The United Nations: International Organization and World Politics

As might be expected, in view of Ziring's credentials, the `textbook' is written with a consistently proUS, and generally anti-UN bias. It tends to downplay the UN's effectiveness, it attempts to demonstrate that all issues must be resolved within the context of political realism, and it implies on every occasion available that regional alternatives are to be preferred over the UN. These leitmotifs are pervasive throughout the book, with the exception of a few small patches of optimistic idealism, remnants no doubt of the second edition which Ziring failed to purge.

The biases of the book are nevertheless put forth with subtlety. When Ziring writes of the US refusal to pay its back dues to the UN, for instance, he refrains from ever using the word "refuse", opting instead for evasive locutions such as "reductions in the U.S. contributions were made necessary by subsequent congressional action...." Relative space allocations are used to forward the political agenda as much as the normative commentary: e.g. the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is given more space than on the UN Human Rights Commission, and in the entirety of this 552 page book, there are only about two or three pages-worth of information about UN environmental initiatives. In terms of security issues, the UN is portrayed as a last ditch recourse which should normally defer to `more effective' regional organizations such as NATO and the OAS.

As an example of sophisticated pro-American propaganda, this book is high quality; as a textbook for studying the UN, however, it can only be recommended to those in search of a tool for undermining the organization's legitimacy.