There is a critical difference between U.S. and European approaches
to reforming the United Nations. Europe fully understands the urgency
of UN reform, whereas
the United States does so only intermittently, particularly when it comes to
supporting a globally agreed upon set of recommendations. There are plenty of
homegrown ideas in Washington, and some of them are very good. But few of them
are connected with the work that is going on in New York to arrive at a set of
reforms that all the organization’s members and other interested parties
can support.
It would be good if the Europeans could send a message to the United States that
a reform plan home-cooked in Washington, as opposed to one negotiated with potential
reform allies in New York, risks being stillborn. Worse, such a U.S. plan actually
risks derailing reform as a whole, because it could very easily be seen as another
heavy-handed American effort to make change alone.
The reform plans that have been emerging in New York already have a
strong American influence. The trinity of priorities development,
security and human rights very much reflects America’s
priorities. That is particularly true of the fourth goal that backs
up the first three: management reform. One of the first questions asked
in Washington when we first proposed this reform package was whether
the vote on Iraq would have been different in an en-larged Security
Council. The answer is
broadly “No.” This is only a hypothetical
scenario. But while one or two more countries might have been in favor
of the war, the majority of new members would probably have been more
likely to oppose it.
Iraq, however, is an exceptional case. The normal business of the Security
Council is much more the failed and failing states of the former Yugoslavia
in the 1990s, continuing civil wars in Africa, Afghanistan and other
places with which we are all very familiar. The point is not that a
bigger Security Council would necessarily make action more or less
legitimate in any of those situations; but, that it would, from the
American and European point of view, make it much more affordable.
An
important fact is often ignored about the so-called G4 countries (Japan,
Germany, India, and Brazil), which are lining up
at the gates for entry into an expanded Security Council. Between them,
they contribute twice as much to the UN budget and, therefore, twice
as much to UN peacekeeping, as the so-called P4 the four permanent
members of the
Security Council other than the United States (Britain, France, China,
and
Russia).
“A real ‘taxation
without representation’ problem is emerging
in funding peacekeeping operations”
The legitimacy of such operations
in financial terms would be hugely
enhanced if the Security Council became more representative of global
contributions. There is a real “taxation without representation” problem
emerging in the funding of peacekeeping operations. There is a sense
that those who pay
do not necessarily enjoy a vote in the
decision to authorize Security Council action.
In a way, it is not so much the
enlargement itself that matters. What is really important is the recommitment
to an enlarged Council, not just by the new Council members, but more
broadly by all governments. We hope that such a heightened commitment
will pave the way for agreement in other areas where reforms are being
proposed, such as the definition of terrorism, the responsibility of
the international community to
protect victims of genocide and human rights abuses and the creation
of a Peace-Building Commission to promote lasting peace between warring
parties after conflicts are over. Reforms in these areas would all
be critical steps toward an enhanced security arrangement, and they
would be easier if the Security Council were seen as more legitimately
representative of today’s distribution of economic, political
and military power.
The UN Secretariat does not particularly favor one proposal for enlarging
the Council over another. It is judiciously neutral. But the Secretariat
feels very strongly, and Secretary General Kofi Annan has made very
clear, that it is not healthy for the organization for the talks to
go on for ever. Security Council
reform has already been discussed for 12 years. There are ambassadors
of the
current five permanent members who arrive, join in the discussion and
allow it to continue without end. They enjoy
the Security Council club as presently constituted and leave feeling
that their mission has been well done, that the conversation has found
no end, and that they can hand over the baton to their successors to
talk out the subject for
another four or five years.
Nevertheless, while the Secretary General feels very strongly that
we need to bring some closure to this debate, we do not want the security
agenda, and particularly the enlargement of the Council, to overshadow
reforms in the areas of development and human rights. And here, too,
the U.S. role is critical.
The subject that most excites the United States is human rights. In
a sense the Secretary General surprised everybody by going much further
than his own High Level Panel by proposing a new human rights council,
a significant strengthening of the office of the High Commissioner
for Human Rights, and a serious effort to make human rights a real
priority in all the activities of the
organization. And yet, these proposals, which are getting more support
than many of us had expected, are nevertheless hostage to progress
on the development agenda.
The development agenda is perhaps the one that is most ready for serious
discussion, especially now that Europe as a whole has adopted the goal
of bringing levels of official development assistance up to 0.7 percent
of GDP by 2015. This presents the United States with a huge challenge
not to act as a spoiler. The 0.7 percent target troubles a lot of American
officials who wonder why you do not
estimate what you need to do to
promote development and then put
up the money, rather than start by
announcing what you plan to spend. That would be an odd way, for example,
to construct a defense or a social security budget, and it is something
to which many Americans object. Despite that, however, there are still
ways in which America can get on board. U.S. official development aid
has grown dramatically in the last few years, so there is no reason
why common ground should not be found on this agenda, too.
Finally, there is management reform, an area in which the controversial
nomination of John Bolton to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
has had a somewhat perverse effect on the American position. U.S. interest
in
management reform was until recently to be found in only two places.
The first was the Congress, where the subject arose in discussion of
the lessons to be learned from the problems of the Oil for Food program
for Iraq. The second was the United Nations itself in New York, where
the issue aroused considerable passion.
The U.S. administration was curiously silent on the subject. There
was a sort of pragmatic new foreign policy afoot, which had a certain
impatience for UN reform and institutional reordering. There was much
more interest in what could be done in the week ahead about, say, Afghanistan
or Iraq, or the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. The Bolton nomination,
however, whether intentionally or not, became a referendum on UN reform.
It made the administration take a much greater interest in reform than
it may have ever intended.
“John Bolton’s nomination as U.S. Ambassador has made the administration
take much greater
interest in UN reform”
There is a huge body of American intellectual work and policy leadership
running through all the three big ideas of the reform development,
security and human rights and, indeed, a lot of U.S. interest
in management reform as well. But at the moment the American approach
is excessively insular. Many
of the ideas that are emerging are very good, but they badly need to
be
connected to the reform discussion going on in New York.
Europe can perhaps act as a bridge to bring the two processes together.
In New York, despite the efforts of a first class merican diplomatic
team, there
is a sense that America is not acting as
a leader in the reform process and
that there is even some estrangement
between Europe and the United States. It is extremely important for
the success
of the reform effort that the United States get back into the heart
of the
discussions in New York and feed in its own proposals.
Mark Malloch Brown is Chef de Cabinet of UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan and has also served as the Administrator of the UN Development
Program. He was previously Vice-President for External Affairs and
Vice-President for UN Affairs at the World Bank. In 1997, he chaired
the UN Secretary-General’s task force on the reform of UN communications.
This article is based on remarks made by Mr. Malloch Brown at a European
Institute seminar on U.S.-EU Cooperation on UN Reform, held in Washington
on June 1, 2005.
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