As the United Nations prepares to enter its fifth decade one thing at least is obvious: Life does not begin at forty. A World without a UN: What Would Happen if the United Nations Shut Down (The Heritage Foundation, 214 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002; $8), edited by Burton Yale Pines and with a Foreword by Ambassador Charles M. Lichenstein, would make the worst disaster movie ever—something on the order of that Warhol film in which the camera remains trained for several hours on the Empire State Building. Quite literally nothing would happen. And yet, if the opinion polls are correct, fully 90 per cent of the American people would pay—or rather not pay—to see it. In 1959 a Gallup poll found 87 per cent of the U.S. citizenry convinced that the United Nations was doing a good job; by 1980 that figure had fallen to 30 per cent. One year later, a Roper poll reported that a mere 10 per cent considered the UN to be “highly effective” in fulfilling its mandate of 1945, since which year the United States has spent $14 billion on the Great Effrontery at Turtle Bay.
In Burton Pines’s opinion, the United Nations, at forty, can no longer plead growing-pains:
Comments