UN, Rediscovered
Mini Teaser: The UN is flawed, but the United States can learn to use it better—as long as we hold reasonable expectations.
AFTER SIX years of tempestuous U.S.-UN relations, the next few months could prove a turning point. The proximate cause is the unusual confluence of four events: the ascension of a new UN secretary-general, Ban Ki Moon; the end of John Bolton's stormy ambassadorship and the nomination of his skilled replacement, Zalmay Khalilzad; and the Democratic takeover in Congress. In many ways personnel is destiny, and the new faces could move the relationship from an era of bitterness, suspicion and isolation to one of sustained, positive engagement and realistic expectations.
But a larger, more impersonal reason also contributes. In Washington, there is a greater sense of sobriety about the limits of America's power and influence to act alone-and more appreciation for strong, effective international institutions.
This moment occurs against a backdrop of dashed expectations. The end of the Cold War boosted hopes that a new system of global governance would rise. These aspirations rested not on new institutions but an old one-despite the fact that, through 45 years of dueling superpower vetoes, the UN had never effectively stewarded global security. Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait presented the first critical test, and President George H. W. Bush later reflected, "I was not yet sure what to expect from the UN." But in less than six months the UN Security Council endorsed Kuwait's liberation, and U.S.-led forces steered a broad coalition to a stunning military victory. Finally, it seemed, the UN could work as intended. President Bush, a proud former UN ambassador and genuine believer in the institution, talked of a "new world order."
That concept, never well-defined and deeply controversial in the right wing of Bush's Republican Party, was soon shelved. As post-Cold War realities set in, the world scaled back grand ambitions for the UN. Though meant to solve the world's problems, the organization proved feckless with urgent challenges like the Bosnian war, the chaos in Somalia, the genocide in Rwanda and the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
Twelve years after triumph in the Persian Gulf, the UN went from its moment of greatest hope to its worst nightmare. Again the issue was Iraq and the American president's name was George Bush. But this time the UN did not support the United States and (far fewer) coalition forces when they invaded-without proper legal authorization, many believed. Given the thick stack of Security Council resolutions Iraq defied, the latter is debatable. The results are not: a crisis that ruptured America's relationship with the United Nations and the perception of the war as an "illegitimate" use of force.
The Iraq War has of course had ramifications far beyond the Middle East. It sparked an intense debate about American power and legitimacy. This debate will be a centerpiece of the 2008 election and the first post-9/11, post-Bush national security agenda. There is wide concern about the sharp decline of U.S. authority-even those Iraq hawks who showed the most confidence about American purpose and the greatest disdain for global consensus now admit that legitimacy is important.
At a minimum, this means more emphasis on diplomacy. But it also means greater focus on the architecture of global governance and the role and effectiveness of the United Nations-subjects much discussed during the Clinton years but then pushed aside. This debate could not come at a better time. The UN plays a larger role than ever before in addressing the world's problems, but it remains deeply dysfunctional and at odds with its most important member, the United States.
The U.S.-UN relationship has never been an easy one. Its history is one of struggles, political grandstanding and genuine crises, from the first Soviet veto to the "non-aligned" anti-Americanism of the 1970s to the fights over peacekeeping and reform in the 1990s. Though an American creation, the UN has never been well understood, or even respected, in Washington circles. Dean Acheson once called the position of UN ambassador a "ridiculous job", and one of its most effective occupants, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, famously referred to the UN as a "dangerous place." To many American policymakers, the maneuverings in New York often seem bizarre-the intensity of UN debates is inversely proportional to its real-world importance. Like Washington's beltway, UN life on First Avenue exists in its own bubble. Writing more than forty years ago, the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., captured this disconnect best: "To outsiders the UN often seemed a vast and picturesque form of make-believe, whose excitement bore little connection with serious issues; but to those who lived every day in the all-enveloping UN environment, it became the ultimate reality."
During the past few years this "ultimate reality" has been harder to dismiss. Historians will likely look back at the period between the Iraq wars as a decisive one for the institution and the U.S. approach toward it. This was an era when the greatest hopes and criticisms about the UN reached a fever pitch. For many, one man embodied these dreams and nightmares: Kofi Annan.
The position of UN secretary-general (the "SG", in UN parlance) is arguably the most important and high-profile job in the world in which the occupant has so few tools of actual power. The SG has no army, has to beg for airplanes to conduct diplomatic missions and can hardly hire or fire people in his own institution. Demanding outcomes from sovereign states is out of the question. All the SG has is persuasion: agendas, speeches, inspiration, shame. Some have utterly failed, coming off as detached, imperial and haughty-like Kurt Waldheim or especially Boutros Boutros-Ghali. But others, like Dag Hammarskjöld and Annan, wielded their influence with a soft touch, being perceived as genuine statesmen for the world.
