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No one loves the United Nations. Not its stern but neglectful parents, the United States, which gave birth to the U.N. 50 years ago, but has fallen about 10 years behind in child-support payments. The U.S. seems only moderately embarrassed at being \"the biggest piker in the U.N.\" (Bill Clinton words), because it hopes that withholding $1.2 billion in dues will force the U.N. to overhaul itself at last. Madlene Albright, U.S. ambassador, said that the U.S. would eliminate funding for several U.N. agencies while trimming the whole U.N. budget by a healthy margin. The U.S. also wants to reduce its own share of that budget to less than 25 percent.
This time the U.N. is nearly $3billion in the hole and appears truly on the verge of bankruptcy. Not only the non-payments of the U.S. are blame to this situation but also the U.N. peacekeeping actions. The budget for peacekeeping has ballooned from $230 million in 1988 to $3.1 billion today, draining U.N. coffers. That is caused by the number of United Nations peacekeeping operations. From 1945 to 1985, 40 years, 13 operations have been deployed, but since 1985 25 operations were started. The annual budget of the U.N. in 1995 was $1.35 billion, plus $3.1 billion for peacekeeping. In comparison: The annual budget of the New York Police Department in 1995 was $2.26 billion.
How to update the Security Council is a case in point. Most people agree that the five permanent members, the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain, reflect the geopolitics of 1945, not 1995. The idea of enlarging the council to include Germany and Japan as permanent members once seemed straightforward, even obvious. Big Third World nations such as India and Nigeria think they deserve a sea at the \"rich men\'s table\", too. Smaller countries clamor for the number of nonpermanent members to be increased. \"The Big Five\" are horrified at the prospect of turning the relatively businesslike Security Council into another version of the hopelessly inefficient General Assembly.
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