Shortchanging the U.N.

In a long-overdue turnabout, the Senate has gone on record calling for full U.S. support of its obligations to the United Nations, ending years of defiance of the treaty obligations of member states to pay their assessments.

The action comes almost a year after the Soviet Union, which had been the most delinquent member, announced plans to pay its obligations, including the costs of peacekeeping operations that had previously been opposed.

Constructive contributions of the world organization to the cause of peace were cited both in the Soviet action, which was announced last September by General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev, and in the resolution of the Senate, which was drafted by Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.), the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. That recognition followed years of open hostility in which the two superpowers tended to castigate or isolate the United Nations when it could not be manipulated to support their own national goals. In taking such narrow nationalistic and often ideological positions, both Moscow and Washington ignored the extraordinary contributions of the United Nations, not only in political terms but also in economic terms as its specialized agencies guided the development of newly independent nations.

The Senate amendment singles out for particular praise the U.N. role in working out recent agreements on the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, in brokering an accord to end the Iran-Iraq War, in sponsoring new peace talks for divided Cyprus, in developing a referendum to end the war in Western Sahara and in providing peacekeeping forces to implement pending agreements to bring Namibia to independence and to end the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. Each of those listed contributions reinforced U.S. foreign-policy commitments.

The Senate resolution also affirms that U.N. security and peacekeeping activities “are in the vital national-security interests of the United States” and “represent an unparalleled opportunity for resolution of major regional conflicts,” with huge savings in U.S. government expenditures because of the contributions to peace in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Angola and Cambodia. The resolution concludes that the United States should pay its assessed contributions and its share of peacekeeping activities that could increase eightfold because of the recent U.N. string of successes.

We thoroughly agree. A distinguished European expert on global strategic matters recently reminded us of the similarity between the budgets of the New York City Fire Department and the United Nations, both of which put out fires. The annual cost of the Fire Department is around$600 million, that of the U.N. $860 million. He concluded that the comparison helps show what a bargain the U.N. is. It is a good argument, although in recent years it has not won widespread support in Congress, which has many members who prefer to inflate the excesses of some U.N. members rather than weigh judiciously the overall contribution of an admittedly imperfect institution.

The paradox now is that the role of the United Nations in the very operations cited by the Senate is imperiled by the cumulative arrears of the United States. The United States owes $252.8 million in unpaid assessments for prior years, has paid none of the current calendar year’s assessment of $215 million, and owes $64.5 million for peacekeeping operations in the Middle East. The Soviets are paid up on current assessments but still owe $250 million for past peacekeeping operations.