With elegance and a quiet but palpable magnetism, Annan skillfully focused international attention on issues like HIV/AIDS and human trafficking. He encouraged debate around bold concepts like corporate responsibility, humanitarian intervention and the "responsibility to protect." In this sense, he worked as what one of his top advisors, John Ruggie, describes as a "norm entrepreneur"-offering ideas that national leaders sometimes can't and often won't. Annan didn't always succeed. Despite his Nobel Prize, the world ignored or rejected plenty of his admonitions. But looking back, it's clear that his ideas inspired an important debate about the UN and 21st-century global governance.
Yet with the exalted heights Annan reached, he suffered in an impossibly difficult job. Annan has many fans, but he leaves the impression of a tragic figure: one who wanted to do great things but found himself broken by a gigantic bureaucracy and personal shortcomings.
This was especially the case when Annan tried to navigate the UN's crucial relationship with Washington. In many ways, his troubles were surprising: Annan was closer to the United States than any secretary-general had been. After college in Minnesota and many years in New York City, Annan knew the American people as few international civil servants ever have. The Clinton Administration engineered the ouster of his predecessor, Boutros-Ghali-a necessary but ugly episode James Traub describes as a bellwether for increasing American unilateralism in his book The Best Intentions: Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power-and promoted Annan as a successor. The administration credited Annan's leadership in getting the UN to agree to NATO's bombing against the Serbian army in Bosnia in 1995. And it believed he could build support for the UN where the organization needed it most-among America's ruling elites, especially on Capitol Hill.
Annan did elevate the UN's image in Washington. He actively courted its most powerful critic, Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), and bargained with U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to ensure U.S. financial support at the end of the Clinton Administration. His willingness to take the UN's case outside the Boston-Washington corridor-to Helms' North Carolina or to the Midwest-may have made him, among Americans, the most well-known and respected secretary-general.
But some of Annan's actions reinforced his critics' harshest allegations of meddling and anti-U.S. bias. Topping the list were his last-minute negotiations with Saddam Hussein (he never lived down his 1998 declaration that Saddam was "a man I can do business with") and his leaking a letter to President Bush the week before the 2004 elections. The missive warned against the U.S. attack on insurgents in Fallujah, leaving the (no doubt accurate) impression that he and his staff were rooting for John Kerry. Combined with Oil for Food, sex abuse by UN peacekeepers and a Human Rights Commission with Sudan and Libya on it, the institution spiraled into crisis. As Annan limped to the end of his tenure, Traub tells that Annan's strongest American supporters privately warned that if he didn't act fast, "the institution is going down."
Annan and his confidantes certainly deserve much of the blame for the U.S.-UN predicament, even though a new team, under Mark Malloch Brown as Annan's deputy, brought refreshing leadership to the organization. Yet Washington itself cannot escape blame. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. approach toward the UN has veered from indifference to hostility to engagement. When global challenges grew more complex and global solutions more important, the United States could never figure out how to get what it wanted from the UN-or even exactly what it wanted in the first place.
When it comes to thinking about the UN, swings between grandiose optimism and brooding despair are something of an American tradition. Along with Bush 41's "new world order" are such rhetorical gems as John Foster Dulles calling the UN Charter a "greater Magna Carta" and Madeleine Albright speaking of "assertive multilateralism." Over-the-top critics have always accompanied these optimists, from the black helicopter crowd to John Bolton, who once joked that it wouldn't be so bad if someone blew the top floors off UN headquarters.
Many U.S. frustrations are warranted. The UN has never been managed well. It is full of career bureaucrats who make no significant contributions. In the cutting words of Malloch Brown, "what a lot of people do here is basically crap." Its failures to act in Rwanda and Darfur are disgraceful. But at the root of America's problems with the UN are the inherent limitations of an organization whose every decision depends on the collective action of sovereign states with their own interests and ambitions. The UN can bring states together, but it cannot make choices for them.
This might seem self-evident, but the organization's U.S. critics and boosters alike often forget it. "There's confusion between the UN as a stage and the UN as an actor", Bob Orr, one of Annan's top American advisors and an influential confidant of Ban Ki Moon, told Traub. "As an actor, there's so little we can do, and often the people accusing us are the same ones who prevent us from being able to act." Or as Richard Holbrooke often puts it, blaming the UN for the world's problems is like blaming Madison Square Garden for a poor New York Knicks showing. Consider two of today's most urgent crises, the genocide in Darfur and Iran's nuclear program. Who's preventing stronger action, the UN or veto-wielding countries like China and Russia?
