Can the Center Hold at the UN Posted by David Shorr

One of the most cynical things I ever heard was when the distinguished former Pakistani Ambassador Ahmad Kamal told a group of college students gathered for a model UN that the object of the game at the United Nations is to "avoid becoming isolated." The implication is clear, with just a few friends, a UN member state can block almost anything it objects to. Ambassador Kamal's words have been ringing in my ears as I monitor the tortured last-minute negotiations over UN reform in preparation for next week's summit meeting. How, I've been wondering, can a fairly small group of renegade countries derail reforms that enjoy fairly broad support? Welcome to the United Nations.

It's not yet time for complete despair. A group of 12-15 ambassadors started meeting Friday evening, chaired by Canadian Ambassador Allan Rock, to try to hash out compromises that proved elusive in the "core group" of 32 that has been meeting for two weeks. In recent conversations, ambassadors have expressed cautious optimism; they tell me that key countries have indicated a new flexibility, but had yet to offer new positions. According to Pollyanna's best-case scenario, a flurry of compromises is reached over the next 48 hours, and all this eleventh-hour posturing is revealed as negotiation brinkmanship.

But the posturing itself says something about the dysfunctions of the United Nations and should be taken as a lesson if no agreement on reform is reached. As the main instrument of international cooperation and the world community's only meeting place with universal membership, the United Nations has great potential to marshal collective action on today's challenges from terrorism to poverty reduction to human rights and nuclear non-proliferation. But it can only achieve this potential if the world's leaders pull together.

When the UN's member states bicker as they have for the last several weeks, they are focused on outmaneuvering one another. The countries actively trying to block the package of reforms that were prepared for the summit -- Algeria, Cuba, Colombia, Egypt, India, Iran, Jamaica, Pakistan, Syria, Venezuela -- are trying to keep the UN from being more active and effective, often preferring the inconclusive debates that often paralyze the 191-country General Assembly. (The problem with the US position is different, but no less real, overreaching by niggling over small stuff rather than shoring up the major items.)

Perhaps Clint's response to my earlier post on human rights had a point in saying that countries fending off international pressure are more motivated than those bringing pressure to bear. As W.B. Yeats put it, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." But let's hope not.

The reform package can still be rescued, but only if the superpower gets into a much more constructive mode and some of the other developing world countries stand up to the obstructionists. What's needed is for member states to focus on the problems (poverty, conflict, repression) rather than each other. Is this too idealistic? According to the report of a High-level Panel  of elder statesmen and women, it's not only possible but necessary:

Without mutual recognition of threats there will be no collective security. Self-help will rule, mistrust will predominate, and cooperation for long-term mutual gain will elude us.

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

One of the most cynical things I ever heard was when the distinguished former Pakistani Ambassador Ahmad Kamal told a group of college students gathered for a model UN that the object of the game at the United Nations is to "avoid becoming isolated."

David, I'm having difficulty perceiving the cynicism in Kamal's statement. It sounds like a wise maxim, even a truism, on the nature of politics. In any deliberative body the various members, who are weak as individuals, seek to protect and advance their interests by building coalitions that act in concert on issues of mutual interest. To maintain the solidarity of some coalition, the members of the coalition must exchange votes and other tokens of support on matters of more particular interest to individual members of the coalition. I'm surprised that Americans, of all people, would have a problem with this statement, since it applies just as much to our own democratic legislative traditions as to other deliberative bodies.

However, there is a very serious problem in any deliberative body when small minorities are able to block action. Effective politics on a large scale cannot be practiced in accordance with the consensus method, or driven by sporadic bursts of idealism and unity - it must be possible for majority coalitions to enact measures. The most fundamental impediment to strong and decisive UN action right now is the Security Council system, with its archaic, neo-colonial class structure and its paralyzing veto system. I suspect that if the five permanent members proposed serious, far-reaching security council reform, one would see dramatic movement from the weaker nations on relinquishing some of their own obstructionist procedural powers. But why should the weak give up the meagre power they do have to protect their own interests when calls by the mighty for them to relinquish that power are not accompanied by corresponding calls for surrender of power by the strong?

Perhaps the current reform package is simply too comprehensive and ambitious. It seems aimed at fixing all problems at once, and that is generally speaking a bad way to make progress in politics. It also seems too wrapped up with specific policy goals and agendas, when the focus should be on reforming the rules by which the UN operates. If you want effective global action on specific policy items from the UN, surely the first step must be to change the current rules in order to turn the UN into a generally effective body.

You say:

The countries actively trying to block the package of reforms that were prepared for the summit -- Algeria, Cuba, Colombia, Egypt, India, Iran, Jamaica, Pakistan, Syria, Venezuela -- are trying to keep the UN from being more active and effective, often preferring the inconclusive debates that often paralyze the 191-country General Assembly.

But in the New York Times article you cite, there is an important additional member nation on the list:

A senior United Nations official, speaking anonymously because of the need to maintain neutrality among member states, identified the principal spoilers as Cuba, Egypt, India, Jamaica, Pakistan and the United States.

