning in relationship to the U.N makes sense of the confusion put forward in Michael Hirsh's 6/01/05 Newsweek article The Hyde Factor. In it Hirsch writes:
"Malloch Brown (Annan's Chief of Staff) noted that the Bush administration has advanced the same Nixon-goes-to-China argument about Bolton and UN reform. But he expressed some puzzlement that Bush and other senior administration officials have pressed the need for UN reform in recent weeks as the Bolton nomination has bogged down. "The administration was not particularly interested in UN reform until Bolton came along," Malloch Brown said. "It never came up between the administration and the secretary-general."".
Part of the Hyde legislation is to make United Nations votes proportional to UN dues. This would give the US disproportionate voice in the UN. It is the same "share holder" set up that has allowed the US to control (own) the International Monetary Fund. The demands of the legislation also call for a corporate type restructuring of the UN and shifting 18 programs to voluntary funding - rather than the UN budget.
What this shapes up to is not another "gut the UN" attempt by the United States. Rather it is an embracing of the "one world government." This time, one that is controlled by the neoconservatives and makes the United Nations the global arm of an equally neoconservative controlled United States.
It is likely that Hyde's UN Reform Act of 2005 will be cast into the same perceptual bin of earlier anti-UN legislation. However, this is not the same. It is a much bigger threat to global peace and security. It is the next move in solidifying the empire.
Most of S. Rowan Wolf's commentaries can be read at the here or visit the Panoptic World homepage.