How would you like it if you were at a fancy dress-up party and your best friend got up and announced to all the swells in attendance that you were a deadbeat?
Not much, I'll bet. And you'd like it even less if all your other friends at the party joined in and said that yes, you are a deadbeat and then proceeded to make jokes at your expense.That, in essence, is what happened this week when the United Nations threw a big party to celebrate its 50th birthday. America's supposed best friend, Prime Minister John Major of Britain, got up before the General Assembly and announced to everyone that the United States was not only a deadbeat, but the world's biggest when it came to paying its U.N. dues.
Major didn't use such sharp language, of course. This is, after all, supposed to be a polite, diplomatic kind of place. His actual words, though, were just as cutting.
"The U.N. is in financial crisis," he said. "It is not sustainable for member states to enjoy representation without taxation. Contributions should be paid promptly and in full and arrears cleared."
No, Major didn't actually name the United States, but you don't have to be a genius to figure out that he was taking America's 18th century justification for declaring independence from Britain and turning it against us. If Washington refuses to pay up its $1.3-billion in back U.N. dues, his logic went, it should lose its say in the councils of power.
Now, Major really doesn't want the United States denied a vote at the United Nations. What he and most of our close friends really want is for their rich ally to pay its U.N. debts in full like the rest of them.
Ordinarily, you'd think this kind of very public razzing would be the occasion for serious mortification and thoroughgoing embarrassment. Think again.
Far from being embarrassed, the Clinton administration seems almost pleased. The president even joked about going to the United Nations as the world's "biggest piker."
The reason for this almost lighthearted reaction is that the Republican-led Congress, not the White House, is responsible for appropriating the money for America's U.N. dues. If America is taking heat, this line of reasoning goes, then the heat is on those nasty, know-nothing, isolationist Republicans running Congress.
If the Clinton administration had been putting on a serious full-court press to squeeze the U.N. dues out of Congress, complacency like this might be understandable. But sadly, however, it hasn't.
The fact is that getting straight with the United Nations is far from the top of the administration's list of priorities. The way some White House officials see it, most Americans don't much like the United Nations anyway, so why should they worry what people there think or say?
As for the congressional Republicans supposedly responsible for this mess, they couldn't care less. They read the same polls the Democrats do and know that only 36 percent of Americans think the United Nations is doing a decent job.
So as it stands, there's little expectation the United States will do anything soon to whittle down the $1.3-billion it owes.
This is serious. To put the U.S. arrearages in perspective, it's useful to know that our $1.3-billion represents the U.N. central budget for an entire year. It's also worth pointing out that our arrears alone could pay off almost 40 percent of the total U.N. debt.
All this is especially galling to our European allies, who together contribute far more than we do to the United Nations and make their payments in full and on time. No wonder friends such as Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez are calling for our U.N. voting privileges to be suspended if we don't pay up.
And that, in turn, reminds me of something said more than 20 years ago by that old American philosopher, former Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz. Speaking about the pope's opposition to birth control, Butz cracked an off-color joke to the effect that if you don't play the game, you don't make the rules.
Well, by not paying our U.N. dues, we are definitely not playing the game. It's time to ante up.