THE UN AT 60
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Stanley Michalak
Stanley Michalak is the John C. Kunkel Professor of Government, emeritus at Franklin and Marshall College and an FPRI Senior Fellow. His books include A Primer in Power Politics (2001) and Competing Conceptions of American Foreign Policy: Worldviews in Conflict (1991).
As the United Nations' 60th anniversary (October 24) approaches, the usual ritualistic spate of editorials, columns, and op-ed essays will barrage the American public. Liberals will excoriate the Bush administration's unilateralism, lecture about the importance of legitimacy, and conclude that any of the UN's failings lie not with the organization itself, but with its member states-and most notably, with the United States. When America leads, pundits will claim, the UN works.
Conservatives, on the other hand, will point to the oil-for-food scandals, the fecklessness of allies, the inaction in Darfur, the failed efforts at nation-building in Haiti and Somalia, and the efforts by the Euro-NGO complex to create a paradise of virtuous people through paper covenants adopted at international conferences-covenants that would leave almost no aspect of national life free from the eyes of international monitors.[1] In the end, conservative commentators will probably applaud the appointment of John Bolton as someone who will knock some sense into the place. In fact, there is truth in what both sides say. The UN has been and always will be an "on-the-one-hand/on-the-other- hand" organization. On the one hand, the UN's oil-for-food program probably was "the largest scam in the history of humanitarian relief," as Claudia Rosett claimed after the release of Paul Volcker's first interim report.[2] On the other hand, without that program, French, Chinese, and Russian pressure might have led to the dropping of sanctions altogether and undercut the leverage needed to allow weapons inspections to continue in Iraq for three more years.
On the one hand, the imprimatur of the Security Council and General Assembly do add legitimacy to American undertakings, as the Korean War and the first Gulf War demonstrate. On the other hand, to argue that the United States should always work through the UN is to argue that China, Russia, or France should have a veto over our use of military force. Neither the Clinton administration nor any previous administration accepted that position. Nor will any administration in the future, or any other member of the Security Council, do so. Were Taiwan to declare its independence, the last thing China would do is ask UN Security Council for permission to use military force.
It is also true that American leadership has made a significant difference throughout the Organization's history. If it were not for President George H. W. Bush, Kuwait would have become an Iraqi province. In fact, the Security Council's authorization of the use of "all measures" to get Iraqi forces out of Kuwait was the first time the UN (or its predecessor, the League of Nations) acted as intended by the founders. And although it took two years of persistent and tortuous diplomatic leadership, President Clinton finally got the UN to end the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia.
However, despite these and many other successes, it would be a fatal error to conclude that America can always lead the UN, and that the absence of "American leadership" is the only problem facing the Organization. Consider the following examples:
* When Serbs were shelling Sarajevo in the summer
of 1992, George H. W. Bush sought to get the
permanent members of the Security Council to hit
Serb positions and use troops to close alleged
death camps. His suggestion was immediately
stymied by the Russians, who feared domestic
consequences if they moved against the Serbs, and
the French and British, who were casualty averse
because they had peacekeepers on the ground.
* When Somalia was descending into a humanitarian
disaster, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros
Ghali appealed to President Bush and not to the
Security Council, which only later authorized the
intervention of American troops to secure
deliveries of humanitarian supplies.
* When the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM)
was forced to leave that country, members of the
UN Security Council sought not to deal with Saddam
Hussein but to rein in Bill Clinton and, later,
George W. Bush. For almost four years after
Saddam's expulsion of the UN inspectors, America's
"partners" in the Security Council dithered, met,
talked and, in the end, offered watered-down
"monitors" instead of "inspectors"-all under the
guise of reasonableness, concern for the Iraqi
people, the need to engage in sophisticated,
incentive-based diplomacy, and not expecting
perfection. But the truth was clear to everyone:
Saddam Hussein had cowed the "international
community." As Edward Luck, former president of
the UN Association of the USA, recently noted: "By
repeatedly failing over the past decade to take
effective action against Iraq, those permanent
members now claiming to be guardians of
international law have, in fact, done the most to
undermine it."[3]
* As Kosovo descended into disaster, stalemate
arose in the Security Council. When China and
Russia refused to countenance the use of military
force under the UN, the Clinton administration
turned to NATO, having decided that
"illegitimately" stopping Serb repression in
Kosovo was more important than a conception of
legitimacy that would give a pass to Slobodan
Milosevic in deference to the views of veto-
wielding members of the Security Council.
