Should the United Nations be abolished?

It’s the week of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, which means: horrible traffic jams, sky-high hotel prices, and sleazy dictators spending money like there’s no tomorrow. Oh, and one more thing: speech after speech after speech by world leaders, many of whom will be using their time to condemn their host, the United States, and our ally Israel. Is it all a colossal waste of time and money? Rupa Subramanya says yes: the United Nations must be put out of its misery. Eli Lake says let’s keep it—it could be surprisingly useful to us. Here they are fighting it out.

The first is Rupa, who claims that the American taxpayer keeps the UN alive, but we get nothing good in return:

Every September, the world in New York witnesses the spectacle of a motley crew of dictators, human rights abusers and corrupt heads of state. They parade through the city with their entourage of hangers-on, enjoying New York life and using the United Nations General Assembly as a stage to show off and play to the fawning audience at home.

Many of these heads of state are openly hostile to the United States and our allies, using the annual General Assembly session to rail against the West, our values, and our institutions.

Every year, Iran’s president condemns Israel and calls for its destruction. Last year, then-President Ebrahim Raisi explicitly vowed to take revenge on and kill U.S. officials for the 2020 assassination of General Qasem Solemaini, who commanded Iran’s Quds Force, an elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that rules the country with an iron fist.

In other words, at the expense of the American taxpayer, a foreign leader threatened Americans with murder on American soil. This was not a one-time incident. In 2006, to take just one example, the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez compared then-President George W. Bush to the devil in his speech to the UN.

When the UN was founded in 1945 at the end of World War II, it was a reboot of the League of Nations, which had been founded after World War I. The League of Nations was founded with the goal of preventing future war, a task that failed miserably. In the same way, the UN has failed spectacularly to unite the world.

The General Assembly issues resolutions, but they have no teeth and are therefore worthless. It has become nothing more than a forum for lunatics to attack the US and Israel. The body has passed numerous resolutions condemning the Jewish state, including, most recently, a completely one-sided resolution condemning Israel, but not Hamas, for the ongoing war in the Middle East.

Most UN agencies are bloated, unaccountable bureaucracies riddled with mismanagement and corruption, which add little to no value. In the late 2000s, when I spent time in Delhi, where the UN has a large presence, it was known more for its extravagant parties in five-star venues than for its work.

Some UN agencies aren’t just useless; they’re downright evil. The UN Human Rights Council has had former members like Saudi Arabia, which is like having a mafia boss on a police council. Current members of the council include China, Somalia, and Sudan, all of whom are of course known for their dedicated adherence to human rights.

Members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which operates in the Palestinian territories, have been credibly linked to the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Despite this, the UN has refused to lift the diplomatic immunity from prosecution that UNRWA members enjoy.

Despite everything, the United States is by far the largest funder of the United Nations, contributing 22 percent of the budget. In 2022, that would amount to $18 billion. Most American taxpayers have no idea how their money is being spent, or misspent.

It is time to defund the UN. The American taxpayer keeps the UN alive, but we get nothing good in return. And neither does the rest of the world. To those who claim that American hegemony needs the UN, my answer is: American hegemony comes from our nuclear missiles, which have protected the world from World War III. If the United Nations disappeared tomorrow, the only ones who would notice would be the dictators who would no longer make an all-expenses-paid trip to America every year to sue America.

Eli Lake says the UN is a valuable intelligence agency for the US surveillance state:

I don’t come to today’s fight club to defend the United Nations. It is, to paraphrase the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a jackal’s den. Its layers upon layers of bureaucracy are scarred by scandal after scandal. Powerful rogue states like China and Russia retain a veto on any UN Security Council resolution that might criticize their aggression or the aggression of their allies. In almost every way, the institution has failed to live up to the high ideals set forth when it was founded after World War II.

So I understand the urge to be done with the United Nations and convert the valuable real estate in Midtown Manhattan into condos. But kicking the UN out would undermine America’s national interests.

For starters, the United Nations is a valuable intelligence agency for the U.S. surveillance state. It’s uncivilized to discuss this openly, and technically, such deception violates the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. But it’s true. The National Security Agency has been sounding the UN’s Turtle Bay neighborhood. In 2013, this was confirmed thanks to the publication of documents stolen by former NSA systems administrator Edward Snowden.

Before you start crying foul over the fate of international law and complaining about America’s Big Brother tentacles, calm down: Everybody’s doing it. And when the world’s largest international organization happens to be headquartered in our largest city, that’s a built-in advantage. There’s no need for FBI spy watchers to do the laborious work of setting up a cover and forging fake IDs when the target area is a few blocks in New York City. Besides, every time some tinpot regime needs a new Xerox machine or a new router, the FBI or the NSA is there to, uh, “modify” the equipment.

This is significant when you consider that UN members include state sponsors of terrorism, such as Iran, which has been credibly accused of smuggling weapons used to assassinate a Kurdish opposition figure in 1989 through its embassy in Vienna. During the Cold War, the Soviets routinely placed KGB officers inside international UN organizations. In other words, the bad guys abuse diplomatic protection all the time. Sometimes it takes a thief to catch a thief.

Beyond the intelligence value of hosting the United Nations in New York, there’s also the revenue the Big Apple generates. In 2016, the office of then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio released a report stating that the city earned $3.69 billion from hosting the UN in 2014 alone. Adjusted for inflation, that’s equivalent to nearly $5 billion today.

For the city that never sleeps, that’s not necessarily a game-changer, but it’s no quid pro quo either. And who else can afford the lavish suites at the Plaza, the Four Seasons, and the Waldorf? The world is unfair. Should Geneva, Paris, or Tokyo profit from a Third World despot’s annual shopping spree when all that money could be creating American jobs?

So I get it. The United Nations is a self-righteous debating society. They pretend to run the world, but in reality they undermine the international system by equating democratic states with tyrannies. They are reckless, obnoxious, and conceited. And they have an unhealthy obsession with the only Jewish state in the world. But as long as there is a United Nations, they should stay in New York City. Think of our spies. Think of our hotels. Think of our overpriced restaurants.

Rupa Subramanya is a reporter for The Free Press. Follow her on Twitter at @rupasubramanya and read her piece, “Anti-Hindu Violence Is Met a Shrug.“ Eli Lake is a Free Press columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @EliLake and read his piece “Hezbollah’s Exploding Pagers.”

And to further support our work, subscribe to Free Press today:

Subscribe now