What About The United Nations? Observations On The Opening Of The 71st UN General Assembly

This year's presidential campaign has touched on many topics, from private emails and private tax returns to immigrants and gun violence. But with the 2016 United Nations General Assembly underway in New York City this week, there has been next to nothing said about the UN or the role of the United States in that institution.

What we do know is that as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton urged the Congress to provide the funds for the United States to meet its financial obligations to the UN. We also know that in 2005 Donald Trump said he supported the UN, but in March of this year he said it "is not a friend of democracy" and "not even a friend to the United States of America."

It is worth recalling that the UN was established in San Francisco in 1945, and no country played a larger role in drafting the UN Charter than the United States played. The UN's primary mission was to prevent, through intergovernmental cooperation, another calamity like World War II, especially after the failure of the League of Nations, which the United States never joined, decades earlier.

Over the past 70 years it has been painfully apparent that the UN is only as effective as the Secretary General, the 193 member states, and particularly the five permanent members of the Security Council, want it to be. Depending on one's point of view, the UN has become an unwieldy and wasteful bureaucracy and elitist debating society that adopts too many resolutions with little or no effect; or, to the contrary, it plays a crucial role in helping to prevent conflict and assist countries that have suffered from war or natural disasters, and to address global challenges such as caring for refugees and responding to climate change.

There is truth in both these perspectives. As former UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold famously remarked, "The UN was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell." It can also be said that the world as a whole, including the United States, has never needed the UN more than it does today. There are countless examples of this, like violent extremism that can lead to war. If we have learned anything from the debacles of Afghanistan and Iraq, it is that the nave use of military power can eliminate enemies in the short term, while making matters worse in the long term by igniting extremism, factionalism, and instability. There is no way that any country, including the United States, can effectively prevent or respond to the spread of extremist violence alone, any more than we can singlehandedly prevent the oceans from being polluted and depleted of fish, or control nuclear proliferation, or prevent the spread of contagious diseases in an age when dangerous viruses are only a plane flight away.

Each year, these and other threats grow more complex in a world where billions of impoverished people, many of them ruled by repressive, corrupt governments, need access to electricity, education, jobs, and the right to freely choose their leaders. Meanwhile, many Americans, feeling ignored by Washington and reacting to a simplistic narrative that the United States is losing its predominance in the world, are turning inward.

The world is undeniably different today than it was in the late 1980s when we celebrated the collapse of the Soviet Union, when China was a country of farmers on bicycles, when climate change and ISIS were not global threats, and when North Korea did not have nuclear weapons. It now is a more complicated and dangerous world, a multipolar interdependent world, and it is harder to be confident about the future.

But while the UN is not yet the institution its founders envisioned, it has the potential to play a more proactive, catalytic role in conflict prevention, in equitable social and economic development, and in promoting and defending fundamental rights. It is a role the United States needs the UN to play, but it will only be possible if the UN's leadership puts forth a bold strategy of reform and an enhanced diplomatic role in pursuit of peace and building accountable government institutions, and if the next U.S. president sets an example for other member states by strongly supporting it.

In the weeks ahead, the UN will choose a new Secretary General, to replace the indefatigable Ban Ki-moon. It is a choice in many respects as consequential as our own presidential election. Never has the UN had a greater need for a confident and visionary leader with top-level executive, political, and international experience, a demonstrated commitment to human rights, and an understanding of the indispensable role the UN must play as a force for prevention - prevention of conflict, of discrimination, and of poverty, for sustainable development, for gender equality, and for the principles of humanitarianism. With the right person in charge who has the strong backing of the United States, the UN could finally fulfill its potential as the preeminent institution for promoting global peace and security that the world needs.

Patrick Leahy is a U.S. senator from Vermont and Ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Subcommittee that provides the funds for U.S. contributions to the United Nations.