Living with the UN: American Responsibilities and International Order Hardback - 2012

A bold new policy framework for the United States in its long-term relations with the United Nations

Relations between the United States and the United Nations relations have traditionally been both friendly and wary. On many important issues, however, relations between the United States and the United Nations have been prickly, tense, and sometimes deeply hostile. In Living with the UN, international legal scholar Kenneth Anderson analyzes US-UN relations in each major aspect of the United Nations' work--security, human rights and universal values, and development--and addresses the crucial question of whether, when, and how the United States should engage or not engage with the United Nations in its many different organs and activities.

The author looks at key United Nations organs and functions and suggests the form of engagement that the United States should take toward it, giving workable, pragmatic meaning to "multilateral engagement" across the full range of the United Nations' work. He offers principles for a permanent relationship based on ideals and interests between the United States and the United Nations--and provides guidance for long-term US policy that runs far beyond the Obama administration's tenure.