PrintState Department report shows which countries at UN have our back
When U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley was appointed, she said she'd be "taking names" of countries that don't "have our back" at the world body. The State Department has released its annual report on U.N. voting records that clearly shows who our friends are and who they aren't.
The report found that U.N. member states only voted with the United States 31 percent of the time last year on resolutions at the U.N. General Assembly – down 10 percent from the prior year. Reacting to the new report, Haley said in a statement that it was not an "acceptable return" on the United States' investment and suggested this could factor into aid decisions.
Haley emphasized that U.S. taxpayers pay for 22 percent of the U.N. budget – more, she said, than the next three highest donor nations combined. Haley noted that the U.S. cares more about "being right than popular and are once again standing up for our interests and values[.]" ...
According to the report, the country that voted least with the U.S. was Zimbabwe – having voted zero times with America. According to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) foreign aid explorer website, Zimbabwe received $58 million in aid for this year.
Rounding out the bottom 10 nations not aligned with the U.S. were: Burundi, which received $2.9 million in U.S. aid; Iran (no U.S. aid); Syria ($72 million); Venezuela ($230,000); North Korea (no U.S. aid); Turkmenistan ($200,0000); Cuba ($115,000); Bolivia ($115,000); and South Africa ($100 million). All figures are from the USAID explorer website.
There isn't much value to discovering who isn't on our side, as far as I can see. Other nations have their own interests and vote accordingly. But the connection to the amount of U.S. aid those countries receives should be of interest to the American taxpayer. South Africa gets $100 million from the U.S. and has been steadily going downhill, as human and civil rights have eroded and more and more oppressive governments take over.
On the question of Israel, even some of our so-called "friends" do not fully support Israel in its war against terrorists. The obvious bias against Israel in every U.N. agency should cause us to question our financial commitment to the world body.
The U.S. is a big target at the U.N. But that shouldn't prevent countries from standing up for universal principles of freedom and human rights. As long as regimes are allowed to oppress their own people and others, the U.N. will remain a mostly useless appendage and a hindrance to peace.
