29 Mar The Aftermath of the U.N. Millennium Summit… A Renewed Commitment to Global Governance
By Peyton Knight, Associate Editor
Now that the U.N. Millennium Summit has come and gone, many are wondering “what happened?” What consensus was reached at the gathering? Are the tools for global governance in place? What will become of our nation’s sovereignty? Did our president express the best interest of the United States? What can citizens of the U.S. expect now that the Summit is over?
While the methods for implementation were vague, the goals for accomplishment were incredibly specific. Everything was promised to everyone. Indeed, the world forum sounded like a roomful of Al Gore’s, each one trying to outdo the other with how much they could pander to their audience of third world countries and socialist dictators. The underlying theme was simple: The world has problems. Only the U.N. can solve them. Give us the power. Sound familiar? It should. It’s the same mantra that liberals and socialists alike spew to the easily swayed masses who believe that rights, happiness, and prosperity begin with government programs and end with individual liberty.
The most deceptive aspect of all this, is the that U.N. is packaging their socialistic product in a box labeled “democracy.” Let’s examine just a few of the details of the “U.N. Millennium Declaration” which was derived from the Summit.
Dictatorial Powers
The most frightening new direction the United Nations is taking after their summit is the change in which authority determines the deployment of peacekeeping missions. Traditionally, this authority has been the U.N. Security Council, a board consisting of the major heads of state. This allows the major contributing nations to decide whether or not certain deployments are worthy of their contributed resources. Most importantly, it gives the United States (the hands-down most generous contributor to the U.N. budget) a voice in where the world body will intervene around the world.
No longer. Now, peacekeeping decisions will be the sole authority of the U.N. bureaucracy—specifically, the Secretary General. This gives the United Nations unilateral power to deploy “peacekeeping” troops around the globe. No more input from the pesky United States. Nonetheless, the U.S. is still expected to pump exorbitant amounts of money, soldiers and resources into U.N. operations—only now we have no voice in how those resources are used. How does the Clinton/Gore administration feel about this castration? Let President Clinton tell you in his own words, in his address to the U.N. Security Council at the Millennium Summit.
“We must do more to equip the United Nations to do what we ask it to do. They need to be able to be peacekeepers who can be rapidly deployed, properly trained and equipped, able to project credible force. That, of course, is the thrust of the Secretary General’s report on peacekeeping reform. The United States strongly supports that report.”
Apparently, the President has no problem signing away our national security, as well as the lives of American soldiers, to the United Nations.
The International Criminal Court
The U.N.’s International Criminal Court (ICC) gained some momentum at the Summit. This court would empower the United Nations to enforce its own rule of law. As stated in these pages before, the ICC would reign supreme over every other judicial system in the world—including that of the United States. The U.N. has vowed to hold every member of every nation accountable to this court, whether or not that nation ratifies it.
At the Summit, the Statute for the ICC was signed by an additional 12 countries and ratified by four. The statute now has a total of 110 signatures and 19 ratifications. This is nearly one third of the 60 total ratifications the ICC must have to enter into force.
Also stressed at the Summit, was the need for the United Nations to have its own fighting force for supposed peacekeeping missions. This army would consist of soldiers from varying nations—who would transform their allegiance to the U.N. This proposal has been labeled many things, most notably the U.N. refers to it as the “United Nations Rapid Deployment Police and Security Force” (UNRDF). In reality, this is no more than a U.N. standing army. With the International Criminal Court at its side, the UNRDF will be boundless in its operation.
A Turkey in Every Pot
The Millennium Summit also served as a stage for the leaders of the United Nations to gain support for their plans of eradicating poverty. Of course, no one likes poverty, however, the U.N.’s solutions to poverty-stricken areas resemble nothing more than a global “New Deal” list of entitlement programs. In their words: “Global challenges must be managed in a way that distributes the costs and burdens fairly in accordance with basic principles of equity and social justice.” Translation: We must redistribute the wealth—welfare for all. Throughout their own report, the U.N. stressed the need for greater oversight of national governments, and stricter regulation of the private sector and civil society.
Through their grand, socialist redistribution scheme, the U.N. hopes to strengthen the dependency of less fortunate nations on the world body. Much like other totalitarian regimes, the United Nations knows that if they can control the flow of goods and services to the people—they can control the people themselves.
For his part, President Clinton also made global promises regarding education of all things. Unbelievably, Mr. Clinton wishes to force our own failed public education system on the entire world. In his speech to the Security Council he declared: “I strongly support the goal of universal access to primary education by 2015. We are helping to move toward that goal, in part, with our effort to provide school lunches to 9 million boys and girls in developing nations.”
Global Warming
What would a Millennium Summit be without the good old “sky is falling” rhetoric about global warming? Even in the midst of overwhelming scientific evidence that shows manmade global warming to be a myth, in its declaration, the U.N. vows: “…to make every effort to ensure the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, preferably by 2002, and to embark on the required reduction in emissions of greenhouse gasses.” President Clinton agreed: “We have to meet the challenge of climate change. I predict that within a decade—or maybe even a little less—that will become as big an obstacle to the development of poor nations as disease is today.” Of course, Mr. Clinton is dead wrong in this respect. The biggest obstacle to poor nations would be the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, as it would force developing countries to industrialize within the framework of massive restrictions on the amount of greenhouse gasses they could emit. How unfortunate that common sense wasn’t invited to attend the Summit.
The World Changed
In the end, the leaders of the United Nations left the Millennium Summit with a renewed sense of power and a mandate to implement the policies called for in the Charter for Global Democracy. Their mandate is the “U.N. Millennium Declaration”—a task list chock-full of global governance proposals. The Declaration was passed by general consensus, meaning no vote was taken and none of the proposals were debated. This document was simply waived in front of the General Assembly and heads of state, and passed by virtue of “hearing no objections.” With no objections, the U.N. received authorization from the highest authority on earth—the world’s heads of state—to move forward with its agenda for global governance. No recorded vote was taken. In a sense, the world changed in early September—yet the U.S. Congress remains in the dark.
