Trends in Multilateral Cooperation - Part II Posted by David Shorr

I had an idea once that the noun United Nations (and its acronym) should always be used in the plural. We should say "the United Nations are," not "the United Nations is."  It's a difficult grammatical discipline, and perhaps impractical. But the point remains: the UN isn't really an entity unto itself, but instead an instrument of the 192 nation-states that comprise its membership. I think a lot of the discussion about the UN merely sets up the world body as a scapegoat and diverts attention from the political tug and pull between member states.

Sometimes I say that the United Nations works best when nations actually unite. In the struggle to address big international challenges like climate change or nuclear proliferation, the power of diplomatic alignment is a sight to behold, yet we see such consensus-building far too rarely. There's a very simple reason the UN has tended to produce lowest-common-denominator outcomes -- the way the UN diplomacy game is played, obstructionists have the upper hand. The UN's traditional diplomatic norm of trying to keep everyone happy has given a handful of countries tremendous blocking power. Often this has meant that New York is a place where urgent international matters disappear into a vortex of deadlock. And the problem is especially bad in UN global conferences, which have followed a consensus rule under which a single nation can prevent a communique or report from being adopted.

With all that as (extremely jaded) background, I think I glimpse very hopeful signs that the dynamic has begun to re-tilt away from obstruction and toward constructive action. Looking back at experts' post-game analysis of last year's key UN conferences on climate change and nonproliferation, they tell a story of dwindling tolerance of the obstructionists.

Let's start with Andrew Light's Cancun read-out over at Climate Progress. According to his narrative, an original hard-line coalition of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Sudan dissolved over the course of the Cancun conference and left Bolivia standing alone. With Bolivia as the unstinting holdout, Light recounts the heroic leadership of conference chair Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa, ultimately rolling right over Bolivia's objections. I'd be interested to hear more from UN experts about the technical grounds for overruling a holdout; or is it simply a matter of common sense? (Also recommended: Michael Levi of CFR arguing in Slate why the Cancun and Copenhagen conferences shouldn't be given short shrift, as well as Levi's outline in WSJ of a diplomatic strategy to outflank China, which I suspect US negotiators used.)

Then there was the every-five-years Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference last spring, cogently explained by Rebecca Johnson of Acronym Institute in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In that case, Johnson highlights the role of the Egyptian government -- with the help of Russia and others -- in pressing Iran to back down and go along with consensus. Obviously recent events give this story a new cast; I would just add that the Egyptian regime's traditional UN stance has been to join with obstructionists as a way to counter an image of being subservient to Washington.

Recently I was talking with a UN delegate about the question of obstructionism, and this diplomat referred to "the moderate countries." I think the emergence of such an identity among developing and middle income nations could change the dynamic within the UN. The key to breaking deadlocks in the past has been either consensus among the P5 in the Security Council, bridge-building Western middle powers like Canada or the Nordic nations, or entrepreneurial small countries trying to make a mark with one issue. If moderates started to act as a counterweight to the traditional obstructionists, we might see "nations actually unite" a lot more often.

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