I wonder why you saw fit to leave the United States off your own list of obstructionists. You go on to say "the problem with the US position is different, but no less real, overreaching by niggling over small stuff rather than shoring up the major items." Do you honestly believe that the US moves in recent weeks are simply a tactically misguided, but good faith effort to address a whole lot of little problems?

I am puzzled that so many experienced American observers of the UN reform effort continue to believe that the current US government actually wants the ongoing reform effort to succeed, in anything close to it present form. Shouldn't it be crystal clear by now, based on a consistent track record of nearly five years in office, that the Bush administration is unalterably opposed to any move that would make the UN a more powerful, self-directed and effective organ of the community of nations? It supports instead moves that would make the UN a more submissive and effective instrument of US policy, and that would cripple its ability to act independently of US direction. Isn't it fairly clear that the 11th hour amendment dump by the US was designed to frustrate the current reform effort? Of all the obstructionist moves, this was clearly the biggest, and the one that opened the floodgates of last-minute bickering and fragmentation. In my estimation, the Bush agenda is to do what it can to frustrate meaningful reform, then (surprise) declare the UN an unreformable basket case, marginalize the world body further, and begin the process of replacing it with a new, more exclusive, more streamlined, America-lead security system.

Is that what you want too? Is that what your "idealism" consists in?

[David Shorr]

Dan--
I haven't reached that conclusion about the true agenda behind the Admin's negotiating posture -- though I remain open to it.

Here's where I'll go the minute the negotiations fail: the Administration should have been able to deliver this and simply didn't offer enough of their own compromises to close the deal.

Next level of suspicion: Bolton was playing a double game with his Washington "masters." He was promising Rice he'd get it done, accepting the instructions from State -- and freelancing. After that would be to join you in believing that Bush's rhetoric was disingenuous all along.

Journalists may well ferret out the evidence for the second possibility. I'm going to wait and see whether foreign policy in the second term is truly a repeat of the first; I could get there, but I'm not close yet.

David

[Demosophist]

There won't be any rescue of the UN, although it will probably remain more or less in its present state. The trouble is pretty simple. The UN was established in an effort to reduce the frequency and intensity of warfare. Although the cause of war is anarchy between nations the UN strictly avoids undermining that anarchy because to do so it would have to challenge the concept of national sovereignty. It was never established to do that, nor can it as long as it's made up of non-democratic and non-Lockean states.

There's no cure, but then the UN wasn't ever very capable anyway. It's a parody of a State, by design. And it can't ever be "reformed" to become better than its original basic design, without basic re-design. Which would be tantamount to replacing it with a functional organization composed exclusively of democratic Lockean states who elect representatives and who can't raise their own armies. Think in terms of centuries before that happens. Like two.

[Kevin S.]

Mr. Schorr,

In college, I was in a model UN group which is likely similar to the one that Amb. Kamal addressed. That was early in the first W administration when the cynicism hadn't spread very far yet. The ambassadors and UN personnel whose addresses I witnessed were still optimistic or at least felt obliged to repeat an optomistic line about the UN. Not much of substance passed through their lips, but it was at least no cause for alarm.

Since then, cynicism in the UN has grown exponentially. In 2002, I interned at the NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court and beared witness from a short distance as the State Dept., under John Bolton's lead, offered carrots to other nations if they would make a mockery of Article 98 of the Rome Statute.

That same summer, John Negroponte attempted to force Security Council members to throw a massive wrench into the system of interntional law by granting blanket exemption to American servicemembers from the ICC domains. He held the peacekeeping mission in the Balkans hostage as if to say to international community, "Peacekeeping or international justice, but not both."

Cynicism at the UN must be by now de rigueur.

John Negroponte is no longer our ambassador to the UN. An even greater cynic has taken his place. And Negroponte has moved on to bigger and better things.

I am still in my 20s, but this is the most politically formative period for me and those in my generation. I'm not cynical (at least I hope not), but I still wonder how the UN will weather a second Bush term. Even more than that, I wonder how my generation will be effected and how the renegade treatment of UN will shape our attitude toward the UN. What can we expect of future generations if this is what's transpiring today?

[libertarian soldier]

As opposed to the carrots (and sticks) being offered by the EU to persuade countries not to sign an Article 98 agreement? And how does signing an agreement specifically provided for in the treaty make a mockery of it? And Amb. Negroponte was representing his countries views--not just the Adminstration but an large majority of Congress--in fighting to get the exemption. Isn't that what being the PERMREP is about--reflecting the wishes of the democratically elected representatives of your country? Lastly, what does "non-renegade treatment of the UN get us"? Slaughter in Darfur, three million dead in the DRC, and no sanctions against an 18 year covert nuclear program in Iran, and Zimbabwe, Sudan and Libya on the UNHRC. Gee, that would make me a big fan of the UN (snark).

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