The UN Takes the Lead

By Todd Strandberg

In the past few months, the United Nations has taken a very active role in managing the affairs of the global community. The UN has been filling a role left vacant by the Cold War superpowers. Gone are the days when the USSR and America had the globe divided into two main camps of influence. The Soviet system is totally defunct, and the U.S. seems to lack the respect and authority it once had on the world stage.

President Barack Obama is pursuing a strategy that calls for greater cooperation between the U.S. and the United Nations. Later this month, he will become the first American president to chair its fifteen-member Security Council.

The Obama administration claims to be changing from the previous administration's cowboy strategy that used the world body principally to endorse its own unilateral policies. The new plan would have the U.S. working exclusively through the UN on issues of global importance.

Our image problem is not that the world hates us because we act alone. Nations hate us because they loathe our values. We stand for freedom and they don’t. Our support of Israel has gotten us into more trouble than anything. Kissing up to the Arab bloc is not going to change our stand with them. The only way to please them is to abandon Israel.

The topic for the session of the council on September 24 is nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament – one of several global challenges that the U.S. now wants to see addressed at a multinational level. Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs will be a key focus of the meeting.

The hope is to make the UN the world’s policeman. George H. Bush started us down this path when he went to the UN for authorization to carry out the first Gulf War. Obama is pushing America deeper into this stew of collective thinking. It no longer matters what is in America's best interest. We now have to find common ground with people on the other side of the globe.

The UN would also like to be the center for dealing with financial crises. The Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development recommended that the dollar’s role in international trade should be reduced by establishing a new currency. It said in a report that UN countries should agree on the creation of a global reserve bank to issue the currency and to monitor the national exchange rates of its members.

China, India, Brazil, and Russia this year called for a replacement of the dollar as the main reserve currency. Of course, this plan would spell the death of the dollar. With the U.S. loaded down with a massive debt load, the idea of a new currency is gaining ground.

People seem to have forgotten the decades of ineptitude that made the UN a yackfest laughing stock. If it wasn’t for American money and manpower, the UN would have long ago collapsed as an organization. The only UN accomplishment that stands out in my mind is how the general assembly could be depended on to issue a condemnation of Israel every time it defended itself from Arab aggression.

All I see is the same UN when I read news reports about Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi planning to make his first visit to the General Assembly. There is still blood on his hands from the Lockerbie bombing that killed over two hundred people. I doubt Gaddafi is coming to New York to pledge he will never again engage in terrorism.

Students of Bible prophecy should know that the emergence of any global body is a red flag for the end time's nearness. Someday, the Antichrist will have total control over the global population. I don't think he will achieve this task as head of the UN. The Bible says the Beast of Revelation will come out of Europe. His rise to power could greatly benefit from a strong UN and a U.S. that is reduced to the status of team player.

I predict this new UN leadership will only compound the world’s ills. It takes a strong military leader to bring any type of peace to the world. Even in the case of the Antichrist, the peace he brings will only be temporary. There will never be true peace until the Prince of Peace (Jesus Christ) comes to setup the eternal kingdom.

Related Links