The Realist Prism: Palestinian UNESCO Admission a New Blow to U.S. Leadership

Scarcely was the ink dry on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s interview with Time magazine in which she extolled U.S. global leadership than the Palestinian bid for membership in UNESCO called into question the secretary’s optimistic appraisal of American influence around the world.

Despite the claims of some pundits that a cabal of U.N. bureaucrats somehow engineered Palestine’s admission as a full member state of the organization, the ultimate responsibility lies squarely with the governments that cast their votes in Paris on Monday. Given the importance and sensitivity of the Palestinian question, it is highly unlikely that UNESCO ambassadors were operating without instructions from their home capitals when the matter came up for a vote. ...