Saving The Security Council
...will be really hard. I agree with Matt that reforming the UN Security Council would be "desirable." Whether it's achievable, I'm not so sure. This one goes in my if-I-could-wave-a-magic-wand category. If we could accomplish it by magic, I'd be strongly in favor. With all the things we have to do to straighten out our foreign policy, though, I don't think Security Council reform makes the short list.
Changing the Council's composition and taking the veto away from its permanent members is akin to amending the Constitution; it opens a very big can of worms. A lot of today's global problems can be resolved through win-win, positive-sum approaches. Any proposal for the composition of the Security Council will have winners and losers. Suzanne Nossel's first-hand account of Amb. Richard Holbrooke's 1999-2000 push for reapportionment of UN dues is a reminder of how much effort it takes. It's not that reform is impossible, but it certainly presents an opportunity cost problem for other potential priorities. So, are there other ways to skin this cat?
Getting away from formal structure and revision of the UN Charter, it may be possible to develop some voluntary rules for the exercise of the veto. Norms could emerge that stipulate situations in which the veto is appropriate or inappropriate. But that, too, is bound to be a drawn-out process.
Which leaves us with the problem of the Security Council's anachronistic post-WWII composition and the valid claim of rising and regional powers to a seat at the table in the high councils of global politics and security. Here I think the answer is what John Ikenberry and Tom Wright call "informal steering committees," of which the G-8 is the best known. Such forums meet regularly at a high level and deal with a lot of important issues. The most interesting work in this area is by two Canadian institutes in the L20 Project .
A few more worsd about international institutions and liberal internationalism. When I write about these matters, I usually shy away from the term 'institutions' and prefer to talk about a 'rules-based order' or 'international norms and cooperation.' Institutions indeed have the virtue of permanence and clear codification, but way too much of this debate focuses on structure rather than political will. I think some of the warping of the foreign policy debate traces back to that problematic focus.
Comments (4)
I understand that the mere existence and charter of of an institution is not the same thing as the political will and support needed to make that institution effective. But that's no reason not to build institutions. It's just a reminder that building them is very hard work. It seems to me that we live in a time in which a number of genuinely global problems are crying out for new global or transnational institutions of governance created to address those problems. Why not go for it?
April 23, 2008 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
If we didn't have so many more things to do, I would want to go for it. I'm very sympathetic to Japan, India, Brazil's cases for UNSC membership, and L-20 or something like it is my answer. Looking at the list of FP priorities: deliberate withdrawal from Iraq, improving the situation in Afghanistan, re-doing detainee policy, rebuilding the State Department an USAID, talks with Iran, nuclear reductions and nonproliferation, global poverty reduction. Security Council reform doesn't make the cut.
April 23, 2008 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's a pretty fair list, David. I suppose what I am talking about are not the immediate-term and short-term priorities for the next US administration, but a much longer-term program for re-making the world order and creating new institutions and treaty-based instruments for global governance, a transnational movement that US progressives can get behind and pursue over the next several decades in solidarity with progressives elsewhere in the world.
I see this as the work of many years, and something that will require re-awakening the vigorous internationalist spirit that once energized and united so many people around the world, especially in the post-WWII period. This re-awakening will involve the cultivation of the neglected intellectual roots of internationalism, the re-discovery of the old, but currently neglected heroes of the internationalist movement, the rethinking of old ideas in the light of more recent experiences, the building or new organizations and parties, and a vigorous effort to change minds and propagandize on behalf of internationalism and global cooperation and governance. Internationalism of this kind can't succeed unless a lot of people change their current attitudes about where they fit in the world, and begin to see themselves as part of something larger than their own countries.
And as I mentioned before, internationalism needs to be presented as a practical response to pressing, concretely identifiable global problems concerning the environment, the energy system, weapons proliferation, the distribution of wealth and the organization of work, and it has to put forward very specific and practical global policy agendas and aims. It's not just a vague preference for a style of doing business in the world, and an expression of a preference for cooperating with others.
April 23, 2008 2:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
On a longer time horizon, in a world of rising powers, the current composition of the central international political organ is not sustainable. We're agreeing to an unprecedented extent; I'm going to start getting disoriented.
April 23, 2008 2:35 PM | Reply | Permalink