From one perspective, Americans may feel like Santa Claus for their support of the United Nations. After all, the United States is just 1 of 191 UN members, yet it is assessed 22% of the UN's core budget and 25% of its peacekeeping budget. The United States also contributes to the budgets of the UN specialized agencies. For 2005 U.S. funding was about $530 million for the core budget, about $550 million for the peacekeeping budget, and about $900 million for the agencies, for a total just under $2 billion.

Two billion dollars sounds like a lot, but it is less extravagant from other perspectives. One is that total U.S. funding came to only about $10.26 per American. That is about 4% of what the average American spends each year going to movies. In another context, only $1 out of every $1,200 dollars in the U.S. budget ($2.4 trillion) for 2005 went to supporting the UN. Focusing on security, Washington spends more every 15 hours on its military forces than it did for the entire year on UN peacekeeping.

Ratcheting down the image of Santa Claus even more, and perhaps even casting Americans as Scrooge, is the fact that the United States is also the UN's biggest debtor. In early 2005, Washington owed $1.4 billion to the UN, accounting for 37% of all UN arrearages. This debt persists even after the United States in 2002 pressured the UN into reducing the U.S. assessments from 25% to 22% for the core budget and from 30% to 25% for the peacekeeping budget.

Most Americans think that their government should pay its debt. A 2002 poll that asked them whether they favored or opposed U.S. payment of its UN debt found 58% in favor, 32% opposed, and 10% unsure.¹ As for the annual payments, a 2003 survey found that 11% of Americans wanted to increase UN funding, 50% wanted to keep it the same, 37% wanted to decrease it, and 2% were uncertain.² How Americans would feel today about funding is unclear. On the one hand, the oil-for-food scandal and other frustrations have undercut American support of the UN. A 2005 poll showed considerable disenchantment among Americans with the UN. Yet the same survey recorded only 13% of its respondents as favoring a U.S. withdrawal from the UN, and almost 65% saying that the UN plays "a necessary role in the world today."³

What Do You Think?
How would you rewrite the script for the U.S. approach to the UN budget? Would you quickly pay off the U.S. debt or ignore it? How about the level of funding—should Santa Claus give less? Should Scrooge give more? Or is U.S. funding of the UN about right?