Javier Milei had a most enjoyable time during his brief visit to New York. A day after giving the Wall Street bell a resounding whack and giving a pep talk to excitable stock-exchange traders, he went on to berate the “world leaders” who had converged on the city for their annual jamboree by telling them that the United Nations many respectable people pretend to revere had degenerated into a bureaucratic mess that is trying to take over the planet. In his view, it is, as British politicians like to say, simply not fit for purpose.
Milei attributed this sad state of affairs to an allegedly almost universal belief in the merits of “socialism.” However, while it is true that many presidents, prime ministers and so on in undemocratic parts of the world are fond of making use of some version of leftist jargon when they address the UN General Assembly and other such gatherings because it goes down well with Western progressives, few can take their own words that seriously. Most of the 193 member states are dictatorships of one kind or another that are run by corrupt thugs who are more interested in filling their bank accounts than in anything else. They are certainly not inclined to share the wealth they have diligently acquired with those who are unlucky enough to live in their domains unless they happen to be relatives.
Nearly 80 years ago, the founders of the United Nations, who wanted to prevent anything like the carnage of World War II from ever happening again, hoped that the organisation they were setting up would help spread sweetness, light and democracy throughout the world. Unfortunately, it was flawed from the start. To make it representative of “the international community,” they had to include Stalin’s Soviet Union which was in many ways every bit as atrocious as Hitler’s Germany.
This meant that, at first slowly but then at breakneck speed, more and more tyrannies were allowed to join the UN, which led to the current situation in which the General Assembly is dominated by individuals who deserve to be behind bars. Even so, many respected politicians and commentators in the West continue to speak of the United Nations as though they truly believed it resembled what its idealistic founders had in mind back in 1945. When pressed, they may agree with much of what Milei said, but few say they think the UN should be put on the scrap heap or, as many North Americans would dearly like, get kicked out of New York and obliged to set up shop in another city such as Geneva where it already boasts an expensive branch office.
As Milei pointed out, most members of the UN have it in for Israel. A ridiculously large proportion of the resolutions that meet the approval of the General Assembly strongly condemn the behaviour of the world’s only Jewish state because it has the temerity to defend itself, by the only means available, against those who seek to put an end to it and its inhabitants. On occasion, what happens elsewhere may deserve a mention, but few delegates get worked up when told that many thousands or men, women and children are being savagely slaughtered in the Congo, Ethiopia, Yemen, Syria, northern parts of Nigeria where Jihadists run rampant, Myanmar or other countries, let alone the cruel treatment that is routinely meted out to allegedly impious women in Afghanistan and Iran who fail to hide their face or ankles.
Unless the hated “Zionists” can be blamed for their plight, such victims of brutality will be overlooked not just by the UN, in which the 57 countries belonging to the “Organization of Islamic Cooperation” are determined to make sure that their own priorities come first, but also by most entities managed by people who say they want to defend human rights but are against “exporting Western values.”
In this respect, the UN’s record could hardly be worse. Its Human Rights Council is regularly headed by the representative of a dictatorship notorious for abusing them. Milei mentioned the participation of Cuba and Venezuela, but allowing such specialists in violently suppressing dissent to be members is simply par for the course. Over the years, just about every bloodthirsty regime on the face of the Earth has been entrusted with the task of making sure that human rights are properly respected throughout the world.
The UN became something like a dictators’ trade union thanks to the willingness of Western leaders to speak and behave as though they really believed that all countries – which in practice means all recognised governments – are equal and it would therefore be wrong to discriminate between a tiny but murderous satrapy somewhere in Africa or Asia and a major democratic power. They desperately want what is, after all, the main international organisation to be both genuinely representative and sincerely attached to the basic democratic principles that are enshrined in its charter with its “faith in human rights,” in “equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small” and the promotion of “social progress and better standards of living in larger freedom,” plus lots of other uplifting desiderata which, at best, only a handful of politicians think worthy of consideration. As for the rest, no days go by without them flouting the UN charter their predecessors signed because the last thing they want is a world with “larger freedom” for anyone other than themselves.
Hypocrisy is the glue that holds the UN together. It would fall apart if the democratic members began demanding the immediate expulsion of countries whose regimes refuse to observe the rules they pledged themselves to respect. However, without China, Russia, Iran and the dozens of smaller but often equally vicious dictatorships that in effect call the shots, the UN would be a body limited to the 40 or so countries that can be considered democracies and which, needless to say, provide most of the money its numerous bureaucrats require.
Would that matter? For those who, despite everything, assume that the UN does serve a useful purpose and helps keep world peace, it would be a tragedy, but perhaps facing up to reality by defunding it would have a salutary, or at least a sobering, effect on people in the West by depriving them of the illusion that the self-appointed spokespeople of the “international community” should be listened to with proper respect because they really want to help make the world a better place and, despite appearances, are democrats at heart.
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