Over the past fifty years, the United States has had an unusually close--but often

tumultuous--relationship with the United Nations. President Franklin Roosevelt

believed that U.S. refusal to participate in the League of Nations had contributed to its
inability to forestall the outbreak of World War II. He envisioned the UN as the
centerpiece of a post-war system of collective security backed by the power of the
United States and its victorious allies. The United States initially contributed a full 40
percent of the UN budget. The world body's headquarters was established in the
United States to underline the centrality of this special relationship and the shift of the
locus of world power from the "old" world to the "new."
The principles and purposes of the UN, as laid out in its founding conference in San
Francisco fifty years ago, largely mirror the values and interests of this country. The
Charter stresses goals of conflict prevention, respect for human rights, national self-
determination, international cooperation, tolerance, and economic and social progress.
To forward these objectives, an inter-state decision making machinery was crafted
that combines a universal one-nation, one-vote deliberative body, the General
Assembly, with a much smaller and more powerful Security Council, entrusted with
unprecedented enforcement authority, in which the United States and its chief World
War II allies have vetoes. Other principal organizations include the International
Court of Justice, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the Trusteeship
Council, and the staff secretariat, headed by the Secretary-General.

The United States and the UN- A Historical Perspective

While many people in the United States greeted the UN with high expectations fed by
idealism and a major public relations campaign by the Truman Administration, the
euphoria was hardly universal. The Senate engaged in a lively debate about the merits
of the new organization, and a number of seasoned State Department officials had
serious doubts. While the war had given isolationism a bad name domestically, the
habit of international cooperation still lacked deep roots in the political soil of the
United States. The increase in East-West tensions within months of the signing of the
Charter made the new organization's limitations and shortcomings painfully apparent,
as the great power consensus required for Security Council action became
unattainable in crisis after crisis as the Soviet-American split widened. The onset of
McCarthyism, moreover, led to growing suspicions of the UN and the people who
staffed it. Paradoxically, when a Soviet boycott of the Council permitted the UN to
resist aggression in Korea, the world organization became associated with an
unpopular war. Given these factors, it is understandable that the UN received some of
its lowest approval numbers in U.S. polls of the late 1940s and early 1950s (Foster
1981), despite U.S. hegemony and Soviet isolation in the General Assembly. Clearly,
these were not the "salad days" in U.S.-UN relations that many have assumed they
were.
From 1948 until the end of the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy was oriented around one
all-encompassing principle: the containment of the Soviet Union and global
communism. Multilateralism-based on common interests and cooperative efforts -was
rarely an option for Moscow and Washington policymakers who believed that they
were locked in a zero-sum competition with their adversary, where their losses were
inevitably the other's gain. Under these conditions, the Security Council was frustrated
by repeated vetoes-mostly Soviet-and the General Assembly became an ideological
and strategic battleground. While the United States won its share of "victories" on UN
votes, the organization was unable to play the central role in political and security
affairs that the founders had envisioned.

Blocked in the security arena, the UN's efforts flowed into other areas where political
conditions were more propitious. When the Council could not agree on taking
coercive military enforcement measures, the concept of non-offensive peacekeeping
with the consent of the parties to a conflict was developed. An impressive array of
functional, humanitarian, and development agencies was established, and the
international financial institutions flourished, turning the UN into a global family of
organizations with specialized tasks. With the support of the United States, the UN
undertook major efforts to promote social, environmental, and economic development
on a global scale. The United States also backed UN efforts to facilitate the
decolonization process in Africa and Asia, bringing dozens of newly independent
nations to life and swelling the ranks of UN member states. With the urging of
Eleanor Roosevelt, a series of landmark human rights covenants and norms were
codified into international law.

While these undertakings by the UN were not always appreciated by a public in the
United States focused on East-West security issues, they reflected the fundamental
values and principles of this country. Over the long term, they also advanced
important U.S. foreign policy goals and interests. In subtle ways, these activities--to
an extent unforeseen by the UN's founders--helped to lay the foundation for a gradual
transformation of the international system and of the politics of the UN itself.

