Globotaxes

Decision Brief     No. 05-D 34                                       2005-07-18

(Washington, D.C.): Most Americans have come – correctly, if reluctantly – to the conclusion that the United Nations has been a failure. Sixty years ago, the UN’s founders envisioned it as an engine of freedom, an international mechanism in which sovereign nations would come together to protect liberty and to facilitate its spread throughout the world.

A Disaster, Not Just a Disappointment

Instead, for most of its life, the “world body” has been dominated by the unfree. Under their influence, the UN has morphed into a protection racket for the world’s despots and, effectively, an abettor of those who would supplant liberty with corrupt authoritarianism, or worse.

In recent months, evidence of how far the United Nations has strayed from its original purpose has steadily leached into plain sight. The staggering Iraq Oil-for-Food scandal has implicated senior members of the UN leadership including, it would appear, Secretary General Kofi Annan. Others in the Secretariat have engaged in embarrassing personal and official misconduct. The bureaucracy is notoriously bloated and inefficient. The agenda remains dominated by anti-Israel and anti-American initiatives. And the reputation of UN peacekeeping operations around the world has been sullied as some of the foreign troops assigned to them have turned into rape squads and sex-traffickers.

Against this backdrop, even the United Nation’s most assiduous supporters have been obliged to pronounce that they favor “reform” of the organization. It would appear that what most have in mind, however, is little more than a reshuffling of the proverbial deck chairs.

For example, under proposals advanced to date by Mr. Annan, the fundamental problems arising from the preeminence enjoyed by nations hostile to the United States and/or freedom and the malfeasance, if not malevolence, of the UN’s largely unaccountable staff will be perpetuated.

America ‘s Leverage

History shows that there is only one way to effect constructive change at the United Nations: By the United States exercising the power of the purse .

Each year, the U.S. is obliged to pony up nearly a quarter of the United Nation’s roughly $2 billion annual budget – far more than any other member state. This represents, by the way, just the contribution for which America gets credit. In addition, we provide untold billions worth of support (notably, that given by the U.S. military for logistical and other assistance to UN peacekeepers) which is neither acknowledged nor reflected in calculations of what we “owe” the organization.

In light of past experience and present problems with the United Nations, the U.S. House of Representatives recently endorsed by a wide margin the recommendation of the distinguished chairman of its International Relations Committee, Rep. Henry Hyde, Republican of Illinois. It makes future American payments to the “world body” contingent upon a set of sensible and wide-ranging reforms being adopted by the United Nations.

The UN’s Strategy for Eliminating U.S. Leverage

The UN is determined to deny the United States such leverage and to insulate itself from further American pressure for systemic change. On September 14-16, the UN General Assembly is scheduled to hold a high-level plenary meeting to consider the implementation of “Millennium Development Goals” contained in the report of the UN’s 2002 International Conference on Financing for Development. According to this so-called “Monterrey Consensus,” the United States and other developed nations are obliged to provide 0.7 percent of their gross national income in foreign aid (also known as Official Development Assistance or ODA).

Secretary General Annan’s special advisor, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, contends that the United States has only provided 0.15 percent of its GNI. Sachs and his friends at the United Nations maintain we therefore “owe” the international community $65 billion each year from 2002 to the target year of 2015, for a total of $845 billion in additional foreign aid.

Since no one in their right mind expects either this President or any other – let alone any foreseeable U.S. Congress, to provide these vast amounts in notoriously ill-spent foreign aid, the UN types have come up with an alternative means of making Americans pay their huge “debt” to the undeveloped world: international taxation (hereafter known as “globotaxes”).

‘No New Taxes’?

Incredible as it may seem, a Bush Administration viscerally opposed to raising taxes has not shown the sort of vehement resistance to this initiative that it should. In fact, Annex II of the Gleneagles G-8 communiqu? (entitled “Financing Commitments”), reveals that the United States agreed to create a working group proposed by France, Germany, Italy and Great Britain to consider implementation of “innovative financing mechanisms” that can “help deliver and bring forward the financing needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.”

Among the “financing mechanisms” to be considered is a “solidarity contribution on [international] plane tickets.” French President Jacques Chirac has declared that he believes this “small levy” would bring – presumably into UN coffers – at least $3 billion.

The Bottom Line

If the United States goes along with this arrangement come September, it will allow a precedent to be established for taxation without representation that would send the Founders’ bodies spinning in their graves. It can forget about the modest constraint its ability to withhold “dues” has exercised on UN behavior. It can be sure real reform of the UN will not be in the cards. And it can expect that other globotaxes will shortly be proposed.

The mother of all globotaxes is an idea that has been kicking around the East River for some time and named after the Yale Nobel Laureate who first proposed it, Dr. James Tobin. The “Tobin tax” would theoretically raise an estimated $13 trillion – yes, trillion – from a small levy on international currency transactions. Imagine what the one-worlders and UN bureaucrats could do to our sovereignty and interests with that kind of wherewithal.

If the Bush Administration is unable or unwilling to resist such globotaxes, it will fall to the Congress to do so. With the August recess looming and the UN’s fundraiser coming right after Labor Day, there is no time to waste.