Tag Archives: Security Council

International news, national news

Quit the U.N.? Sure thing, Sarah

Half-Term Gov. Sarah Palin thinks she’s nailed it with a major foreign policy solution.

The United States should just pull out of the United Nations over the U.N. Security Council’s vote to condemn Israel over its building of settlements along the West Bank, according to Palin.

That’s it, says the one-time Alaska governor. Let’s just quit the U.N. and lose our still-powerful voice on the Security Council. Let’s just leave it to others to make decisions critical to U.S. foreign policy and internal security.

Palin’s foreign policy chops are, shall we say, limited in the extreme … which is to say she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/sarah-palin-donald-trump-quit-un/2016/12/30/id/766176/

Palin ran for vice president on a Republican ticket led by John McCain in 2008. After the McCain-Palin ticket got trounced by Barack Obama and Joe Biden, she quit her governorship in the middle of her first term.

Now this quitter wants the president-elect to listen to her “advice” on how to handle a vote on the Security Council? She obviously disagrees with the decision by the United States to abstain from the Israel condemnation vote, rather than veto it as we have done in the past.

Well, I disagree with the decision, too.

Does anyone — other than, say, TEA Party members of the GOP — believe we ought to pull out of the U.N. over this single vote? Give me a break.

The United States of America retains a significant voice in the international body. It shouldn’t toss it in the crapper in a fit of pique.

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Ukraine is our concern … because?

A good night’s sleep has a way of making one’s perspective change a bit the next day.

It happened to me overnight. I went to sleep wondering why Russian officials are talking about yanking their ambassador to the United States because of our demands that Russia stay out of Ukraine’s internal affairs.

I awoke this morning wondering: Why are we involved in this dispute?

This is a classic United Nations matter that needs to be resolved around the Security Council table of nations — and that certainly includes the United States.

Of all the permanent Security Council members, I’m going to presume that all of them — except Russia, of course — believe fervently in Ukraine’s sovereignty. Therefore, one can presume that the Security Council should be drafting resolutions calling for Russia to back off, get out and leave this Ukrainian matter up to the Ukrainians.

One big problem, of course, with that Russia is one of those nations that can veto anything the Security Council proposes. That makes the matter virtually moot, given the U.N. governing structure.

Still, the United States’s involvement — the demands from the White House and the declarations of “costs” that Russia could pay if it doesn’t butt out — is creating an equally untenable position for this country.

What, precisely, can we do to Russia? We aren’t going to hit them militarily. We aren’t going to sever diplomatic relations; heck, we even had an embassy in Moscow during the depths of the Cold War.

The most we can do is as President Obama has declared: “Stand with the international community” in backing Ukraine’s sovereignty.

Geopolitics remains a highly complicated matter.