The international debate on Puerto Rico: the costs of being an agenda-taker

The United States insists that the issue of Puerto Rico was removed from the international agenda by a vote of the UN General Assembly in 1953. This insistence has not quieted the international debate. During the last decade, more nations have used more international organizations to pursue the decolonization of Puerto Rico. They have been assisted by moderate Puerto Rican leaders who are looking for a way to induce the United States to change the island's status. As an agenda-taker, the U.S. government has had to expend increasing amounts of energy, prestige, and resources—mostly diplomatic, but occasionally economic and political—each year to try to keep from being condemned as a colonial power. Agenda-setters, particularly Cuba, pay a small price but derive substantial benefits from raising the cost to the United States or increasing the number of turnstiles (actions in other international forums) through which the United States must pass each year. Other countries, whose UN vote is transformed by U.S. concern into hard currency, owe the agenda-setter a debt. Five specific changes in strategy could reduce the costs to the United States of being an agenda-taker in the United Nations