UN Reform: Will the Summit Plummet? Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Drowned out amid Katrina is the drama underway at UN headquarters as the organization prepares for a gathering next week of 170 heads of state to review and approve a reform program for the organization.  Last time we checked, John Bolton setting the process backward by a characteristically impolitic 11th hour intervention that threw the negotiating document into disarray.   

Since then talks have staggered along.  As Mark Goldberg describes, the rest of the UN membership, including particularly the General Assembly's controlling developing world blocs, struck back at Bolton proposing counter-amendments that undid earlier compromises.   Since then, apparently recognizing that reforms the Administration has already trumpeted are now in jeopardy, the US has made some gestures toward conciliation.

While some are in suspense, let me offer a guess at what happens next.  There will be a consensus document.  It's too late to call off the Summit, and too embarrassing to have a Summit that fails to adopt a document.   High-stakes UN negotiations always come down to the wire; refusal to bend until the very last minute is deeply ingrained in UN delegates' DNA.

The document will be much vaguer than hoped, and will simply duck significant areas of disagreement including, inter alia, what should be done (i.e. how much money and political will should be devoted to) global poverty, terrorism, AIDS, global warming, human rights violators, streamlining the UN itself, etc.  You can get a feel for the document from this early draft. 

There will be some language that, if acted upon, could result in substantial, specific reforms to the way the UN does business (helping to restructure and re-legitimize its human rights commission, for example, or convening a Peacebuilding Commission to handle post-conflict reconstruction).   But the text will also leave loopholes that allow spoilers bent on killing particular reforms to get future bites at the apple (slowing the reforms down, watering them down, and/or refusing to fund them) once other bodies like the Security Council and GA working committees take over and attempt to implement.

More important at this stage than nuances of wordsmithing is how the whole enterprise gets spun:  do the heads of state and the media reference a sense of disappointment over the failure to get further, or do they declare victory despite a document that's short on details and iron-clad commitments, stressing those clauses that sound solid and real.   

The spin, in turn, will be driven by exactly how frustrated the governments become with one another - and most notably the US -  in the coming days:  most countries would prefer to have something positive to tout back home, though if they're angry enough at the US in particular, that desire could be trumped by the impetus to blame us for yet another international mess.

For the US's purposes at this point, the best we can hope is that 1) we don't get blamed for this devolving into failure; 2) that our key goals make it into sub-committee with some momentum.  This means ensuring that the Summit document is perceived as a major stride toward reform rather than a lowest-common-denominator compromise.  I expect the Administration will opt to paint the Summit outcome as a success, if only because it can ill-afford bad news right now.

David Shorr (aka Pollyanna) is confident that, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, John Bolton is committed to seeing through significant reforms if only because if in not doing so he personally risks being seen as a failure. 

I'm not so sure.  After all, as Assistant Secretary for Arms Control Bolton allowed the NPT and other non-pro mechanisms to wither and languish.  To many of Bolton's staunchest supporters, UN reform means confining the organization to a narrowly defined set of roles and responsibilities and otherwise getting it out the US's business (see here to get an idea of what I mean).  To them, successful obstruction of reforms that would augment UN capabilities would be viewed as a triumph.   By most accounts Bolton's obstructionist opening salvo two weeks ago was not done at Condi Rice's behest;  that being so, one has to wonder which constituencies Bolton has uppermost in mind.

The latest turnabout by the US, agreeing to accept language on the Millennium Development Goals and other issues that he had previously excised may signal that Rice and the White House have decided that, Bolton's personal agenda aside, they cannot risk failure.  Even putting the UN's future to one side, as a simple political matter given the pressures created by a chaotic Iraq and a sunken New Orleans, they're right.

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

The latest turnabout by the US, agreeing to accept language on the Millennium Development Goals and other issues that he had previously excised may signal that Rice and the White House have decided that, Bolton's personal agenda aside, they cannot risk failure.

The sheer number of amendments, and the resulting chaos they sowed, suggests to me that the whole point is to drop a big bunch of them at the tenth hour, and another bunch at the eleventh hour, in a series of dramatic mock-conciliatory moves, in order to hang onto the three or four amendments that the Bush administration really cares about. I wonder what they are.

I subscribe to the view that the Bolton/AEI agenda is in fact the Bush agenda, and that Bolton's moves have full support at the highest levels.

