Kevin Sullivan

Where is Your UN Now!!?: Burma Edition

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Intentions over Outcomes

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Have UN peacekeepers been complicit in African elephant poaching?  Dan Hannan isn’t surprised:

I’ve argued before that, for many Lefties, intentions seem to matter more than outcomes. But how bad do the outcomes have to be before intentions are no longer an excuse? What has to happen before people face up to the real UN (or EU or IOC or whatever) instead of fantasising about some abstract one?

Appropriately enough, the kind of people who are most unthinkingly pro-UN tend also to be the ones most opposed to the ivory trade. Intentions over outcomes, you see. In truth, the ban on ivory sales has been calamitous, both for Africans and elephants. Experience shows that it is far more effective to declare elephants the property of the people who own the land they roam, thus giving locals an incentive to treat them as a renewable resource.

I have little interest in Hannan’s ode to private property, but his greater point is well taken.  There are, ahem, some pundits and bloggers who believe that the UN–while not a perfect institution by any stretch–still stands as the best alternative to the anarchic, Hobbesian world that would presumably fill the void. 

There are several problems with this false dichotomy, and Hannan hits upon one of them here.  The primary issue with the “UN as ideal” argument is that it depends on this crazy idea that the world would immediately revert to a late-19th Century, multi-polar nightmare.  But this time, there are nukes, powerful missiles and other WMD’s.

I think Richard Haass has done a pretty good job of dispelling this myth; describing a “non-polar” world where the UN is simply an actor among several, rather than a confederate umbrella monitoring the whole system.  Banning the killing of elephants is not the issue; the question is whether or not disinterested or overly interested external actors should be voting and intervening on what are essentially regional problems.  The CITES ban–while certainly good intentioned and feel good–hasn’t helped Kenyan elephants, nor has it balanced out the ivory trade.  However, when local actors moved to do something about the problem, the adjustments were far more beneficial.  Zimbabwe and South Africa, for example, now have more elephants than they can handle.

More at memeorandum  

The Conditional Hegemon

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John Boonstra of UN Dispatch expresses his displeasure with American inaction in Darfur:

By failing to provide more robust support for UN peackeeping, to invest a deeper commitment in Sudan’s tortured peace processes, and to exert more concerted pressure on Sudan and its enablers, the U.S. has consistently watched opportunities for peace and protection in Darfur sail by. Faulting the UN for a slow-deploying and under-resourced peacekeeping mission is a bit like blaming one’s shadow. If the U.S. is going to cast stones at the UN, it would do well to remember that the UN is no more than its Member States, and that the U.S., with the huge amount of influence and funding that it brings to the world body, may well end up looking to itself, with a stone in its hands.

Yet President Bush continues to present this false dichotomy: unilateral U.S. military action, for which the American population largely has no stomach, versus a failed UN mission, which the U.S. can conveniently scapegoat for the continually deteriorating situation in Darfur. The media should call the administration out on this self-exculpatory tactic, and the U.S. should discard its smoke and mirrors and work honestly with the international community to achieve real, tangible progress in Darfur.

I can understand and appreciate Boonstra’s frustration over the lack of progress in Darfur.  But I think his critique is terribly unfair, for a whole plethora of reasons.  One, as I recently argued, it’s hard to condemn President Bush on Africa (if you want to debate the Middle East, well, there you have an argument).  President Bush had the guts to use the word “genocide” in reference to Darfur long before the blessed “international community” could bring itself to stomach the backlash from Arab states.  This issue only gained the steam it has today when the Bush administration began to address it.

Secondly, I am a little bit perturbed by this inconsistent rhetoric on American interventionism.  When calamity arises, it’s up to the United States to bear the brunt and the blame.  The U.S. has of course adapted and become good at dealing with this role, but it’s completely unfair of Boonstra to say that its invasion, evasion or bust.  The United Nations is indeed a reflection of its makeup, which is why it would be great if its absolutely disgraceful Human Rights Council would begin to take Darfur seriously.  It would also be helpful if the Arab League was convinced to take these matters seriously, rather than hosting their lavish annual summit in Khartoum; in stark defiance and indifference for the atrocities occurring directly under their noses.   

And then there’s China, perhaps one of the “enablers” mentioned by Boonstra.  In a sane world, China’s economic interests–more specifically, their continued arming of the current regime–would likely disqualify them from having any negotiating stake on the genocide in Darfur.  However, in the world that is the “international community,” they not only have a say, but they represent a deciding factor in whether or not the United Nations can take more aggressive action with Khartoum.  Under the current system, the enablers are permitted to not only enable, but to mitigate any and all solutions.  The only thing the United States can do in this situation, sadly, is lobby China like every other nation to take Darfur more seriously.  Unfortunately, Sudan sits on a long list of gripes and grievances we currently have with the People’s Republic, which also currently includes Tibet, Iran, and other matters like climate and trade. 

