As the eyes of the world are focused on the Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations in New York, another troubling chapter is unfolding in Paris. The United States is on the brink of abandoning its decades-long leadership in several international organizations – a process that will fundamentally undermine American national security and economic interests.

At issue are two laws from the early 1990s that prohibit the United States from providing financial contributions to any United Nations entity that admits Palestine as a member. The laws are strict: if Palestine is admitted to a U.N. agency, the United States must stop paying its membership dues. The restrictions provide no authority for the president to waive these prohibitions even if it is in the national interest to do so.

With a clear majority of countries around the world prepared to back Palestinian ambitions at the United Nations, the United States is poised to lose its leverage over several U.N. bodies that advance American interests and promote our ideals.

The damage to Americans of a forced withdrawal would not stop there. The first U.N. agency from which the United States could be pushed out is UNESCO, which admitted Palestine as a member today. To Americans, UNESCO is best known for designating World Heritage Sites. It also leads global efforts to bring clean water to the poor, promotes educational and curriculum building in the developing world, and manages a tsunami early warning system in the Pacific, among other important tasks. This critical work would be jeopardized if UNESCO’s top funder stops paying its bills.

I was going through Steam today and discovered a fairly newly promoted game “Homefront.” I’m always a bit interested to see games developed with modern-ish military concepts in mind, and clicked to find out more.

The advertising includes that the story was penned by the same writer who gave us the movie “Red Dawn,” which makes it suddenly unsurprising. It can’t actually be very long since it was conceived, despite the engine and graphics being rather far along, because it directly relates to certain news items right now.

However, although of course it’s promotional material, the game goes on to say the player will “Discover a terrifyingly plausible near-future world – the familiar has become alien in this nightmare vision of Occupied USA.”

That just horrifies me. That it’s “plausible.” The very first premise that the Koreas would unite is just stupid. South Koreans would never take it. The new generation of Koreans who grew up in a new world without the global fear of Communism doesn’t care as much about lost family members from the war. They would fight, and they would resist. Reunification would not be a willing choice for the South, and the US would not diplomatically just let it happen.

And the US would not abandon its bases in Japan and so on, not with that supposed situation. And the idea of Japan “surrendering” to Korea is just silly. I don’t think Japan, even if it were forced to act independently, would fall to that. Not to mention that the South Korean economy would cripple itself trying to support the north if they DID reunite… And even working together wouldn’t stand a hope against the rest.

And the idea of quick conquests of big countries like the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia is just play silly. Probably that includes Malaysia and Singapore too. It’s not just to say that these are militarily strong countries, but they’re also strategically very difficult, with huge populations and mixed levels of developing infrastructure and jungle environment. And all of them have the equally capable will to resist a foreign occupier.

The US would have to be rather stupid and powerless to let that global situation get to a point where they’re being invaded by a tiny country like Korea. And China wouldn’t accept that situation either. It’s not the 1970s anymore, and Communists wouldn’t simply stand with other Communists.

The ironic thing is that although “Red Dawn” was a ridiculous story, it was a fun movie and achieved cult classic status. There are a lot of silly people out there who might believe that this story really is plausible.

To you, dear gamers, I tell you simply: It is not.