Understanding these inherent limits is an important step. Post-9/11, when many of the threats we face are transnational and non-state, there is only so much one organization of states can do. This doesn't mean the United States can or should throw the UN away. But to deal with the complex challenges we face, it makes good sense to strengthen other institutions, like NATO, or build new ones (as some suggest we do with the Community of Democracies or a Middle East security organization).
For American policymakers, the fundamental question is what role to expect the UN to play. The UN will remain indispensable in meeting humanitarian and development challenges through agencies like the UN Development Program, UNICEF and the World Food Program. And as the only global political organization, the UN can continue to set standards and norms for behavior. But when it comes to grappling with the most sensitive security questions-where the issue of sovereignty is often central-the reality may be that the UN has to yield to regional organizations or ad hoc coalitions. Again, this seems to be the direction it is heading in Iran and Darfur: The UN Security Council has been more of a forum for global deadlock than for strong action.
Regardless of what one expects from the UN, thinking differently is not enough. America has to act differently. Sustained U.S. engagement and creative leadership are necessary to gain the maximum benefit. As with any large deliberative organization, the keys to success in the UN are the usual tools of influence-log-rolling, symbolic gestures and, of course, raw power.
Too often, the United States approaches the organization with only the latter, leaving us isolated and empty-handed. When the United States has succeeded at the UN, such as during the financial dues debate in the late 1990s, it has done so because of creative, energetic diplomacy and skillful politics. And when it has failed-reform efforts under John Bolton come to mind-it's been because we gave nothing to our potential supporters and provided ample ammunition to our opponents. American diplomats shouldn't be pushovers, but they shouldn't be martyrs either.
Washington's shifting political winds offer an opportunity to change course. The Iraq quagmire and the challenges of Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs have reinvigorated pragmatism among American policy elites. Choosing between bad and worse policy options is sobering, and, more than ever, policymakers and citizens want institutions that work well and solve problems. An improved relationship with the UN might be just what the beleaguered Bush Administration needs, and the new U.S. ambassador could make this his legacy-as Holbrooke did during the last two years of Clinton's presidency.
President Bush is fond of comparing himself to Harry Truman, and repairing U.S.-UN relations could make this strained comparison apt. His initial approach toward the UN is a mistake he is willing to admit: "I don't know if I'd call this ‘change of mind', but one thing that my European friends have taught me is that the United Nations is an important body in order to be able to convince parliaments of hard work that needs to be done", he said recently. "I have come to realize that other countries do rely upon the United Nations and I respect that a lot. So there's an area, for example, where I have been taught a lesson by my allies and friends." The President's new UN ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, has shown in Afghanistan and Iraq that he can handle diplomatic complexity-and his admirable patience for diplomatic rituals, nuance and hand-holding will serve him well in New York.
But while we can hope for a new U.S. attitude, we cannot expect it. So the new Democratic majority must help rebalance the U.S. approach and demand the kind of vigorous American participation that makes the UN effective. Too often, Democrats have been pinned between bloated hopes for the UN and fears that those hopes will hurt them politically-witness the scrambling in the John Kerry campaign after the candidate spoke of a "global test" for America's leadership. But most Democrats, like many centrist Republicans, have a clear understanding of both what the UN can be (a tool for solving some problems) and what it will never be (a global government).
Thus, the new Congress should promote UN reform without demonizing the institution or undercutting the American position there. For Democratic leaders, this is a chance to show they understand the UN's possibilities and limits. It is worth noting that the most effective UN ambassadors have been registered Democrats, even if they served under Republican presidents: Adlai Stevenson, Moynihan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Madeleine Albright and Holbrooke.
Leading members of Congress should work to develop a strong relationship with the new secretary-general and his team. Although Washington helped shepherd Ban Ki Moon into the job, he is not well-known as a policy operator and is practically unknown to the American people. If the SG's most important powers are voice and authority, he has a long way to go.
Members of Congress should also find ways to deepen engagement between the two institutions. Congress should take a cue from Jesse Helms and exchange visits with the Security Council or hold Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings in New York. While it's true that the U.S. Congress and the UN have an unusual relationship-there is no other international organization that depends so much on one country's legislative body-a more positive American role is impossible without legislative support.
Such efforts might strike some as trivial, as changing the mood music while the dangers, possibilities and limits of global governance go unaddressed. But they are based on a fundamental premise. For all of its problems and complexities, a strong United Nations is in America's interest. Yes, the UN is flawed; yes, the squabbles there can be petty and ridiculous; yes, the nature of the institution tends to reward bloviating over action; and yes, even a talented and respected secretary-general like Kofi Annan can fall short of expectations. But in today's world, if the UN didn't exist, we'd have to invent it. So it's only realistic to make it work better.
Derek Chollet is a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution. He served as a speechwriter at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations during the Clinton Administration.
Essay Types: Essay