Since 1991 the United States has been the world's dominant military and political power, as well as having by far the largest economy. The United Nations was not designed for a unipolar world, and conflict between the US view the world and the views of most other UN members has increased. The September 11 terrorist attacks on the US and subsequent events have heightened the US sense of its own uniqueness, as well as the desire of other countries to use the UN as a vehicle to retrain what they see as US unilateralism.
Conflict between the US and the UN is not new. The first major defeat for the US at the UN was the admission of the People's Republic of China and removal of the Republic of China against US wishes in 1971 (see China and the United Nations). Since the US changed its own China policy shortly after, however, this did not do lasting damage. Far more serious was the 1975 General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism, which caused great offence in the US. Under the Reagan administration, the US withdrew from UNESCO, and began deliberately to withhold its UN dues as a form of pressure on the UN.
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2 The UN peace-keeping issue 3 The Iraq issue |
The UN has always had problems with members refusing to pay the assessment levied upon them under the United Nations Charter. But the most significant refusal in recent times has been that of the US. For a number of years the US Congress refused to authorise payment of the US dues, in order to force UN compliance with US wishes, as well as a reduction in the US assessment.
After prolonged negotiations, the US and the UN negotiated an agreement whereby the United States would pay a large part of the money it owes, and in exchange the UN would reduce the assessment rate ceiling from 25% to 22%. The reduction in the assessment rate ceiling was among the reforms contained in the 1999 Helms-Biden legislation, which links payment of $926 million in US arrears to the UN and other international organizations to a series of reform benchmarks.
US arrears to the UN currently total over $1.3 billion. Of this, $612 million is payable under Helms-Biden. The remaining $700 million result from various legislative and policy withholdings; there are no current plans to pay these amounts.
Under Helms-Biden, the US paid $100 million in arrears to the UN in December 1999; release of the next $582 million awaits a legislative revision to Helms-Biden, necessary because the benchmark requiring a 25 percent peacekeeping assessment rate ceiling was not quite achieved. The US also seeks elimination of the legislated 25 percent cap on US peacekeeping payments in effect since 1995, which continues to generate additional UN arrears. Of the final $244 million under Helms-Biden, $30 million is payable to the UN and $214 million to other international organizations.
UN peace operations are funded by assessments, using a formula derived from the regular scale, but including a surcharge for the five permanent members of the Security Council (who must approve all peacekeeping operations); this surcharge serves to offset discounted peacekeeping assessment rates for less developed countries.
In December 2000, the UN revised the assessment rate scale for the regular budget and for peacekeeping. The peacekeeping scale is designed to be revised every six months and is projected to be near 27% in 2003. The U.S. Administration intends to pay peacekeeping assessments at these lower rates and has sought legislation from the US Congress to allow payment at these rates and to make payments towards arrears.
Total UN peacekeeping expenses peaked between 1994 and 1995; at the end of 1995 the total cost was just over $3.5 billion. Total UN peacekeeping costs for 2000, including operations funded from the UN regular budget as well as the peacekeeping budget, were on the order of $2.2 billion.
Further conflict between the US and the UN arose in 2002 and 2003 over the issue of Iraq. The US under President George W. Bush maintained that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had not fulfilled the obligations he had entered into at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, namely to rid Iraq of all weapons of mass destruction and to renounce their further use. A series of inspections by UN weapons inspectors failed to find conclusive evidence that either proved or disproved the allegation that Iraq was continuing to develop such weapons. The US replied this by saying that the responsibility of proof of disarmament was upon Iraq, neither the UN nor the US.
In November 2002 the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1441, giving Iraq an ultimatum to co-operate in disarmament. In March 2003, the US supported by the United Kingdom and Australia, launched military operations against Iraq, and on April 9 Saddam Hussein's regime was overthrown and Iraq was placed under occupation. The US argued that this action was authorised by Resolution 1441, since Iraq had failed to comply by co-operating fully in the identification and destruction of its weapons programs. Other countries, led by France, maintained that Resolution 1441 did not authorise the use of force without a further Resolution, and made it clear that they would not support such a Resolution.The US arrears issue
The UN peace-keeping issue
The Iraq issue