The Failure of the United Nations

The Failure of the United Nations

The United States has been a member-state of the United Nations since its creation in 1945. Its main goal was to prevent wars between countries, enforce international law, security, and achieving world peace. It hasn’t achieved any of these goals and has been extremely ineffective at achieving them. The United States should withdraw from the United Nations and put its resources towards its own interests instead of the interests of other nations.

The United Nations has two main budgets approved by the General Assembly. Over the years the United States has funded billions of dollars toward the peacekeeping budget of the United Nations. In the 2009-2010 year the U.S funded 2.01 billion dollars or 27% of the peacekeeping budget. That’s an increase of 120 million from the previous year’s 1.9 billion. The U.S also funds 22% of the U.N’s regular budget which totaled 13.9 Billion (Russel). The total contributions to the U.N exceed over 5 billion dollars annually which makes the U.S the largest contributor to the U.N. Withdrawing from the United Nations would free millions of dollars that would allow the U.S to spend on essential programs such as healthcare, education, and rebuilding the economy.

Corruption is a major problem within the U.N and has wasted billions of dollars because of it. The Oil for Food program was one of the most recent corruption scandals, it was a program where Iraqi oil would be sold on the world market at discounted prices and the profits would be used to provide food for its people. The U.N negotiated terms with Iraq’s leader Saddam Hussein where the Secretariat of the U.N would receive 2.2% of the programs revenues. While this may not seem much the program totaled 64 Billion which meant the Secretariat received 1.4 Billion for his personal use (McMahon). The extra revenues for Iraq fed its people they were also used by Saddam to buy palaces, luxury cars,