The 2007 Norris and Margery Bendetson EPIIC International Symposium, "Global Crises: Governance and Intervention," began yesterday with a panel entitled "UNcertain Future?" that examined the evolving role of the United Nations in international relations. The distinguished guests discussed a broad range of topics ranging from the tensions between the United States and the U.N. to the genocide in Darfur.
William Luers, the president of the United Nations Associations of the United States of America, spoke first about the relationship between the United States and the U.N., describing it as "'U.N.'easy or perhaps more specifically, an 'U.N.'mitigated disaster."
According to Luers, whose organization's goal is to promote a positive relationship between the two, the dynamics have been complicated since the start. "We've had our ups and downs with the U.N. and certainly they with us," he said.
Luers said that the United States' opinion about the U.N. depends on how much power the country has at a given time. When it is weak, it may rely on the U.N., but when "we're particularly macho," the U.N. is seen as more of a nuisance, he said.
The United States, he said, thinks the purpose of the U.N. is to provide security. "But most of the world sees the agenda of the U.N. to be built around development and issues of suffering," he said.
The Bush administration has had an effect on this relationship as well, according to Luers. [They] set out to disassociate the United States from the U.N. as much as possible," he said. The administration has not signed or ratified any treaties.
However, Luers believes this may change. "As the United States begins to reevaluate its role in the world in the wake of Iraq ... I think we'll find a return to the need for international cooperation, international treaties and international law," he said.
Panelist James Traub, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, spoke of the role of Kofi Annan, who served as secretary-general of the U.N. from January 1997 until December 2006.
"I'm often asked what his legacy is," he said. "It's good to remember that he has a legacy ... The last three or four years were so astonishingly difficult or painful for him."
Traub feels, however, that Annan "really seemed to rise above personal and national interest" as secretary-general.
"When we look back, we will admire him both for ... revalidating the institution and for standing for principles, and promoting principles, that at least we in the West believe in," Traub said.
Ironically, he said that by the time Annan left his position, he was viewed as being "anti-American" by some Americans and as a "puppet controlled by the United States" in the third world. According to Traub, this is not a reflection on Annan, however. "It's a reflection of the immensity of the gulf that separates the United States from everybody else," he said.
Traub has found that secretary-generals have succeeded and failed based both on their own inhibitions and the political climate within which they operate.
The discussion then turned to Darfur, as Mukesh Kapila drew on his personal experiences in the region as a former U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator for Sudan to discuss ways in which the organization could better approach similar issues. While many aspects of international relations may have uncertain futures, he said that there is "one thing that is extremely certain."
"For the people of Darfur, the suffering continues, and there will be many Darfurs in the future," he said.
Kapila feels that Darfur and similar genocides could have been prevented. "Although Darfur was in an isolated part of the world, the genocide [did not happen] because of lack of awareness or a failure of early warning," he said.
In turning to member states to help, "we learned that security councils had good information and were aware of what was going on," he said.
Had these member states intervened earlier, the suffering could have been reduced or even averted, Kapila said.
Kapila has heard many excuses for non-intervention. To him, they boil down to feelings of some combination of cynicism, denial, prevarication, caution, distraction, evasion of responsibility and helplessness.
Still, he feels that he has come to a valuable conclusion. "At the end of my futile quest, I realized that institutional decisions are made by individuals," he said. These individuals can hide behind the institutions in their decision making process, something that they cannot do if future Darfurs are to be prevented.
"It is only by making individuals take responsibility for [failing] to act that we will see progress," he said.
After Kapila spoke, Abiodun Williams, the director of strategic planning at the Office of the Secretary-General of the U.N., focused on peace building in his talk.
"When I joined the U.N., I really believed I wanted to be part of its difficult mission to build a safer, better world," he said.
But he said the difficulty in peacekeeping is that it does not always lead to a sustainable result. He said that a third of the countries that emerge from war have relapses within the next five years.
Williams spoke of the Peacebuilding Commission within the U.N. that attempts to help countries secure peace within their borders. But he said the commission cannot do all the work by itself. "The peace building process has to be run by the country itself," he said.
Williams said that building peace is a slow process. "Progress is never easy or quick, especially in international institutions," he said.
As such, the commission has said that "responsibility to protect does not only have one element," according to Williams. There is the element of prevention, then of response, and finally, if both those fail, there is the responsibility to rebuild.
Williams was hopeful for the future of the Peacebuilding Commission. "I believe that as the new century advances, the Peacebuilding Commission will be at the center of the international community's peace building work," he said.
The final speaker was Deputy Secretary-General of the U.N. Mark Malloch Brown, who spoke of his experiences living in and dealing with different countries. He said he has found a common thread throughout nations. "The nation state is a very troubled institution," he said. "[We're] on a downward trend of effectiveness. This is true of the states in the West, the former states of the Soviet Union and the states of the South."
Brown believes that the reason for this stems from the sorts of issues that nation states are confronted with today. "I think it's the nature of the global problems that governments now face," he said. "How can you ... deal with climate change on your own? How can you, if you are the United States or if you are a small and weak state, deal with the problems of security and terrorism on your own?
"In issue after issue, solutions to today's most pressing public policy decisions have gone global," he said.
According to Brown, "there is a steady erosion of the traditional sense of national sovereignty" and a trend "toward a more global public policy," which is the source of much of the tension between the United States and the U.N.
Brown also acknowledged that this is a problem shared by other large states as well, including China and India.
"Big countries find it all the harder to let go of a decision making system that rewards them for their size and their importance in the world," he said.
Brown also offered suggestions for the future of the U.N. "I think the way forward is several fold," he said.
He said that having a more powerful secretary-general would be an important start, but that for that to be possible, an underlying problem needs to be addressed.
"The U.N. has fallen under the thrall of a 192-member committee that seeks to micromanage every decision," Brown said. "Until that is resolved you won't have [the] empowered chief exec that the U.N. needs today."
According to Brown, the U.N. also needs to be "a lot more robust on issues such as human rights and genocide."
Finally, the U.N. needs to have some sort of viable military power. "It needs the standing capacity to carry out mandate given to it by security councils," he said.
Brown said that a "coalition of the willing," to be made up of a "more imaginative partnership between governments, the U.N., civil societies and private sectors," may be the solution.
This coalition "has to fall around the U.N. if we're to create the kind of supple, network, joined-up governance that will really fit with the kind of global problems that we have to address in today's world," he said.
