Diplomatic Divorce
Why America Should End Its Love Affair with the United Nations
By Thomas P. Kilgannon
Stroud & Hall Publishers
HC, 240 pg. US$22.95
ISBN: 0-9745-3766-7
Growing apart
By Carol Devine-Molin
web posted September 18, 2006
In his new book, Diplomatic Divorce: Why America Should End Its Love Affair with the United Nations, author Thomas P. Kilgannon asserts that American sovereignty is being systematically whittled away by power-grabbing UN globalists who can readily rely upon members of the worldwide political Left as their most ardent advocates and enablers. Of course, leaders of despotic regimes are tremendous supporters of the United Nations as well, since the Turtle Bay crowd coddles them, and provides them with a legitimacy and cachet that they can't garner anywhere else. Kilgannon states, "The UN General Assembly is littered with terrorist governments, human rights abusers, corrupt regimes, dictatorships and political deviants of all stripes."
Amazingly, those enamored with the United Nations are willing to ignore the reality that its bureaucrats are profoundly corrupt, incompetent, blatantly anti-American, and given to bolstering tyrannical regimes and terror states while failing to promote freedom and democracy throughout the world. The UN bureaucrats are less-than-worthless, and one needs only to focus upon their leader, Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, to grasp their current state of degradation.
This Grand Pooh-Bah of the UN presided over the worst scandal in the history of the global body – the UN Oil-for-Food scam – that's well chronicled in Kilgannon's book. Moreover, the Secretary-General spread the wealth around, as Kilgannon notes, "Kofi Annan's son Kojo Annan, and a long-time friend of the Annan family, Michael Wilson, were trading on their access to the Secretary-General to win a lucrative Oil-for-Food contract for their employer (Cotecna)." Sadly, the starving Iraqi people, who were supposed to benefit from the humanitarian program, received very little assistance.
With the UN turning a blind-eye, Saddam Hussein was able to utilize the Oil-for-Food program to feather his own nest, bolster Iraqi oil production, purchase weaponry, and co-opt individuals for the purpose of buying influence on the UN Security Council. Kilgannon indicates, "As Charles Duelfer of the Iraq Survey Group pointed out, Saddam was trying to win influence in the UN Security Council, which is reflected in the fact that the two countries where most of Iraq's oil was sold were Russia and France, two permanent members of the Security Council." Saddam successfully conducted bribery by selling cheap oil. The investigative panel, the Volcker Commission, didn't have subpoena power or a grand jury, and couldn't compel testimony. Furthermore, for a nine month period in 2004, three years of UN files, including those on the Oil-for-Food program (1997-1999), were destroyed by order of Annan's Chief of Staff. Unfortunately, these arrogant UN bureaucrats appear poised to get away with their crimes.
Throughout Diplomatic Divorce, Kilgannon underscores that the UN represents "global governance that is hostile to the United States." He cites some significant examples of the deleterious impact of UN activities upon our nation:
- The UN Security Council delayed in the US liberation of Iraq;
- World Trade Organization decisions force Congress to rewrite US laws;
- The creation of the International Criminal Court required the State Department to expend political capital and strike bilateral agreements with every nation on earth to protect US military personnel;
- The International Court of Justice has forced a delay in the case of a Mexican national convicted of rape and murder of an American citizen;
- Kofi Annan's Millennium Development Goals spawned the creation of President Bush's Millennium Challenge Account and a spike in US foreign aid;
- UN treaties have influenced decisions of the US Supreme Court.
That being said, the United Nation's International Criminal Court (ICC), is the focus of considerable attention at this juncture, undoubtedly due to the presence of US military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan where fighting continues.
Imagine this very troubling scenario: In the not-too-distant future, American soldiers are hauled before the UN's International Criminal Court on so-called "war crimes", to be subjected to the justice meted out by American-hating, "one-world" Lilliputians who render universal judgment from their Ivory Towers. Sadly, this is not science fiction fantasy, but virtual certainty if America ever chooses to subordinate itself to the aforesaid global tribunal.