* Today, the UN Security Council watches as
genocide takes place in Darfur. The presence of a
totally inadequate and largely ineffective
Organization of African Union force has provided
our partners on the Security Council with a
rationale for making excuses and procrastinating
as the genocide continues.[4]
The experience of the Clinton and two Bush administrations makes one thing clear: There are limits to American leadership in the UN-and even when America tries very hard.
While America's posture and policies toward the UN have not always been beyond reproach, the UN's major problem is not a lack of American leadership. In the past and now, the UN's weaknesses and inadequacies have also stemmed from the policies and foreign policy worldviews of our continental European allies and our Russian and Chinese "partners" in the Security Council.
Over the past-several decades, our European allies have moved well beyond the state-centric liberal internationalism rooted in the ideas of Woodrow Wilson and FDR. Spurred no doubt by the success of their own European Union, many European political elites seek a supranational international order that would secure not national security but human security; not national interests but planetary interests; not the sovereign rights of states but human rights; not collective security but the collective abolition of weapons systems-all to be attained through codes of conduct that stand above states and to which states will be held accountable.
For them, force-if it is to be used at all in international relations-should only be used as a last resort, and only when authorized by the UN Security Council. Thus, when the conflict in the Balkans began, the Europeans sent in a "peaceful observer force"-the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR). In the end, they went along with the use of force in Bosnia only because President Clinton threatened to intervene unilaterally. When Saddam Hussein sent the UNSCOM weapons inspectors packing, our European allies refused to countenance the use of force, just as they would later oppose the war against Iraq. Today, in regard to Iran's violations of the nonproliferation treaty, they have pursued a diplomacy of carrots alone, and in Darfur, France has deferred on taking up a leadership role in the Security Council.
The diplomacy of post-Cold War Europe is a diplomacy of words and covenants. It is, in fact, a diplomacy quite similar to the diplomacy America embarked upon when it shed its isolationism at the turn of the last century-a diplomacy of peace through multilateral treaties such as the Open-Door Notes, the Washington Naval Treaty, the Four-Power Treaty, the Nine-Power Treaty, and, perhaps, most notably, the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Peace and world order through nonmilitary means: what better words describe the European approach today?
Over the past fifty years, Europe has settled into an international posture that combines the worst of America's geopolitical isolationism with the worst of its former utopian internationalism. Today, we see a Europe that is strategically passive, in military decline, culturally provincial, and preoccupied with the pursuit of grandiose diplomatic objectives unrelated to military power. The legalistic-moralistic approach to diplomacy that George Kennan chided Americans for over fifty years ago in his American Diplomacy well describes the diplomacy of Europe today.
France, of course, is an anomaly among the continental nations. While fully participating in Europe's quest for a supranational international order, it also seeks to regain its position as a great power in the old-fashioned sense, which means conducting foreign relations on the basis of interests rather than moral principles. For example, while France is an active participant in the international "human rights regime," it maintained good relations with Saddam Hussein in the past and has good relations now with authoritarian North African regimes that routinely violate the covenants which France promotes as a cosmopolitan nation. And in regard to Iraq, France's interests involved not only oil and other economic goods; but a lucrative weapons trade, as well.
While Europeans have retreated into cosmopolitan utopianism, the Chinese and Russians are practitioners of nineteenth- century realpolitik. They might put their signatures on
Europe's parchments, but their role models are neither Immanuel Kant nor Woodrow Wilson, but Klemens von Metternich and Otto von Bismarck. National interests and sovereignty guide Chinese and Russian diplomacy within the UN and without.
For example, when UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for more active intervention by the UN when civilian populations were at risk, China's foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, demurred, claiming that respect for national sovereignty and noninterference in the internal affairs of another country are "the basic principles governing international relations." Deviation from those principles by the UN, he claimed, would lead to a new form of gunboat diplomacy and "wreak havoc."
