Washington wishes to put UN in its pocket by delaying dues

According to the United Nations, the world's governing body may run out of cash in August. China Daily writer Li Yang comments:

The UN's budget gap for peacekeeping hit $1.5 billion, and its regular budget gap is about $492 million. The United States is the largest defaulter among all UN members, owing about $1.16 billion in membership dues to the UN, and it has remained behind in its payments since 1986.

Although Washington's debt to the UN is only a hair off a bull's back as it spends about $700 billion on its military a year, the money is necessary to ensure sustainability of the UN's daily operations, particularly its peacekeeping missions.

The Charter of the United Nations stipulates in Article 19 that a member of the UN which is in arrears to the organization shall have no vote in the General Assembly if the amount of its arrears equals or exceeds the amount of the contributions due from it for the preceding two full years. The General Assembly may, nevertheless, permit such a member to vote if it is satisfied that the failure to pay is due to conditions beyond the control of the member.

The US is not subject to the waiver conditions as some of the least developed countries are, and Washington has carefully toed the line to maintain its vote by keeping its payment in arrears below the amount of its two-year contribution on the one hand, while seizing the UN by the throat and pushing it to the verge of bankruptcy on the other.

True, the UN urgently needs some institutional reform to streamline its departments and improve its efficiency to better respond to the challenges in today's world. But that should not be an excuse－which some US politicians have openly cited to justify the US intentionally defaulting on its payments－for the US to take advantage of its contribution, about 22 percent of the UN's total, to compel the world's largest governing body to act at its beck and call.

In the 1990s, the US also leveraged its contribution to show its discontent with the UN's low efficiency－to be more precise, its failure to endorse the US' unilateral and hegemonic behavior. The US repeatedly steered clear of the UN Security Council to invade sovereign states on the pretext of what later proved to be nonexistent causes.

It is ridiculous that Washington demands that its vote be proportional to its share of the UN's dues, which desecrates the founding principle of the organization that all countries are equal; if adopted, the UN will instantly descend into a club for the rich countries, and become no doubt as efficient as Washington wants in legitimizing its interference in other countries' domestic affairs.