With the influx of scores of newly independent member states, the UN began to
assume a new look in the 1960s. These developing countries of the southern
hemisphere had their own problems and agendas distinct from the East-West politics
of the Cold War struggle. They saw the UN as a forum to voice their economic needs
and security concerns, and to legitimize their struggle for independence. With their
numbers, they sought, often successfully, to dominate the one-nation, one-vote
deliberative bodies such as the General Assembly and the Economic and Social
Council. Gone were the automatic majorities enjoyed by the United States during the
UN's first decade.
For almost two generations, the East-West and then North- South struggles played out
in the UN sapped public enthusiasm for the world organization. The UN seemed
anything but united. The vision of U.S. founders had to compete with other agendas
and other interests in an increasingly complex world forum. U.S. Ambassador Daniel
Patrick Moynihan summed up the feeling when he dubbed the UN "a dangerous
place." This is not to say, however, that people in the United States completely
abandoned their internationalist sentiments. Public opinion polls showed a solid
minority of 30 to 40 percent of Americans keeping faith in the UN in the worst of
times and voicing sympathy for the struggles of the poorer countries (Foster 1981).
Calls for giving up the U.S. seat in the UN, moreover, never were supported by more
than 15 percent of the public (Gallup Poll 1985), as the prevailing attitude seemed to
be "fix it, don't leave it."

The UN Reborn in the Eyes of the United States

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the playing field upon which the UN operates
has changed dramatically. The Security Council is no longer paralyzed into inaction,
and U.S. foreign policy is no longer oriented around one single unifying theme. The
public finds it increasingly difficult to rally around a foreign policy defined by relative
and variable interests rather than absolutes, and some politicians seem to be calling for
a reemphasis on domestic issues and a disengagement from the world at large.
However, public opinion polls indicate that, to the contrary, people in the United
States remain as internationalist as ever, recognizing the linkages between domestic
and foreign policy in an increasingly interdependent world. A recent survey by the
University of Maryland (1994) indicated that 84 percent of the public support the idea
of UN peacekeeping operations, while in a New York Times poll 89 percent said that
the UN had made a real contribution to world peace over the past fifty years
(Greenhouse).

Complete non-involvement in regional crises is simply not a realistic policy option for
the United States. The political, economic, and military reach of this country is now
so great that its citizens, firms, diplomats, soldiers, and investments are a presence
throughout the world. Its veto in the Security Council and the weighted voting
formulas in international financial institutions give the United States enormous
influence over how and when the UN will respond to a crisis situation. Isolationism is
a historic relic, not a policy option for the United States, although the nature of U.S.
interests and the terms of U.S. engagement with the world are still the subject of
considerable debate.

The U.S. Influence at the UN

The United States cannot, and should not, bear alone the burden of being the world's
policeman. The UN provides a means of getting other countries to share the expenses,
with the United States paying 25 percent of the regular budget and 30 percent of
peacekeeping costs. Although the United States continues to play a leadership role at
the UN, it has also accumulated massive arrears in its payments to the UN, owing the
world organization approximately $1 billion, far more than any other member state.
Despite those critics who charge that the UN is attempting to dictate U.S. foreign
policy, acting within the UN system can often be a highly cost-effective way of
advancing U.S. interests abroad. This country can use its influence and veto in the
Security Council to guide the UN in building international coalitions and in choosing
how and when to intervene without having to be solely responsible for carrying out
the Council's mandates. Acting multilaterally and acting unilaterally, of course, are by
no means mutually exclusive. The United States can choose to act alone when that is
the only way to protect its national interests.

Reflecting on the Accomplishments of the UN

For all of the controversy it has generated, the UN has in many ways been an
extraordinary success in its first fifty years. A third world war has been averted, while
the majority of UN member states have not experienced war over the past five
decades, and almost all of them have experienced rising standards of living. In
Cambodia, El Salvador, Namibia, Nicaragua, Eritrea, Mozambique, and South Africa,
the UN has helped give common people a voice in their own affairs-in some cases, for
the first time in their nation's history. By helping write democratic constitutions,
developing educational programs and literacy, resettling refugees, promoting fair
labor standards, controlling population growth, providing emergency food relief,
bringing health care to mothers and children, helping to protect the global
environment, negotiating peace settlements, and monitoring human rights conditions
worldwide, the UN and regional organizations are giving pluralism and democracy a
chance in places that have previously known only repression and tyranny. The UN has
its problems, but they are not unsurmountable. During the next fifty years, the
commitment and leadership of the world's most powerful nation will be essential in
helping to solve these problems and in working with the UN to fulfill the role
envisioned by its founders.