Couldn't find the source for my earlier statement that concern has been expressed from within the Obama administration that the severance of funds -and consequently loss of paid-up membership voting rights- to UNESCO and potentially all sixteen fellow UN subsidiary agencies, could promote both increasing alienation of the US from the wider international community, and corresponding diminishment of political influence over same. However, one Professor Julian Cole makes some quite interesting observations on the matter, on his Middle East blog here*:

http://www.juancole.com/2011/11/unesco-palestine-vote-isolates-us-further.html


"Since a law passed by Congress in the 1990s forbids the US from funding UN bodies that recognize Palestine, the Obama administration has no choice but to withdraw the $80 million a year it gives UNESCO, which is a fifth of the agency's budget. But what this step really means is that the US loses influence over UNESCO, and indeed, it might well lose its membership in the organization. UNESCO may have to close some offices and lose employees. Or someone else, such as Saudi Arabia or China, might pick up the $80 million, gaining influence over UNESCO at US expense.

If the move becomes common, the US could end up further and further isolated and helpless. What if the International Atomic Energy Agency recognizes Palestine as a member? If the US cuts it off, it loses a key arena within which it has been pressuring Iran over its nuclear enrichment program. And so on and so forth."


* personally making no claims here as to either this bloggers academic credentials or his stated 'impartiality'