On the issue of humanitarian intervention, Chinese leaders claim that any such activities are a violation of the principles of the UN Charter. "The outbreak of war in Kosovo," Tang claimed, "has sounded an alarm for us all: A regional military organization, in the name of humanitarianism and human rights, bypassed the United Nations and took military action against a sovereign state." In so doing, Tang said, NATO created "an ominous precedent in international relations."[5] Troubled by Chechnya and fearful of precedent, the Russians take a similar "strict constructionist" view of the UN Charter.
In contrast to the Western concept of universal human rights, the Chinese proclaim "the sanctity of cultures" and "the sanctity of borders." To be sure, China has not been able to become a hermit nation. Nor has it ignored the UN's human rights organizations, for defensive purposes alone, if no other. However, as Ann Kent's definitive study on the issue makes clear, while China may have signed the various rights covenants and issued perfunctory, formalized reports, they have not permitted any monitoring on Chinese soil.[6]
On larger issues of international security, Russia and China base their UN policies on their interests rather than the abstractions of the UN Charter and international treaties. In regard to Iran's violations of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Washington Post recently noted that "prospects for Security Council action are dismal, largely because of the interest China and Russia have in keeping their economic deals with Tehran."[7] China vetoed a peacekeeping force for Macedonia because of that country's relations with Taiwan. The Chinese and Russian joint declaration on a multipolar world, released in 1997, amounted to an old-fashioned alliance in noble sounding trappings. Both Russia and China view their veto power in the Security Council as a lever to restrain and contain the United States whenever they fear their interests might be jeopardized.
America's unilateralism and its failure "to lead" are not the only obstacles to an effective UN. The unilateralism of inaction by other member states has frequently led to immobilisme in the organization, no matter how much America may have tried to lead. In the summer of 2004, then-Secretary of State Powell and UN Ambassador John C. Danforth circulated a draft resolution to Security Council members seeking sanctions against the Sudanese government. They found no takers-despite a death toll of more than 30,000 and more than 1 million people driven from their homes. Russia, a supplier of military planes to Sudan, claimed the situation was complex, but that sanctions would not be in the interests of humanity. The Algerian delegate expressed profound concern; the Europeans weren't sure the situation warranted the term "genocide"; and the Chinese delegate, whose country has oil interests in the Sudan, threatened to veto any resolution containing sanctions. In the end, the Security Council passed a resolution that praised the Sudanese government because the massacres were proceeding at a slower rate.[8]
What is needed as the UN turns sixty are not more calls for new study groups or commissions that will, once again, come up with the same old timeworn proposals for making the UN more effective, such as making the UN Security Council "more democratic." Creating an effective UN will also require more than our signing pieces of paper that are honored more in the breach than in the observance. An effective UN will also require a positive commitment to the organization by our Russian and Chinese partners and a willingness on the part of our European allies to countenance sticks as well as carrots in their diplomacy.
In short, as the UN turns 60, Americans should consider the past policies of others as well as ourselves in trying to assess the state of the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------
Notes
[1] For more on this, see my "Post-Democratic Cosmopolitans: The Second Wave of Liberal Internationalism," Orbis, Fall 2004.
[2] Claudia Rosett, "Blame Game: Kofi Annan's silence," New Republic, Feb. 21, 2005.
[3] "Stayin' Alive: The Rumors of the UN's Death Have Been Exaggerated," Foreign Affairs, July/August 2003.
[4] On this point see Eric Reeves, "The African Union is Failing in Darfur," New Republic, Oct. 10, 2005.
[5] Barbara Crossette, "China and Others Reject Please That the UN Halt Civil Wars," New York Times, Sept. 23, 1999.
[6] Ann Kent, China, the United Nations, and Human Rights: The Limits of Compliance, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999, pp. 245, 247.
[7] "An Alliance on Iran," editorial, Washington Post, Sept. 27, 2005.
[8] See David Brooks, "Another Triumph for the United Nations," New York Times, Sept. 25, 2004.
