This paper examines the role of the United Nations in shaping United States foreign policy, arguing that the UN's influence has steadily declined. Beginning with a brief history of the UN's founding and structure, the paper outlines the organization's core aims and responsibilities, then analyzes how U.S. interests have increasingly overshadowed UN authority. Drawing on sources from the Cato Institute, Council on Foreign Relations, Heritage Foundation, and Bush-era policy documents, the paper traces how post-Cold War unipolarity and the September 11 attacks accelerated America's shift toward unilateralism — ultimately suggesting that U.S. foreign policy is now guided more by neoconservative ideology than by multilateral UN frameworks.
The paper uses a textual/documentary analysis technique, counting and contextualizing how often the UN is mentioned (or omitted) in key U.S. policy documents such as the National Security Strategy and the "Rebuilding America's Defenses" report. This quantitative-within-qualitative method turns the absence of evidence into evidence of absence, a subtle but effective argumentative move.
The paper opens with an introduction that establishes the UN's founding, membership, and stated aims. The second section surveys the UN's formal roles and highlights critical voices calling for a cost-benefit reassessment. The third section examines UN interests and the threat posed by member-state neglect. The fourth and longest section traces the evolution of U.S. foreign policy from the Cold War through the post-9/11 era, building toward the conclusion that neoconservative doctrine has effectively sidelined the UN. The paper closes with a summary argument that the UN's fate in U.S. policy is largely determined by Washington, not the other way around.
This paper describes the role of the United Nations in the making of United States foreign policy. In an effort to support the argument that the United Nations has an increasingly smaller role in U.S. decisions, the paper presents a short background of UN history, an explanation of the organization's roles, responsibilities, and interests, and a discussion of the UN's role in U.S. foreign policy making.
The United Nations (UN) was created in October 1945, when the UN Charter was ratified by a majority of the original 51 Member States (UN Cyber Schoolbus, 2004). The main purpose of the United Nations is to bring all nations of the world together to work for peace and development, based on the principles of justice, human dignity, and the well-being of all human beings. It provides the opportunity for countries to balance global interdependence and national interests when addressing international problems, issues, and concerns.
Currently, there are 191 members of the United Nations (UN Cyber Schoolbus, 2004). These members meet in the General Assembly, which functions as a kind of world parliament. Each country, large or small, rich or poor, has one single vote; however, none of the decisions made by the Assembly are legally binding. Still, the Assembly's decisions become resolutions that carry the weight of global governmental opinion.
The aims of the United Nations are as follows (UN Cyber Schoolbus, 2004):
To keep peace throughout the world; to develop friendly relations between nations; to work together to help people live better lives, to eliminate poverty, disease, and illiteracy in the world, to stop environmental destruction, and to encourage respect for each other's rights and freedoms; and to serve as a center for helping nations achieve these aims.
As the most representative intergovernmental organization in the world today, the United Nations' role in world affairs is considered the strongest of all international or regional organizations (Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the UN, 2004). The UN has made major contributions to maintaining international peace and security, promoting cooperation among nations, and supporting international development. Today, global citizens still face the two major challenges of peace and development. According to the Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the UN (2004): "Only by international cooperation can mankind meet the challenges of the global and regional issues. The United Nations can play a pivotal and positive role in this regard. Strengthening the role of the United Nations in the new century and promoting the establishment of a just and reasonable international political and economic order goes along with the trend of history and is in the interest of all nations."
In order to strengthen the role of the United Nations, efforts must be made to uphold the purposes and principles of the organization (Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of China to the UN, 2004). The authority of the Security Council in maintaining world peace and security must be preserved, and the role of the United Nations in the area of development must be strengthened. To reinforce the UN's role in foreign affairs, it is also crucial to ensure that all Member States retain the right to equal participation in international affairs, and that the rights and interests of developing countries are protected.
However, despite widespread belief that the UN must be strengthened with the support of major world powers, many argue that the role of the United Nations in foreign policy needs to be reexamined (Carpenter, 1997). "It is not isolationism, much less know-nothingism, to insist that the role of the United Nations — and America's relationship to the world body — be carefully examined and that the UN's performance be subject to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis," said Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, in Delusions of Grandeur: The United Nations and Global Intervention.
The book examines numerous issues, including the UN's role as peacemaker and peacekeeper, the UN's social and environmental agenda, and the UN's role in economic development (Carpenter, 1997). In his essay "UN Military Missions as a Snare for America," Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, argued that the United States has intervened in many UN operations around the world at a time — the post-Cold War era — when it should be reconsidering its military commitments. "Collective security was not desirable or practical even during Woodrow Wilson's era," wrote Bandow. "It has even less appeal as a strategy today." Bandow calls on the president — and Congress, if the president refuses to act — to bar American military participation in UN missions.
Alan Tonelson of the U.S. Business & Industrial Council Educational Foundation agrees with this point, arguing that many U.S. presidents have found the UN a useful means for drawing the United States into military conflicts without congressional approval (Carpenter, 1997). "Since 1994," Tonelson wrote, "(U.S. presidents) have cited the need to assist UN missions or enforce UN resolutions in Bosnia, and more recently Iraq, to justify use of military force." Such presidential actions, Tonelson concludes, are both unethical and unconstitutional.
The world is full of threats and challenges: military threats such as terrorism and hostile states attacking the U.S. and its interests; economic challenges including the increasing tendency toward protectionism in trade; and political initiatives that threaten America's ability to protect its global interests, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC). The UN is an organization of world governments that, at best, can facilitate diplomacy and curtail conflicts; at its worst, however, it may protect despots and stifle efforts to promote positive change.
According to Schaefer (2003), for the U.S. to protect its interests, it must be forcefully engaged in the world and in international organizations, including the United Nations. As the main international body involved in political and security issues, the UN oversees important treaty discussions with significant implications for the United States. The U.S. must be prepared both to support and to oppose the efforts of this organization, as appropriate, in order to secure its interests. Thus, the UN is largely in the hands of the United States when it comes to foreign policy and decision-making — rather than the other way around.
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