[UN dues and nuclear proliferation]

By Paul Konye, from a discussion on the Africa-L, 13 February 1995

To justify the US's non payment of UN dues because the US has little to benefit from the UN is not quite accurate. I can’t think of any nation most likely to benefit more than the US from a stable global community. The only possible loss I envisage in such a scenario is the loss of revenue from arms sale. The perception by some that the rest of the world benefits from the generosity of the US while the US gains nothing in return could not be further from the truth. To state that all aspects of human relations oper ate on reciprocal basis is an understatement. Some aspects of these recipro city may be less obvious, concealed or even deliberately distorted to create a different impression.

The US did not build its wealth entirely from within its border. By the same token the Western world did not generate their wealth from sitting or even trading in Europe. To a large extent, the economy of the US was bulit from European connections. European economy on the other hand was largely deve loped from its associations with nonwestern cultures. The nature of these relations is an entirely different topic.

The simbiotic nature of human relations cannot be taken for granted. It is far more significant than it gets credit for. The reasons are obvious.

The NUCLEAR proliferation treaty is supposedly one of the ways the west ensures a stable global community, what is the morality of this treaty. For the benefit of those who have to pay for their E-mail space I’ll address this issue in a separate posting.