Stanley Michalak
Stanley Michalak is the John C. Kunkel Professor of Government, emeritus at Franklin and Marshall College and an FPRI Senior Fellow. His books include A Primer in Power Politics (2001) and Competing Conceptions of American Foreign Policy: Worldviews in Conflict (1991).
As the United Nations' 60th anniversary (October 24) approaches, the usual ritualistic spate of editorials, columns, and op-ed essays will barrage the American public. Liberals will excoriate the Bush administration's unilateralism, lecture about the importance of legitimacy, and conclude that any of the UN's failings lie not with the organization itself, but with its member states-and most notably, with the United States. When America leads, pundits will claim, the UN works.
Conservatives, on the other hand, will point to the oil-for-food scandals, the fecklessness of allies, the inaction in Darfur, the failed efforts at nation-building in Haiti and Somalia, and the efforts by the Euro-NGO complex to create a paradise of virtuous people through paper covenants adopted at international conferences-covenants that would leave almost no aspect of national life free from the eyes of international monitors.[1] In the end, conservative commentators will probably applaud the appointment of John Bolton as someone who will knock some sense into the place. In fact, there is truth in what both sides say. The UN has been and always will be an "on-the-one-hand/on-the-other- hand" organization. On the one hand, the UN's oil-for-food program probably was "the largest scam in the history of humanitarian relief," as Claudia Rosett claimed after the release of Paul Volcker's first interim report.[2] On the other hand, without that program, French, Chinese, and Russian pressure might have led to the dropping of sanctions altogether and undercut the leverage needed to allow weapons inspections to continue in Iraq for three more years.
On the one hand, the imprimatur of the Security Council and General Assembly do add legitimacy to American undertakings, as the Korean War and the first Gulf War demonstrate. On the other hand, to argue that the United States should always work through the UN is to argue that China, Russia, or France should have a veto over our use of military force. Neither the Clinton administration nor any previous administration accepted that position. Nor will any administration in the future, or any other member of the Security Council, do so. Were Taiwan to declare its independence, the last thing China would do is ask UN Security Council for permission to use military force.
It is also true that American leadership has made a significant difference throughout the Organization's history. If it were not for President George H. W. Bush, Kuwait would have become an Iraqi province. In fact, the Security Council's authorization of the use of "all measures" to get Iraqi forces out of Kuwait was the first time the UN (or its predecessor, the League of Nations) acted as intended by the founders. And although it took two years of persistent and tortuous diplomatic leadership, President Clinton finally got the UN to end the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia.
However, despite these and many other successes, it would be a fatal error to conclude that America can always lead the UN, and that the absence of "American leadership" is the only problem facing the Organization. Consider the following examples:
* When Serbs were shelling Sarajevo in the summer
of 1992, George H. W. Bush sought to get the
permanent members of the Security Council to hit
Serb positions and use troops to close alleged
death camps. His suggestion was immediately
stymied by the Russians, who feared domestic
consequences if they moved against the Serbs, and
the French and British, who were casualty averse
because they had peacekeepers on the ground.
* When Somalia was descending into a humanitarian
disaster, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros
Ghali appealed to President Bush and not to the
Security Council, which only later authorized the
intervention of American troops to secure
deliveries of humanitarian supplies.
* When the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM)
was forced to leave that country, members of the
UN Security Council sought not to deal with Saddam
Hussein but to rein in Bill Clinton and, later,
George W. Bush. For almost four years after
Saddam's expulsion of the UN inspectors, America's
"partners" in the Security Council dithered, met,
talked and, in the end, offered watered-down
"monitors" instead of "inspectors"-all under the
guise of reasonableness, concern for the Iraqi
people, the need to engage in sophisticated,
incentive-based diplomacy, and not expecting
perfection. But the truth was clear to everyone:
Saddam Hussein had cowed the "international
community." As Edward Luck, former president of
the UN Association of the USA, recently noted: "By
repeatedly failing over the past decade to take
effective action against Iraq, those permanent
members now claiming to be guardians of
international law have, in fact, done the most to
undermine it."[3]
* As Kosovo descended into disaster, stalemate
arose in the Security Council. When China and
Russia refused to countenance the use of military
force under the UN, the Clinton administration
turned to NATO, having decided that
"illegitimately" stopping Serb repression in
Kosovo was more important than a conception of
legitimacy that would give a pass to Slobodan
Milosevic in deference to the views of veto-
wielding members of the Security Council.