Hyperbolic rhetoric, you say? Hardly. On October 4, 2001, the British ratified its alignment with the International Criminal Court. By 2005, three members of Her Majesty's armed forces were indicted by the ICC for war crimes pursuant to their actions during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The British government circumvented UN intervention – and the specter of having their soldiers paraded before a world body – by bringing the men before their own domestic courts, charged under Britain's International Criminal Court Act. However, that hasn't dulled the controversy. As noted by Kilgannon, "Nobody is arguing that British soldiers should be able to act with impunity, but citizens are concerned that the charges against the men are politicized and they are being tried in order to appease the ICC." The notion of political show trials is absolutely abhorrent to free societies. The British experience should be a wake-up call to other nations – particularly democracies - that have been enthusiastically willing to genuflect before the altar of UN power. Currently, the US is opposed to the ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. However, one never knows if this will change.
Clearly, the UN will criminalize US foreign policy if it ever gets the opportunity to do so through the ICC. The UN believes it has the right to determine when and how a nation utilizes military force. However, our government is accountable to the American people – not the UN – and the US should never even consider turning over its Constitutional responsibilities to foreign entities. Moreover, Kilgannon avers, "One of the things that makes the court [ICC] dangerous is the precedent it sets in allowing the United Nations to impose its will on the rest of the world." The author is not pro-Republican in his overall stance, and indeed lambastes the Republican-controlled Congress and the President for "flooding the United Nations with unregulated soft money that is used to undermine every part of our Constitution." That said, Kilgannon has an even bigger problem with the Democratic Party, which he says has "hitched its wagon to the asses of the internationalists."
Kilgannon's use of the phrase "Love Affair" in his book title is most apropos, since there's almost a romanticizing of the UN throughout the world as a fair arbiter or "fair broker" that's egalitarian in nature, and which ostensibly works to pave-the-way to a utopian society where "artificial" notions of national sovereignty and borders will be tossed aside. Yep, it will be heaven on earth to the political Left. The "kumbaya" liberal elites eat this stuff up. However, most Americans still appear to have a healthy skepticism of the UN. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was roundly criticized when he indicated that he would only take preemptive military action if it passed "the global test", which of course is pure Leftist gobbledygook. The majority of Americans are cognizant that the Commander-in-Chief must make national security decisions that are in the best interests of the US, and the heck with a global consensus.
As noted by the author, the US pays about 22 percent of the regular UN budget amounting to approximately $363 million each year, and when contributions to peacekeeping and other UN agencies are added in, we pay roughly $3 billion annually to the UN. That's beaucoup bucks! And it begs the following question: Why should Americans pay for the privilege of being disrespected and attacked by a global body that means us harm? As underscored by Kilgannon, "The General Assembly is a hotbed of anti-Americanism." Simply put, the UN, which seeks to diminish our sovereignty and national security, represents a considerable threat to our national interests.
Can the UN change? Kilgannon believes that meaningful reform at the UN is virtually impossible due to its flawed nature. Therefore, he advocates a more radical step, stating, "We do not want to withdraw from the world, only from the United Nations."
Thomas P. Kilgannon is a leading authority on international institutions, and has produced an extremely informative, yet eminently readable, book on the dangers posed by the United Nations and the globalists. It offers insights on so many issues – domestic politics, American sovereignty, American national security, international relations, the inception of the Iraq War – that I recommend it without hesitation to anyone who wants to understand the challenges that our nation must address in order to survive and thrive in this 21st Century. 
Carol Devine-Molin is a regular contributor to several online magazines.
Buy Diplomatic Divorce at Amazon.com for only $15.61 (32% off)
Other related essays:
- When friendships go bad by Steven Martinovich (July 26, 2004)
If you hate the United Nations and Old Europe then Steve Martinovich says Jed Babbin's Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are Worse than You Think is right up your alley