There’s certainly a lot of blame to go around on the genocide in Darfur, and unfortunately, a lot of it is beyond the scope of American power. 

Nonpolarity

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Richard Haass has an interesting essay in the upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs, wherein he addresses the issue of nonpolarity.  In short, Haass argues that unlike the pre-WW I era, the global system is now embarking on a quasi-anarchic journey that involves more than state-oriented actors; instead branching out to players such as NGO’s, large corporations, terrorists and energy providers.  It’s well worth the read, and Haass proposes a litany of ameliorating measures to help manage this new world order (such as a “World Investment Organization,” more trade, etc.).  All of his points aside, the thing that grabbed me was the question of multilateralism, and the makeup of global deliberation:

Multilateralism will be essential in dealing with a nonpolar world. To succeed, though, it must be recast to include actors other than the great powers. The UN Security Council and the G-8 (the group of highly industrialized states) need to be reconstituted to reflect the world of today and not the post-World War II era. A recent meeting at the United Nations on how best to coordinate global responses to public health challenges provided a model. Representatives of governments, UN agencies, NGOs, pharmaceutical companies, foundations, think tanks, and universities were all in attendance. A similar range of participants attended the December 2007 Bali meeting on climate change. Multilateralism may have to be less formal and less comprehensive, at least in its initial phases. Networks will be needed alongside organizations. Getting everyone to agree on everything will be increasingly difficult; instead, the United States should consider signing accords with fewer parties and narrower goals. Trade is something of a model here, in that bilateral and regional accords are filling the vacuum created by a failure to conclude a global trade round. The same approach could work for climate change, where agreement on aspects of the problem (say, deforestation) or arrangements involving only some countries (the major carbon emitters, for example) may prove feasible, whereas an accord that involves every country and tries to resolve every issue may not. Multilateralism à la carte is likely to be the order of the day.

Nonpolarity complicates diplomacy. A nonpolar world not only involves more actors but also lacks the more predictable fixed structures and relationships that tend to define worlds of unipolarity, bipolarity, or multipolarity. Alliances, in particular, will lose much of their importance, if only because alliances require predictable threats, outlooks, and obligations, all of which are likely to be in short supply in a nonpolar world. Relationships will instead become more selective and situational. It will become harder to classify other countries as either allies or adversaries; they will cooperate on some issues and resist on others. There will be a premium on consultation and coalition building and on a diplomacy that encourages cooperation when possible and shields such cooperation from the fallout of inevitable disagreements. The United States will no longer have the luxury of a “You’re either with us or against us” foreign policy.

A lot of ideas get floated here, but I think Haass is essentially right.  We’ve seen how the UN has encountered problems in dealing with world affairs; mostly due to an antiquated framework that elevates some not-so-relevant actors, while belittling the emergent ones.  This not only affects commerce and trade, as Haass notes, but it has direct bearing on the way in which wars are waged, and what conflict will look like in the new century. 

The emergence of so-called failed states and non-state actors has handcuffed the United Nations, which approaches many of the world’s dilemmas with a “grand strategy” sort of approach, when a more focused, regional and short-term solution would often make more sense.  Because of the control over resources and energy, alliances and interests will constantly shift at the behest of external actors lacking a state-oriented mindset.  In other words, asking the “whole wide world” to make slow, deliberative and overly bureaucratized decisions on every pressing matter makes little sense, and it only serves to make states less relevant when corporations and terrorist cells can operate with a freedom that nations united cannot. 

Haass’ diagnosis is pretty sound, but in the case of global terrorism, I would also add a stronger emphasis on the true Bush Doctrine.  The enabling of violent extremism is one result of an increasingly nonpolar world, and it’s essentially a redefinition of warfare (proxy wars via various money channels, financing of militias and separatists, etc.).  We’ve seen how this has made progress difficult in the Middle East.  During the Nixon years, the U.S. relied on a “twin pillars” policy that asked Saudi Arabia and Iran to essentially police the region on our behalf.  With the states receiving internal competition for influence in the region, this kind of arrangement is no longer possible (if it ever truly was).  This may be unavoidable, which makes isolating the regimes that perpetuate this anarchism all the more important.  We should thus continue to freeze assets going towards terror, sanction regimes that knowingly attack the state system and fight these terrorists when and where it’s possible.              