* Today, the UN Security Council watches as
genocide takes place in Darfur. The presence of a
totally inadequate and largely ineffective
Organization of African Union force has provided
our partners on the Security Council with a
rationale for making excuses and procrastinating
as the genocide continues.[4]
The experience of the Clinton and two Bush administrations makes one thing clear: There are limits to American leadership in the UN-and even when America tries very hard.
While America's posture and policies toward the UN have not always been beyond reproach, the UN's major problem is not a lack of American leadership. In the past and now, the UN's weaknesses and inadequacies have also stemmed from the policies and foreign policy worldviews of our continental European allies and our Russian and Chinese "partners" in the Security Council.
Over the past-several decades, our European allies have moved well beyond the state-centric liberal internationalism rooted in the ideas of Woodrow Wilson and FDR. Spurred no doubt by the success of their own European Union, many European political elites seek a supranational international order that would secure not national security but human security; not national interests but planetary interests; not the sovereign rights of states but human rights; not collective security but the collective abolition of weapons systems-all to be attained through codes of conduct that stand above states and to which states will be held accountable.
For them, force-if it is to be used at all in international relations-should only be used as a last resort, and only when authorized by the UN Security Council. Thus, when the conflict in the Balkans began, the Europeans sent in a "peaceful observer force"-the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR). In the end, they went along with the use of force in Bosnia only because President Clinton threatened to intervene unilaterally. When Saddam Hussein sent the UNSCOM weapons inspectors packing, our European allies refused to countenance the use of force, just as they would later oppose the war against Iraq. Today, in regard to Iran's violations of the nonproliferation treaty, they have pursued a diplomacy of carrots alone, and in Darfur, France has deferred on taking up a leadership role in the Security Council.
The diplomacy of post-Cold War Europe is a diplomacy of words and covenants. It is, in fact, a diplomacy quite similar to the diplomacy America embarked upon when it shed its isolationism at the turn of the last century-a diplomacy of peace through multilateral treaties such as the Open-Door Notes, the Washington Naval Treaty, the Four-Power Treaty, the Nine-Power Treaty, and, perhaps, most notably, the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Peace and world order through nonmilitary means: what better words describe the European approach today?
Over the past fifty years, Europe has settled into an international posture that combines the worst of America's geopolitical isolationism with the worst of its former utopian internationalism. Today, we see a Europe that is strategically passive, in military decline, culturally provincial, and preoccupied with the pursuit of grandiose diplomatic objectives unrelated to military power. The legalistic-moralistic approach to diplomacy that George Kennan chided Americans for over fifty years ago in his American Diplomacy well describes the diplomacy of Europe today.
France, of course, is an anomaly among the continental nations. While fully participating in Europe's quest for a supranational international order, it also seeks to regain its position as a great power in the old-fashioned sense, which means conducting foreign relations on the basis of interests rather than moral principles. For example, while France is an active participant in the international "human rights regime," it maintained good relations with Saddam Hussein in the past and has good relations now with authoritarian North African regimes that routinely violate the covenants which France promotes as a cosmopolitan nation. And in regard to Iraq, France's interests involved not only oil and other economic goods; but a lucrative weapons trade, as well.
While Europeans have retreated into cosmopolitan utopianism, the Chinese and Russians are practitioners of nineteenth- century realpolitik. They might put their signatures on
Europe's parchments, but their role models are neither Immanuel Kant nor Woodrow Wilson, but Klemens von Metternich and Otto von Bismarck. National interests and sovereignty guide Chinese and Russian diplomacy within the UN and without.
For example, when UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for more active intervention by the UN when civilian populations were at risk, China's foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, demurred, claiming that respect for national sovereignty and noninterference in the internal affairs of another country are "the basic principles governing international relations." Deviation from those principles by the UN, he claimed, would lead to a new form of gunboat diplomacy and "wreak havoc."
