(CNSNews.com) –  Both critics and supporters of the United Nations have found applause-worthy features in the Republican Party platform adopted at this week’s convention.
 
But while those on both sides of the issue see the document as heralding a shift in direction, its treatment of the U.N. in fact differs little from the GOP’s 2004 platform.
 
The new document says the U.S. “will pay a fair, but not disproportionate, share of dues” to the U.N., and “will never support a U.N.-imposed tax.”
 
“The U.N. must reform its scandal-ridden and corrupt management and become more accountable and transparent in its operations and expenses,” it adds.
 
Similar language appeared in the 2004 GOP platform, which stated that the U.S. “will pay a fair, not disproportionate, share of dues to the United Nations, which must continue to reform its management and take steps to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse.”
 
Countries’ contributions to the U.N.’s operating costs are calculated from assessments based on their relative “capacity to pay,” taking into account income statistics and other factors. The ceiling is set at 22 percent – the rate the U.S. is expected to contribute. The U.S. also contributes 25 percent of the peacekeeping budget.
 
The other four permanent members of the Security Council contribute considerably less to the operating costs, with Britain assessed at 6.7, France at 6.2, China at 2.4 and Russia at 0.7 percent.
 
In 2006, the Bush administration proposed reforming the assessment process, arguing that using purchasing power parity (PPP) data rather than gross national income as determined by GDP would produce a “more balanced” outcome.
 
PPP compares living conditions across countries, by comparing how much is needed to buy the same basket of goods and services.
 
If the measure were used to calculate U.N. contributions, the U.S. and other major funders – in particular, Japan, which currently contributes 19.5 percent – would pay less, while Russia and especially China would pay more.
 
In a 2006 poll commissioned by the Hudson Institute, 71 percent of respondents said the U.S. contribution to the U.N. should be cut.
 
John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., argued during and since his tenure for a shift to a system of “voluntary contributions.”
 
Such an arrangement, he said in congressional testimony last year, would allow member states “to judge the effectiveness of the various parts of the U.N. system, and demand results.  Non-responsive programs and funds can be defunded, effective agencies and personnel can be rewarded and augmented, and, most importantly, the crippling mentality of ‘entitlement’ that pervades the main U.N. organization will be stripped away.”
 
Neither the 2008 Republican platform nor the party’s 2004 one called directly for a review of the amount the U.S. pays towards the U.N. budget, nor to the possibility of withholding dues, as has been proposed at various times by conservative Republicans.
 
‘Commitment to paying our dues’
 
A posting on U.N. Dispatch, an independent service sponsored by the United Nations Foundation, saw the platform’s position on the world body as promising.
 
“While tough, [it] is far from an anti-U.N. screed,” U.N. Dispatch poster Mark Goldberg wrote Tuesday. “In fact, parts of it are an outright rejection of far right’s preferred approach to the United Nations.”
 
“To its great credit, the GOP platform says nothing of voluntary contributions or withholding dues,” Goldberg said.
 
He read the reference to “a fair, but not disproportionate, share of dues” as “essentially an endorsement of the current modus operandi” and said “it represents a commitment to paying our dues to the United Nations without condition.”
 
Goldberg also pointed to the absence in the platform of an explicit endorsement for Sen. John McCain’s proposal for a “league of democracies.”
 
McCain has said that as president he would convene a summit of democracies in his first year in office to push forward the vision of a body of like-minded nations that “could act where the U.N. fails to act,” advancing shared values and defending shared interests.
 
The GOP platform says merely that participation in international organizations should not prevent the U.S. from “joining with other democracies to protect our vital national interests.”
 
Although the “league of democracies” concept has some support on both sides of the political aisle – some key foreign policy advisors to Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama are proponents of what they call a “concert of democracies” – critics view it as an attempt to sideline the U.N.
 
Other references to the U.N. in the platform include criticism of discrimination against Israel and the Vatican; rejection of funding for organizations involved in abortion; repudiation of treaties that violate marriage and family values (specifically referring to the U.N. conventions on women and children’s rights); and concerns about aspects of the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Treaty.
 
The 2004 platform, too, referred to discrimination faced by Israel and the Vatican and also rejected any treaty or convention contradicting marriage and family values.
 
Nonetheless, conservative leader Phyllis Schlafly, president of the Eagle Forum, saw the 2008 platform as an improvement, saying in a column Tuesday that it “marks a refreshing break from the previous platform’s obsequious kowtowing to the United Nations.”
 
She pointed to the 2004 document’s reference to the U.S. being “committed” to institutions like the U.N.  The reference does not reappear in the current platform.
 
‘Indispensable’
 
The Democratic Party platform for 2008 says the U.N. “is indispensable but requires far-reaching reform,” cites inadequate management practices and overextended peacekeeping operations, and declares its Human Rights Council to be “biased and ineffective.”
 
“Yet none of these problems will be solved unless America rededicates itself to the organization and its mission,” it says.
 
The Democratic platform supports reform of the U.N. Security Council to make it “more reflective of 21st century realities.”
 
The council is presently made up of the five permanent, veto-wielding members, and 10 elected members each serving for two-year terms.
 
India, Japan, Germany and Brazil have been campaigning for years for permanent seats, and the African and Islamic groups are also eager to be represented. But attempts to restructure and enlarge the council have repeatedly stalled, for multiple reasons.
 
The Bush administration publicly supported only Japan’s bid, and said that adding any more than one or two new permanent members would make it unwieldy.
 
The Democratic document also pledges to reinstate federal funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The Republican administration has defunded the agency since 2002, citing alleged links to China’s coercive population control policies.