Sun Myung Moon - Politics

Politics

In the 1950s, Moon was a supporter of the World League for Freedom and Democracy, an international anti-communist organization based in Taiwan. According to the author Amber K, Moon had been loved much by Rockefellers and gained support from them. On 1 February 1974, President Richard Nixon publicly thanked a Unification Church-related pro-Nixon campaign and officially received Moon.

In 1980, Moon asked church members to found CAUSA International as an anti-communist educational organization, based in New York. In the 1980s, it was active in 21 countries. In the United States it sponsored educational conferences for Christian leaders as well as seminars and conferences for Senate staffers and other activists. In 1986, it produced the anti-communist documentary film Nicaragua Was Our Home.

In Washington, D.C., Moon found common ground with strongly anti-communist leaders of the 1980s, including United States President Ronald Reagan. His international media conglomerate News World Communications founded The Washington Times in 1982. By 1991, Moon said he spent about $1 billion on the paper (by 2002 roughly $1.7 billion), which he called "the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world".

In August 1985, seven years before the fall of Soviet Union, the Professors World Peace Academy, an organization founded by Moon, sponsored a conference in Geneva to debate the theme "The situation in the world after the fall of the communist empire." In April 1990, Moon visited the Soviet Union and met with President Mikhail Gorbachev. Moon expressed support for the political and economic transformations under way in the Soviet Union. At the same time the Unification Church was expanding into formerly communist nations. In 1991, he met with Kim Il Sung, the North Korean President, to discuss ways to achieve peace on the Korean peninsula, as well as on international relations, tourism, etc.

In 1994, Moon was officially invited to the funeral of Kim Il Sung, in spite of the absence of diplomatic relations between North Korea and South Korea. Later on, in 2011, after the death of Kim Jong-il his youngest son laid a wreath to Kim in Pyongyang.

Since 2000, Moon has promoted the creation of an interreligious council at the United Nations as a check and balance to its political-only structure. Since then King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and King Juan Carlos of Spain hosted officially a program to promote the proposal. Moon's Universal Peace Federation is in general consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council and a member of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, a member of the United Nations Division for Palestinian Rights, a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, a member of the UNHRC, a member of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. Three of Moon's NGOs—Universal Peace Federation, Women's Federation for World Peace and Service for Peace—are in consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

Moon founded the Family Party for Universal Peace and Unity in different countries. Thus, Ek Nath Dhakal, a Member of Parliament (MP) from the party is a member of the Unification Movement and leader of the Nepalese chapter of the Universal Peace Federation. Official events have periodically been held in honor of Sun Myung Moon in the municipalities of Korea. Moon's projects have been lobbied in the National Congress of Brazil by Brazilian MPs. Formerly, U.S. Presidents Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon were "honorary" presidents or directors of Moon's Korean Culture and Freedom Foundation, and former United States Secretary of the Treasury Robert B. Anderson was Moon's consultant. Moon have been held the dialogues between the members of the Israeli Knesset and the Palestinian Parliament as part of his Middle East Peace Initiatives.