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Edited by Melvin I. Urofsky
Virginia Commonwealth University
   
   
The United States and the United Nations: Congressional Funding and U.N. Reform
   

Benn L. Bongang
       
   

Bongang reveals that the United States Congress determined the content of United Nations through a coercive funding strategy including withholding dues until reforms were implemented. The coercive funding legislation, Helms-Biden, although bipartisan, was inspired by ideas from conservative policy think-tanks. Bongang traces the evolution of ambivalent attitudes in Congress towards international organizations. These ranged from the rejection of the League of Nations in the Senate to enthusiasm for the creation of the United Nations.. Such swings, Bongang contends, are consistent with the logic of America's unique and dominant role in the twentieth century. The book is thus a case study consistent of American exceptionalism and hegemony, and it emphasizes the importance of ideas in foreign policy.

       
  Benn L. Bongang worked as a Radio Journalist and a television producer/director for the Cameroon Radio and Television Corporation (CRTV) in the Republic of Cameroon. In 1992/93, he was a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow at Boston University. He worked at the United Nations in New York as an intern in the Disarmament office and at the UN Radio. In addition to degrees in Radio broadcasting and TV production, he obtained a M.S. in Journalism from Boston University and a doctorate in International Studies from the University of South Carolina in Columbia.
       
    xvi, 238 pages. Index, bibliography. ISBN 9781593322106.
$70. Published 2007.