Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

In the Chicago Sun-Times, Robert Novak writes of the Senate investigation into corruption in the Oil-for-Food Program. He’s not optimistic, and neither is Norm Coleman, the committee chairman charged with the investigation:

The reaction by the U.N. bureaucracy has been an intransigent defense of its stone wall. Edward Mortimer, Annan’s director of communications, publicly sneered at the Coleman-Levin letter as ”very awkward and troubling.” Privately, Annan’s aides told reporters that they were not about to hand over confidential documents to the Russian Duma and every other parliamentary body in the world.

But the U.S. Senate is not the Russian Duma. These are not just a few right-wing voices in the wilderness who are confronting Kofi Annan. ”In seeing what is happening at the U.N.,” Coleman told me, ”I am more troubled today than ever. I see a sinkhole of corruption.” The United Nations and its secretary-general are in a world of trouble.

Our problems with the UN run back to a very distinct point in time. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (his article for Commentary, “Joining the Jackals”, is available by subscription), one of the finest Democrats ever in the Senate, was just as effective as our UN Ambassador. Both he and Jeanne Kirkpatrick were tough in defense of America’s interests. Between their terms there, everything was thrown away. Moynihan was one of the finest minds around, and one of the few who could take on William F. Buckley intellectually. And before you scoff at Kirkpatrick, understand she was a Democrat until Jimmy Carter came along. Disillusioned, she joined Ronald Reagan’s revolution.

Moynihan traces Carter’s loss in the 1980 election to his failure to defeat Edward Kennedy in the New York primary. That loss came at a point when Carter had been leading in the polls in New York 54-21. Kennedy won 59-41. Between the poll and primary, Carter’s UN Ambassador Donald McHenry voted FOR an anti-Israel resolution in the Security Council. I think that vote simply validated Carter’s view that the UN was the place to do business in foreign affairs–a belief he has retained ever since. As have the Democratic Party in general. Moynihan was precient in 1980:

For I do not conceal my judgment that so long as the ideas underlying the Carter administration’s UN policy are dominant within the Democratic party, we Democrats will be out of power.

Sixteen nations pay for 90% of the UN budget, in descending order: United States (26%), Japan, Germany, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, France, Italy, Canada, Spain, China, Republic of Korea, Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland, Russian Federation, Belgium, and Sweden (1.2%). These are the only ones which contribute at least 1% to the total. Another 80 nations pay less than one-tenth of one percent. This list includes Syria, North Korea, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Congo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Angola, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda, and account for just over 1% of the total budget combined. Egypt, Libya, Kuwait, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates are just above them.

Doesn’t it seem odd that the nation which provides the most to the UN has the least influence? And which ones are the perennial problem children?

In another Commentary article, Joshua Muravchik makes The Case Against the UN. Writing of the opening of the 59th session of the General Assembly, Joshua notes:

…Annan chose to focus on the rule of law, especially international law as represented in and laid down by the UN. His sharpest points were aimed, none too obliquely, at the United States. “Those who seek to restore legitimacy must themselves embody it,” he scolded. “And those who invoke international law must themselves submit to it.” That the United States was derelict on this score, Annan had made clear a week earlier when he reiterated a prior accusation that the 2003 invasion of Iraq by America and its allies had been “illegal.”

The second voice was President Bush’s. Speaking soon after Annan, he focused on the advancement of democracy and human rights, but his remarks also included a rejoinder to critics like Annan: “The Security Council promised serious consequences for [Saddam Hussein’s] defiance. And the commitments we make must have meaning. When we say serious consequences, for the sake of peace there must be serious consequences.”

Here is the disconnect. The Carter and Clinton Administrations both looked to the UN as the source of foreign policy, and attempted to build the institution into a world quasi-government. I can’t say they were misguided in the theoretical concept, but the realities of international relations are far different from that ideal. Kofi Annan embodies that.

And it is simply business as usual for international operatives such as Annan. Graft is a way of life. He probably doesn’t see it as unethical, but simply one of the fruits of being one of the international elite.

Senators Coleman and Levin will be tenacious in trying to get information. Already it has become clear that the early estimate of $11 billion in misdirected funds was off by another $10 billion. And both men have made it clear they will ask questions to get real answers, and not be put off by non-answers. I will wait on their final report before drawing firm conclusions about our future with the UN. But right now it seems the UN has outlived it usefulness.

Unless you rule places like Syria, North Korea, Yemen, and Zimbabwe

Or Iran.