The United Nations: “a club”

On February 21, 2008, the seats in Salomon 101 quickly filled, as the attendees anticipated seeing former United Nations ambassadors John Bolton and Richard Holbrooke ‘62 duke it out over the importance of an organization “criticized as an irrelevant…debating society.” Or, at least, Janus Forum leader Jess Maddox ‘08 told the audience this was the case. I expected one of the ambassadors to take up Jess’s challenge and defend the U.N., but the audience was unfortunately treated to a non-debate.

Bolton, a 2005 Bush appointee, and Holbrooke, a Clinton appointee, spoke for twenty minutes on what were supposed to be opposing positions. They essentially arrived at one conclusion - that United States foreign policy cannot be controlled by the U.N. - and two options for reform: A) a new voluntary funding scheme, promoting transparency and making the U.N. more financially worthwhile for the U.S., or B) the United States should just support its votes more and this will make everything better Which sounds more appealing?

Bolton’s presentation outlined three ways in which U.N. policy is incongruous with American domestic and foreign goals, the first being that U.N. resolutions frequently attempt to “norm” our society, in essence superceding sovereignty within our country. He stated that he would not allow U.N. policy to influence constitutional issues such as the death penalty, arms control, and abortion.

Second, Bolton criticized the unreasonable expectations placed upon the United States as a permanent member of the Security Council, best illustrated by “the 2004 election, [in which Democratic candidate] John Kerry said that [U.S.] foreign policy must pass a global test” of approval by the U.N. Security Council. Bolton pointed out the unrealistic nature of this goal, considering the natural tendency of nations to act in their own interests. Bolton pointed to the issue of sanctions on Iran, emphasizing the difficulty in effectively sanctioning Iran when Russia and China, both members of the Security Council, refuse to act in accordance with the resolution.

Last, Bolton addressed a laundry list of scandals that make it clear that the U.N. is in sore need of some managerial restructuring. He implied that these changes will be difficult to implement from within, referencing the Oil for Food scandal, in which the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein illegally extracted some $67 billion from the Oil for Food program between 1997 and 2002. Recommendations of an “independent outside auditing [service]” were presented to the General Assembly, but this effort at transparency was defeated 120 to 50, with the 50 nations that voted for transparency contributing 90% of the U.N. budget. Bolton finally proposed a solution to the problems he presented: “We should eliminate the system of assessed [mandatory] contributions [and]…make it voluntary.” This, said Bolton, will make agencies “more effective, transparent, responsive,” and give the United States the power to “pay for what we want and get what we pay for.” In other words, the U.S. could choose which agencies and programs to support.

Holbrooke, currently Professor-at-Large at the Watson Institute, began his speech with a play to his home crowd, saying “When I was at Brown, the student body looked at the U.N. as the last great hope for mankind…we’re more realistic now.” Holbrooke defended the theory that the overall strength and effectiveness of the U.N. rests in the hands of the member nations, who need only enforce the policies they vote for.

“If people are upset with Darfur, the administration in Washington, D.C., blames the U.N. - as they have - and ten Security Council countries vote to take action in Darfur, and [then] nothing happens.” Holbrooke did agree that U.S. foreign policy could not be controlled by the United Nations, but countered that “the weaker it [the U.N.] gets, the more anti-American it will get.” Even earlier that day, February 21, he said, Serbians responded to a long battle within the U.N. over Kosovo’s independence from Russia by attacking the American embassy in Belgrade.

There’s “obviously nothing united about the United Nations, [the] U.N. can [still] make a difference [with programs such as] UNICEF, UNAIDS, and policies in Iraq and Kosovo,” said Holbrooke, who emphasized that “it’s much cheaper to support the United Nations than to try to do everything ourselves,” and that of course the U.N. is flawed, but that we shouldn’t be so demanding…“there’s no corruption in Washington, right?”

All rhetorical questions aside, former ambassador Holbrooke simply could not convince this writer that more enforcement from the U.S. would make the U.N. more effective and worth American dollars and time.

First, both ambassadors agree that the U.N. is made up of nations with their own agendas. For this reason alone, even if the United States were to throw its weight behind every resolution it supported, the resolution could still hold little weight for other major world powers, and even less weight with nations already opposed to U.S. foreign policy. The only way that increased American support of a resolution could make a difference is if our federal government took independent (unilateral?) action against other countries who refuse to support a U.N. decision. Talk about an added burden to a country with an already stressed foreign policy!

Holbrooke’s concern was that removing mandatory funding requirements (the U.S. currently provides 22% of U.N. funding) would permanently cripple necessary programs. Holbrooke later noted that it is more expensive for the United States to do certain things, like supporting a national peacekeeping force, on our own than it is for us to split the cost through the U.N. If peacekeeping, which apparently gets “highly leveraged returns,” is important to the United States, then is this not one of the programs the United States would continue to voluntarily fund under Bolton’s proposal? With a voluntary funding system, if those PKO Blue-Helmets (the peacekeepers) do decide to engage in a little questionable action (anyone remember accusations of child abuse, rape, or weapons under the table?), the United States would then be free to choke funding, potentially influencing the transparency of all U.N. groups in this fashion, instead of (as we have been known to do) just withholding U.N. dues and crippling many programs at once.

Said Holbrooke, “The United Nations…is a club,” not an organization. Everyone agrees with him, yet many Brunonians may have come away from the debate feeling that, yet again, the United States has shirked its responsibility to humanity by not enforcing every vote it makes within the Security Council. I believe that a second look at what was said during this debate is warranted. In essence, both candidates came to the conclusion that a change was warranted. Only one former ambassador presented a solution: a mandatory payment program that would enable our nation to strengthen legitimate programs, and leave illegitimate ones in the dust, while the other just asked us to “try harder” and continue to support an institution with little hope of change. Based on what this writer heard that afternoon, I say that a mandatory payment program sounds one heck of a lot better than supporting a disintegrating, corrupt institution and potentially endangering the sovereignty, Constitution, and foreign policy of our nation.