On the issue of humanitarian intervention, Chinese leaders claim that any such activities are a violation of the principles of the UN Charter. "The outbreak of war in Kosovo," Tang claimed, "has sounded an alarm for us all: A regional military organization, in the name of humanitarianism and human rights, bypassed the United Nations and took military action against a sovereign state." In so doing, Tang said, NATO created "an ominous precedent in international relations."[5] Troubled by Chechnya and fearful of precedent, the Russians take a similar "strict constructionist" view of the UN Charter.
In contrast to the Western concept of universal human rights, the Chinese proclaim "the sanctity of cultures" and "the sanctity of borders." To be sure, China has not been able to become a hermit nation. Nor has it ignored the UN's human rights organizations, for defensive purposes alone, if no other. However, as Ann Kent's definitive study on the issue makes clear, while China may have signed the various rights covenants and issued perfunctory, formalized reports, they have not permitted any monitoring on Chinese soil.[6]
On larger issues of international security, Russia and China base their UN policies on their interests rather than the abstractions of the UN Charter and international treaties. In regard to Iran's violations of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Washington Post recently noted that "prospects for Security Council action are dismal, largely because of the interest China and Russia have in keeping their economic deals with Tehran."[7] China vetoed a peacekeeping force for Macedonia because of that country's relations with Taiwan. The Chinese and Russian joint declaration on a multipolar world, released in 1997, amounted to an old-fashioned alliance in noble sounding trappings. Both Russia and China view their veto power in the Security Council as a lever to restrain and contain the United States whenever they fear their interests might be jeopardized.
America's unilateralism and its failure "to lead" are not the only obstacles to an effective UN. The unilateralism of inaction by other member states has frequently led to immobilisme in the organization, no matter how much America may have tried to lead. In the summer of 2004, then-Secretary of State Powell and UN Ambassador John C. Danforth circulated a draft resolution to Security Council members seeking sanctions against the Sudanese government. They found no takers-despite a death toll of more than 30,000 and more than 1 million people driven from their homes. Russia, a supplier of military planes to Sudan, claimed the situation was complex, but that sanctions would not be in the interests of humanity. The Algerian delegate expressed profound concern; the Europeans weren't sure the situation warranted the term "genocide"; and the Chinese delegate, whose country has oil interests in the Sudan, threatened to veto any resolution containing sanctions. In the end, the Security Council passed a resolution that praised the Sudanese government because the massacres were proceeding at a slower rate.[8]
What is needed as the UN turns sixty are not more calls for new study groups or commissions that will, once again, come up with the same old timeworn proposals for making the UN more effective, such as making the UN Security Council "more democratic." Creating an effective UN will also require more than our signing pieces of paper that are honored more in the breach than in the observance. An effective UN will also require a positive commitment to the organization by our Russian and Chinese partners and a willingness on the part of our European allies to countenance sticks as well as carrots in their diplomacy.
In short, as the UN turns 60, Americans should consider the past policies of others as well as ourselves in trying to assess the state of the organization.
----------------------------------------------------------
Notes
[1] For more on this, see my "Post-Democratic Cosmopolitans: The Second Wave of Liberal Internationalism," Orbis, Fall 2004.
[2] Claudia Rosett, "Blame Game: Kofi Annan's silence," New Republic, Feb. 21, 2005.
[3] "Stayin' Alive: The Rumors of the UN's Death Have Been Exaggerated," Foreign Affairs, July/August 2003.
[4] On this point see Eric Reeves, "The African Union is Failing in Darfur," New Republic, Oct. 10, 2005.
[5] Barbara Crossette, "China and Others Reject Please That the UN Halt Civil Wars," New York Times, Sept. 23, 1999.
[6] Ann Kent, China, the United Nations, and Human Rights: The Limits of Compliance, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999, pp. 245, 247.
[7] "An Alliance on Iran," editorial, Washington Post, Sept. 27, 2005.
[8] See David Brooks, "Another Triumph for the United Nations," New York Times, Sept. 25, 2004.
posted by Marko at 10/19/2005 09:16:00 PM
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