[libertarian soldier]

I think you are attributing too much power to (or blaming too much) Bolton.
I believe he was an Under Secretary, not just an Assistant Secretary; even so, decisions on issues like the NPT are interagency, not solely the purview of the State. So maybe you could blame Bolton, Cheney (behind the scenes), and the Three Stooges in the Pentagon collectively, perhaps aided and abetted by that great American George Tenet, but not just Mr. Moustache alone.
And while I am willing to agree he is intelligent and energetic, I don't believe he personally generated 750 changes and introduced them on his own after he arrived in USUN. It would seem more likely that this was a recap of changes the US had been proposing for weeks or months. I seem to recall a picture of him holding up documents dating from June that included many of the changes.
The reform issue was always going to be a tough row to hoe. To many countries, the key issue was getting more seats on the UNSC (with or without veto power) while other organizational reform issues were less important. After all, if so many countries really cared about the UNHRC, they wouldn't have so slavishly allowed countries such as Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Libya on it. So, I think from the USG perspective, real accomplishment by the Sep deadline (or any other) was not in the cards.
"though if they're angry enough at the US in particular, that desire could be trumped by the impetus to blame us for yet another international mess". I agree completely.

[rosignol]

I'm not so sure. After all, as Assistant Secretary for Arms Control Bolton allowed the NPT and other non-pro mechanisms to wither and languish.

Do you have a workable proposal on how to revive the NPT and give it some teeth within the existing international framework?

If so, let's hear it.

If not, your criticism of Bolton is akin to criticizing King Canute for not being able to hold back the tide.

To many of Bolton's staunchest supporters, UN reform means confining the organization to a narrowly defined set of roles and responsibilities and otherwise getting it out the US's business (see here to get an idea of what I mean).

Considering the past performance of the organization, why wouldn't giving it a well-defined area of responsibility be a good thing, both for the organization and the world? Bureaucrats thrive on vague guidelines and unaccountability, such things do not lead to results.

To them, successful obstruction of reforms that would augment UN capabilities would be viewed as a triumph.

...following on my last comment, why should we give an organization riddled with corruption and incompetence even more capabilities? Is that not rewarding undesired behavior? How does anyone other than UN bureaucrats benefit from this?

By most accounts Bolton's obstructionist opening salvo two weeks ago was not done at Condi Rice's behest; that being so, one has to wonder which constituencies Bolton has uppermost in mind.

What is the source for these rumors?

[Michael Roston]

Rosginol -

President Bush made a great proposal for reforming the NPT in his February 2004 speech to the National Defense University. It's made exactly not movement, and Bolton as the policymaker for nonproliferation work is the person who was responsible for making that movement happy. He was too busy harassing the Russians on plutonium disposition and securing a job inthe second Bush administration to do his job. Not to mention the cheap old wine in new bottles that is PSI.

Your railing against the UN follows the usual talking points - why are the UN's problems the property of the UN alone? This is like the statements that say "the UN let Rwanda happen." The UN did not invent Rwanda - it did not create the debate on Rwanda the way it went down - it did not call for the obstruction of action on Rwanda. Individual member-states did.

For decades there have been serious proposals for seriously UN accountability, including treaty mechanisms like the ones to prosecute peacekeepers for committing war crimes. Among a whole group of countries, the United States has opposed them.

[Clint]

I think this line sums up quite a lot of what I don't get about how so many on the left feel about diplomacy and the U.N.:

"More important at this stage than the nuances of wordsmithing is how the whole enterprise gets spun..."

Do I really read this paragraph correctly? Are you saying that the most important part of the reform process is that we all keep smiling for the cameras? More important than the "nuances" of whether we agree on reforms that will make the U.N. better or worse?

By this standard, the U.N. response to Darfur has been a wonderful success, except for a few flies in the ointment like the U.S. referring to the "situation" as a genocide.

To be quite honest, I think we failed in this round of U.N. reform when the discussion was opened up so widely that we're discussing terrorism and development and arms control and peacekeeping... the problem with the U.N. is not that its goals aren't sufficiently laudable. Reform that doesn't focus primarily on the structure and procedures of the U.N. is a failure from the start, irrespective of how many teeth are showing in the pictures.

[ALK]

The comments made by John Bolton to the U.N. reform "output document" were merely a summary of previous U.S. comments ignored by the President of the General Assembly. The G77 are mad at the U.S. because we are not giving them as much money as they would like for "development" ( read: "transfer to the pockets of politicians").

Bolton is doing a good job. If we are not careful we will be robbed blind by the 3rd world!

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