Overview Of The Reagan Administration's Obligation To The UN

As the leader of the free world is it the obligation of the United States to pay its fair share of financial contribution to the United Nations. I say yes.

Background and History

Early UN Financial Problems In the early 1960’s when the United States maintained most of power in the General Assembly, the United States felt that it was their obligation to pay its dues and support the UN’s peacekeeping operations funding. The political leaders of the United States felt strongly that payment must be made in a timely matter as an obligation to the UN charter. Since the United States rival, the Soviet Union, had refused to pay as the result of the peacekeeping operations in Africa and the Middle East cast the United States as the defender of “prompt

The Reagan Administration In 1981 the Reagan administration at the advice of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation formed a more hostile policy toward the UN based on the belief that the UN was no more than a Soviet Union propaganda machine. That spouted anti-capitalist propaganda and was a sounding board for Third World radical views. It was proposed by The Heritage Foundation that the United States needed to refuse to pay it’s share of funding until UN meets certain reforms or just to refuse to fund programs that the United States felt that wee against their best interests.1

In 1983 the Kemp-Moynihan amendment was added to the UN appropriations bill. The amendment would deny funding of any programs that gave aid and support to the anti-Israeli PLO or the revolutionary SWAPO, which demanded independence in Namibia.1

In 1985 the UN was forced to cut spending by 10% after the United States decide to withdraw from UNESCO after accusations that the organization was poorly-managed and was becoming to politicized. Of the $198 million assessments the United States paid only $124

Administrator, "Global Policy Forum," Background & History, accessed April 27, 2018, https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/224/27260.html. Defunding of the United Nations Population Fund

In May of 2002 President Bush as the result of the allegation that the fund supported the Chinese governments use of force for abortions and involuntary sterilization programs against its own citizens used a little-known provision that was under the “Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs Appropriations Act” to reduce the funding of the UNFPA by 34 million dollars. The UNFPA’s major programs involved such programs as “reproductive health and family planning, safe motherhood, reproductive health supplies, and women’s empowerment.”2

2 Farkas, Rachel. 2003. "The Bush Administrations's Decision to Defund the United Nations Population Fund and Its Implications for Women in Developing Nations." Berkeley Women's Law Journal 18, 237. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed April 27, 2018).