Good Ideas Shouldn’t Take So Long

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Apparently McCain’s “league” idea fails because we can’t be arsed to start it:

McCain’s habit of putting this at the center of his foreign policy agenda reveals not just poor strategic thinking on the underlying merits of the concept, but an extraordinary detachment from the realities of the contemporary world. The idea that Canada and France and Brazil and India and South Korea are all just chomping at the bit to join a new McCain-initiated, America-led war club is ludicrous and anyone who thought about it for five minutes could see that.

Pure silliness.  I doubt McCain believes this is something that will see complete fruition during his presidency, but that shouldn’t hinder him from getting the ball rolling if it’s a good idea.  Of course such a thing would take time, but it will obviously take time to A. Clean up the bureaucratic mess created by the UN, and B. Hammer out all of the institutional bylaws and whatnot.  But you have to start somewhere, just as the United Nations did. 

Furthermore, it may be counter-productive to reinvent the wheel on this thing, if it’s something McCain is serious about creating.  I think some medley of the G8 and NATO is a good start; something with a foundation in solid ideals such as free elections and freer markets.  The question of legitimacy is a canard, because the UN’s legitimacy is still to this day challenged repeatedly.  We only got to invade Korea because Stalin boycotted the Security Council vote.     

Blaming the UN

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From Matthew Yglesias:

There’s a tendency to attribute policy failures of the UN’s member states to “the UN” as if “the UN” is supposed to be able to take dramatic action in the face of indifference from the key countries. Meanwhile, you don’t see the main people making this complaint arguing for measures to increase the independent capabilities of the UN organization.

***

Meanwhile (and relatedly) one thing critics of the UN tend to get vague about is “compared to what?” When the project isn’t being dismissed as totally ineffectual, it tends to get dismissed as utterly utopian. Both critiques are, in my view, wrong but they’re also a bit schizophrenic. The truth is simply that the UN’s mission is difficult so we shouldn’t be shocked that problems remain nor should we ignore the fact that a great deal of good is being done.

The mission becomes especially difficult when the organization as a whole loses sight of said mission.  Like many bureaucracies, the UN has added a caveat to its mission, with the priority being the perpetuation and security of the United Nations.  It’s obviously understood that nations serve as self-interested actors.  But if we hold no expectations of the body, or simply shrug and say that the mission is “tough,” well sure, it’ll stay dysfunctional. 

There are, in fact, plenty of reasons to blame the United Nations for several of the world’s ills (granting legitimacy to terrorists makes the list).  But while we shouldn’t “blame” the UN for the absence of utopia, we certainly should blame them for turning their aid programs into boondoggles.  It isn’t, however, their corruption that should make us uneasy, but rather, their frequent unwillingness to look internally and exercise their own corrupting and corrosive demons.  This is what happens when a great, big bureaucracy loses sight of its mission statement; instead opting to be a funnel for jobs, programs and cash.  Yes, UNICEF and the WHO do great work.  But the UN hierarchy is not necessary for those agencies to continue that work.

One of the problems is the structure of the Security Council.  It’s a product of a Cold War world, granting far too much veto authority to questionable regimes.  How China can be a key power-broker in an international institution geared towards world peace and freedom boggles the mind.  And yes, even the United States is granted far too much veto power within the institution (I feel this balances out many of the undeserving member states, but I digress).

So we could blame the member states for the problems of the UN, but that doesn’t change the culture of autonomous obfuscation that has overtaken the body’s power structure.  If the UN is failing to meet its charter and foster global dialogue, than what purpose does it serve?

Cernig’s World

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Everyone’s favorite IRNA editor-at-large has taken issue with my UN death knell:

Kevin Sullivan, the most right-leaning “liberal” in the blogosphere, wouldn’t attend the UN’s funeral and James Joyner seems to think a different, democratic, alternative would be better for U.S. interests than the UN is, writing that “Attempting to get that business done through a smaller coalition of more like-minded states only makes sense, and it’s a far sight better than either going it alone or waiting on the UN to achieve consensus.”

But here’s the rub – what happens when the League of Democracies tries to impose its authority on a non-democracy and the latter says it doesn’t recognise the authority of a body it hasn’t been invited to send representatives to and has no voice at?

We bomb them? 

