The United States should withdraw from the United Nations

“This argument, deverbed, has two components: The United States does not always “get its way,” and should not play. The American Constitution should not be second-fiddle to foreign law. Many readers will have spotted the logical problem with this argument right away: that in order to impose its will fully, the UN would need to be a totalitarian power, which outrages the “sovereignty clause” of the argument. In other words, the argument can be reduced to: “The US should support a totalitarian UN in order to support freedom. ”” Clearly, this is a complete misinterpretation of my argument. The United Nations should never "impose its will fully. " The U. N. bases all its "power" on the willingness of its member-states. The U. S. can better further its own interests outside the U. N. and should do so. I'm not entirely sure how this is an endorsement of a totalitarian U. N. or an infringement of anyone's national sovereignty, so I will leave it to my opponent to clarify that. My argument was not for the U. S. using the U. N. as a tool to pursue American interests, but rather to work completely free of the U. N. My opponent also tries to argue that the United States should not relinquish its influence in the U. N. simply because the two do not always agree. First, the U. N. has very little power without American backing. The U. S. provides 22% of the U. N. 's annual budget, and the next 6 top contributors are American allies [1]. Therefore, if the U. S. decides to withdraw, it will leave behind an extremely weak United Nations. Second, if this withdrawal did happen, the United States would not suddenly suffer a decrease in international influence. As the world's leading economic, technological, military, and political power, the United States will continue to exercise a vast amount of influence in the world for the same reasons it wielded such influence in the U. N. Third, the Security Council, like the U. N. as a whole, has no teeth without American support. The U. S. provides 27% of the Security Council's peacekeeping budget, which would make a U. S. withdrawal a crippling blow [2]. However, even with U. S. power in the Security Council, it has proved to be an inadequate avenue for protecting American interests and human rights, in general. For proof, look at Syria. The Assad regime has been allowed to murder tens of thousands of its own people because the Security Council is paralyzed by the vetoes of China and Russia. In summary, the argument that the U. S. would be giving up any amount of influence or power by withdrawing from the U. N. is completely invalid. “I will allow the Heritage Foundation to justify its own data, and explain where the $6 billion figure came from, but this figure is grossly overblown. ”The Better World Campaign, a decidedly pro-U. N. organization (their motto is "Dedicated to a strong U. S. -U. N. relationship"), puts the figure of U. S. funding for the U. N. closer to $4 billion in 2012 [2]. This amount of funding is still ridiculously high given the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the U. N. The U. S. can and does accomplish much more with its own foreign aid programs, in addition to the contributions of private citizens [3]. I'm not sure what relevance Rush Limbaugh's salary has to this debate, but I'm sure my opponent has a good reason for referencing it twice. Sources:1. www. un. org2. www. betterworldcampaign. org3. www. foreignaffairs. com