This is perhaps telling. Since the United States made its intention to run for a seat on the Human Rights Council known, about a month and a half ago, skeptics have wondered whether it could gain enough votes in the supposed “dictators’ club” of the General Assembly. These murmurings persisted even after the United States and New Zealand — ahem — agreed that the former would run unopposed, lowering the standard for membership to a simple 50% confidence vote. Would all the America-haters in the world fiendishly cast their ballots against the U.S., rebuking its much-publicized attempt to re-engage with the Council?
Based on yesterday’s vote, not even close. The United States got a whopping 167 votes out of the 192 member General Assembly (just ten fewer than Belgium, and only 12 fewer than that global pariah, Norway). Seems like a pretty good sign that the rest of the world is happy to see the U.S. coming back inside the tent. (Unless, of course, countries voted the U.S. in simply to lull it into a sense of false security before unleashing their dastardly agendas – but even the paranoia-mongerers haven’t gone that far.)
(In the two competitive elections yesterday, Hungary was able to defeat Azerbaijan, but Kenya fell short of unseating any of the five incumbent African nations.)