Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

HUDOME: Here’s One Key Move On The World Stage Republicans Should Get Behind

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The world doesn’t need the James Webb Telescope to see the United Nations is ineffective. With the General Assembly of this one time respected institution meeting in New York City, perhaps now is a good time to pass judgment as to whether it is even necessary.

This is a matter for U.S. candidates to ponder and an opportunity for Republicans. For decades, mainstream conservatives and many an establishment Republican, have questioned the efficacy of the United Nations. At best, they may view the UN as a decent idea poorly executed.

At worst, they have nightmares about one world government with alien values forced on America. No need to worry about the latter. Like eunuchs guarding a Turkish Suleiman’s harem they can’t seem to perform.

The war in Ukraine has shone a spotlight on the castrated body. In April Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky went deep into the belly of the beast that is the UN National Security Council (UNSC). That’s where he pulled their pants down. And since then, the world has seen more than it deserves. Zelensky had the temerity to tell the UNSC “dissolve yourself altogether.”

This is a message Senate Republicans ought to embrace.

The UNSC has five permanent members in China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and the U.S. Each have veto authority over major UN decisions. The first two out of the five are arguably state sponsors of terror which means the arrangement isn’t a fair fight for the states who embrace democracy and respect human rights. Veto authority renders the entire operation impotent.

While Russia wages war on Ukraine, weaponizes gas and wheat, China rounds up Muslims with the precision of the holocaust foot soldiers. And we sit at a table with them along with non-permanent voting members and repeatedly get poked in the eye. We need better rules to break bred with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, who strive in plain sight to extinguish current world order.

Demonstrably, the UN doesn’t keep peace. However, it does a smashing job at counting casualties and preparing white papers on “climate change.” It’s not “global warming” anymore since focus groups deduced the former tests better than the latter, a trick the left learned after turning “liberals” in to “progressives.”

Republicans running for the Senate should campaign on Zelensky’s message. Dissolving the UNSC has no parallel to dismantling NATO. Dissolution does not mean elimination of useful food distribution programs. NATO is winning the war against Russia and without significant help from the bystander states who choose to look the other way while reaping benefits.

Americans view institutions with increasing distrust. Everything from banks to the FBI and even the seemingly innocuous National Archives is open to suspicion. If candidates put some meat on the bones of the argument to dissolve, they have a winner.

The added benefit is keeping the left accountable for views that are theoretically copacetic yet quite dangerous. Genocide, war crimes and famine are consequences of war the UN is constitutionally incapable of preventing. Consider that Putin threatening nuclear weapons is significantly more terrifying than Khrushchev brandishing his shoe at a 1960 UN meeting.

This is not an isolationist message. During the Reagan administration, the Soviet Union threatened to leave UN because their hosts (the U.S.) didn’t like the fact they shot down a commercial South Korean airliner. Reagan official Ambassador Charles Lichenstein let them know “We will put no impediment in your way…”.

President Reagan backed him up. Of the UN and America’s best interests, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass recently said “The UN and especially the Security Council appear feckless.”

Running against the UNSC is tantamount to running against terror and authoritarianism, akin to confronting staid institutions, and supporting those who cannot oppose tyrannical aggression aloe. The UNSC is an institution that belongs in the Ash Heap of History Museum. Here is a winning theme the entire GOP should get behind.

Michael J. Hudome is a Republican media consultant whose clients have included John McCain for President, all four national committees and several current and former members of the House and Senate.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.