It’s one of the biggest scandals to hit the United States, and it’s happening in the heart of New York. For years, the United States has had the capability to alleviate the situation, but our government’s inactivity has instead exacerbated the problem. Through passive negotiation, we have allowed this regime to endanger the security of American citizens while at the same time wasting away their tax dollars. No, this regime is not the radical Islamic fascists. The enemy Tom Kilgannon exposes in his new book, Diplomatic Divorce, is the inept global government known as the United Nations.
While the U.S. government has repeatedly put faith in the United Nations (UN) and other international government organizations (IGOs) to create global stability, they often become institutes of corruption and manipulation, not to mention threats to American security, says Kilgannon.
The UN in particular is out of touch, if not outright ignorant, says the author. Kilgannon cites several inconsistencies between how the U.S. and the UN perceive other nations. For example, the U.S. State Department listed seven countries as state sponsors of terrorism prior to the U.S. liberation of Iraq: Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea Cuba, Sudan and Libya. Ironically, all of these nations are considered by the UN to be “peace-loving states.” Kofi Annan, whose tenure at the head of the UN has led to some of the most corrupt and deceitful scandals in history, even refers to the leaders of these countries as “Excellencies.”
Kilgannon portrays the affiliation of the United States and the United Nations as a give-and-take relationship: The U.S. gives American tax dollars to the UN, and the UN in turn takes away security and political voice from American citizens. In other words, the United States is paying for the most expensive ticket in order to sit in the nosebleed section.
This ripoff scenario holds true not only for the UN, but also for other IGOs such as the ineffectiveWorld Trade Organization. Kilgannon notes that that the $26.5 million that the U.S. pays annually to the WTO is twice more than any other nation pays, and is in fact more than the total combined payment of 122 of the 148 represented nations.
And while one would hope that the track record of the United States as a successful political and economic power would bode well for its relationships with developing and developed nations, the facts show that the opposite is true. In the United Nations, 131 countries vote against the U.S. at least 75 percent of the time, and only four countries (Palau, Israel, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands) vote with the United States over 60 percent of the time. Kilgannon affirms that the United States is being treated “like an international doormat in the General Assembly,” and it’s entirely not obvious why. Whatever the reason , be it envy or not, it must be understood “the UN is anti-American to the core.”
Furthermore, the creation of the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice is laughable, says Kilgannon, and both institutions have negligible, if not harmful, effects on American security and foreign policy. American citizens cannot depend on a weakly established foreign body for protection.
Until the United States begins a process of separation, the UN and other IGOs will continually strip our nation of its power, using the money we give them to do so. If the U.S. does not “diplomatically divorce” from the UN soon, the American citizens could incur costs of taxes on international trade, international postal servicing, and international emails, as well as service fees for use of “global commons” such as the oceans.
In Kilgannon’s perspective, the United Nations does have a legitimate purpose in improving the world’s human rights violations -- however, the UN is failing miserably in that purpose. One alarming example of this failure can be found in Sudan, a Commission of Human Rights member, where “a government-sponsored genocide has displaced more than 2,000,000 people and killed upwards of 300,000 by the way of starvation and murder.”
One of the common themes expressed throughout this book is the United Nations’ ability to undermine U.S. authority in all aspects of government and leadership. Kilgannon summarizes:
One of the mistakes the U.S. government makes with respect to the United Nations is to treat it as an ally. It is not. In today’s world, and given the offensive the UN has mounted to increase its authority, the organization must be treated as an adversary — one that is persistent, not passive.
Diplomatic Divorce is a wake-up call for the American government and citizens, alerting us to a network of international organizations that are steering the United States in the wrong direction. After reading Kilgannon’s condemning account of manipulative strategies and corrupt catastrophes, including Annan’s treacherous Oil-for-Food scandal, patriotic Americans will have no choice but to question the United States’ involvement with such an incompetent line-up of characters and organizations.