The U.S. is schedule to be the biggest single contributor to the U.N.‘s2017 ecumenical budget , paying $ 611 million of the $ 2.58 billion total , and covering 29 percent of the U.N. ’s $ 7.87 billion peacekeeping mission budget for the 2016 - 2017 fiscal class , which adds another $ 1.94 billion to the tab .
Rogers ' office in Washington did n’t respond to an emailed request for more information . But in apress releaseon his website , the Congressman charged that the international organization had " essay a number of actions which aimed to infringe on the rights granted to U.S. citizens under our Constitution , " though without specifying what those actions were . He also called the 72 - year - old system " a waste matter of taxpayer dollars . "
Similar legislation was introduced in 2013and 2015 , and got nowhere . They were process of the original American Sovereignty Restoration Act front spearheaded by libertarian ikon Ron Paul , who enter measures for a U.N. exit every yr from 1997 through 2011 . But Rogers and the bill ’s other angel may be line encouragement this time around from new President Donald J. Trump ’s dim view of the U.N. , which he derided in aDecember tweet . " The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for citizenry to get together , talk and have a expert time , " Trump sound out . Since then , the Trump administration has proposedcutting voluntary U.S. support for the U.N. and other international organizations by 40 percent .
If Rogers ' bill did somehow pass both planetary house of Congress , and Trump signed it into constabulary , what would chance then ? How would the U.S. really go about quitting the U.N. ? Is there even an official process for leaving ?
The U.N. itself is keeping mum about the subject . " We would not speculate about legislating which is still part of a domesticated legislative process , " say Farhan Haq , deputy representative for U.N. Secretary - General António Guterres , via email . " Since most of your question are based on the hypothetical possibility that the legislation passes , I do n’t really have anything to say . "
One problem is that there ’s only one example in U.N. history of a commonwealth deciding to empty its rank — Indonesia — and it only stay out for a abbreviated metre .
Lessons From the past tense
accord to U.N. historiansAndrew W. Cordier and Max Harrelson , the story begin in former 1964 , when Indonesian president Sukarno proclaim in public that his land would quit the U.N. if the Federation of Malaysia were seated as a appendage of the U.N. Security Council . The Indonesian drawing card , a vehement anti - colonialist , was gall that Malaysia was a penis of theBritish Commonwealth .
Gregory Fealy , an associate professor at Australian National University and an expert in Asian story and Indonesian political science , says that Sukarno not only viewed the Malay peninsula as a bona fide knife pointing into Indonesia ’s stomach , but that he had total to see the U.N. itself as a just another defender of European colonialism . The Indonesian leader talked of pitch away from the West and adjust Indonesia with the Soviet Union , North Vietnam and other communistic nations . He even floated the idea of creating a sort ofalternative to the U.N. , scream the Conference of freshly rising Forces .
But a passel of that may just have been bluster , tell Fealy . " Behind all this external activism was the domesticated realness that Sukarno ’s political position and the state ’s thriftiness were increasingly precarious , " he enunciate . " Many have argued that Sukarno used the Malaysia issue to deflect attention from internal trouble . "
Thant pondered what to do , and took nearly two month to react . While Article 6 of theU.N. Chartergave the General Assembly the top executive to kick out a member that did n’t follow the prescript , there was really nothing in the text file about how a commonwealth could voluntarily bequeath . After confabulate with U.N. delegates and his own legal staff , Thant at long last conclude that there was nothing he could do to prevent a member Department of State from quit . So he say Subandrio that he regretted Indonesia ’s determination . " The withdrawal was accepted without any official recognition from either the Security Council or the General Assembly , " Cordier and Harrelson wrote .
Rejoining the Club
Thant was thrifty to let Indonesia know it was welcome to come back anytime . In his introduction to the U.N. ’s one-year report in September 1965 , Thant wrote that he hop that the country ’s coitus interruptus was " only a temporary phase , " and that it would decide that its long - term interests " can best be served by resuming its membership and by participating fully in the Organization ’s constructive activities . "
As it turn out , that happen pretty apace . After Sukarno was overturn in a 1966 military takeover , new leader Gen. Suharto , even before he consolidated power , decided to rejoin the U.N. as a sign that Indonesia again would join forces with the West , consort to Fealy . The country was quiet welcomed back into the fold in September 1966 , and no nation since then has leave , or endeavor to leave , the outside organisation .