I think Cernig’s primary hang-up here is how he views the UN, and what precisely the role of such a global, deliberative body should be.  The problem with his argument is that the UN was not an institution built for growth, but rather, an institution built for results.  There were 50 founding members in 1945; including the permanent members of the Security Council.  Even then, there were nations outside the organization that weren’t going to immediately recognize the authority or the legitimacy of the body (and you also had Stalin attempting to pack the body with his Soviet satellites, like Belarus and the Ukraine).  There were in fact membership regulations imposed on applicant nations, and even upon membership you had efforts to incorporate weaker states into the global system (the Group of 77, UNCTAD, and so on).  These groups have to start somewhere, and the opinions held by those who are outside looking in shouldn’t be the roadblock to a good idea.

I think something resembling the Bretton Woods System would be a good start.  You can lay out the rules for membership, but the ideals must be the core of the institution.  Building a global body premised on democratic planning, freer markets and collective action is a good thing, and it’s no wonder that it bothers someone with a Socialistic outlook on the world.  To Cernig, “liberalism” means non-aggression and bureaucratic haggling.  This doesn’t, however, foster peace or progress.  Cernig relishes the thought of a global body that impedes the democratic nations of the world; instead focusing its time on perfunctory activity like condemning Israel and scolding the United States. 

Such wasted time, energy and resources would madden a genuine liberal (as it does!), but it’s precisely the kind of world Cernig wants to live in.  Peace, prosperity and trade are all fine in rhetoric, but throwing that monkey wrench into the machinery of the evil corporate powers makes for a much nobler goal in their minds.  To the global socialist, this is the job of the UN.  But we mustn’t confuse this as progress, or liberalism, or whatever else they’ll call themselves.  We’ve tried their bad ideas, so maybe it’s time to start over.  

Oh, and as for who the “league” bombs or doesn’t bomb–Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman bombed plenty of people during the era of global deliberation and compromise.  Nations that bomb other nations unjustly will be held accountable by other global actors.  With the merging of markets and finance, it doesn’t make sense for arbitrary bombing campaigns and invasions to go on, because they’re obviously bad for business. 

This is another one of those ideals I was talking about.                         

If the UN Were to Die…

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…who would go to its funeral?

The United Nations was founded on the idea that a platform for global dialogue would end war, maintain global order and advance human rights all around the world.  Can we truly say that the body has accomplished this?  Aside from a select few on the extreme Left, who would mourn the passing of such a perfunctory and often pointless institution? 

Granted, the organization has satellite agencies that do some wonderful work.  But those sister agencies–such as the World Health Organization–could certainly carry on their work with a better body (much in the way the PCIJ transitioned into the new ICJ under the UN charter).   

The UN is “Corroding”

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Is this news?  Kaveh Afrasiabi seems to think so, and he blames the sanctions on Iran:

It is noteworthy that the US’s unilateral sanctions do not simply complement the UN sanctions, as is usually claimed by US pundits. In fact, given the US’s pressure on foreign banks to stop issuing letters of credit for trade with Iran and other such pressures exceeding the limits of UN sanctions, the latter are trumped by the US sanctions to some extent, raising the question of their legality from the prism of international law.

The proposed travel sanction also faces the hurdle of coming up with an accurate list of targeted individuals to transmit effectively to appropriate authorities in countries throughout the world. Since the present list omits political leaders and decision-makers, the question arises as to the grounds on which poor scientists who simply follow orders should be penalized, and their freedom to travel curtailed.

Another pertinent question is whether it would not be better to save the UN from another embarrassing failure, harming its global legitimacy, by avoiding such rash moves that have absolutely no chance of success and will simply perpetuate the image of an ineffective world organization.

The answer is a resolute yes, all the more reason for the UN to return Iran’s nuclear dossier to the IAEA, in light of the IAEA’s near conclusion of giving Iran a clean bill of health, and the US’s own spy agency’s admission that Iran is not presently involved in the nuclear proliferation business.

Perhaps I’m too cynical, but I can’t recall the last time the political/deliberative wing of the UN did anything that deserved praise.  Hezbollah is still in violation of Resolution 1559, and the far Left would be remiss not to remind us of Israel’s failure to comply with multiple lesser resolutions.  But somehow, not enforcing these sanctions would be the final straw.  Puzzling.

The truth is that the United Nations is nothing more than a perfunctory bureaucracy.  Once an organization built on preserving and promoting democracy and freedom, it’s now simply a place meant to mediate claims between all sorts of regimes.  A cigar shop for petty thugs, totalitarians and genuine republics.  One more round of sanctions won’t diminish the UN, that mission was accomplished a long time ago. 

In fact, tarnishing their own good name is the only thing this institution has managed to triumph at.