bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2000) — Spring 2000 // Printemps 2000, pp. 29–31
After 25 years of active involvement with The United Nations and associated agencies, and twenty years of retirement to reflect on what it all meant, it was suggested that it might be useful if I were to try to put on record some thoughts on the Security Council during the time when I was Canada’s New York representative, in the late seventies, and what it seems to be today, judged by someone outside the net. The suggestion was a limited one, but I haven’t been able to resist the temptation to go beyond the mandate and add some musings of my own.
An underlying verity is that just as succeeding generations of leopards keep their spots, so does the Security Council maintain its inborn characteristics
– the influence of the great-power veto, even if not exercised, the realities of economic and military power, and the relationships between the Council and other organs of the UN. The more it changes the more it stays the same. The composition of the Security Council is a decisive factor in determining the way the Security Council operates. The five permanent member-delegations, in addition to having the veto, are old hands at the game. The ten non-permanent members are relative neophytes. Even for delegations like Canada, which have been on the Council several times, the time-lapse between terms is so great that, in effect, they are starting all over again. In my day most of the real work was done in small informal groups, or informal meetings of the Council, where no minutes were kept. Informality was encouraged by the fact that the “committee room” was not properly equipped with interpretation facilities. Formal meetings were held only if delegations wished to put positions on record, or when everyone was satisfied that the maximum level of agreement had been reached, and it was time to take formal action. There were a variety of scenarios followed, depending on what was appropriate to the issue. In some cases there would be a round of speeches, followed by the adoption of a resolution. If the problem merited special handling the President would read out a decision of the Council, followed by speeches to give evidence that some delegations had reservations about what had been decided. Sometimes the Council would adopt a resolution as its first item of business, with speeches to follow. And, of course, if it became evident that positions were irreconcilable, a meeting of the Council might be called to give delegations an opportunity to put their positions on the record. I assume that the Council operates in the same way today.
Shortly after our 1977-78 tour, the German Government contributed funds to enable the Council to construct a proper committee room, with interpretation facilities. I suspect that this addition has made the in-camera meetings more structured. Personally, I found the informality that was a characteristic of my day a good thing.
Then, as now, the Council was a reactive, rather than a proactive, body. It doesn’t like to face up to problems until it has no options. A classic example occurred during the 1960s when George Ignatieff was ambassador. In the spring of 1967, he and his Danish colleague tried manfully to persuade the Council to grapple with the rapidly escalating Arab-Israeli crisis. The Council wouldn’t face up to the impending danger, and the 1967 Arab-Israeli war broke out. Perhaps the war was inevitable, irrespective of what the Council was prepared to do, but at least it could have tried.
Another continuing characteristic is that Council involvement in situations calling for its intervention is almost always accompanied by the direct involvement of one or more of the great powers, plus any other parties to the dispute. Negotiations, as often as not, take place outside the UN. But their success depends on suitable international cover, and the Security Council then performs the important task of acting as an executing agent for what has been agreed upon.
In 1977, as a manifestation of Canadian activism, we tried to follow up on a previous initiative by the Finnish delegation, by floating the idea of having periodic informal meetings of the Council, to discuss the issues of the day, without attempting to reach conclusions. Our idea, which reflected an enthusiasm of the Foreign Minister of the day, the Hon. Paul Martin, was that if issues could be discussed before they became crises, perhaps they could be defused. Our model was the discussions of the Heads of Government at Commonwealth Conferences. We got quick agreement from the members of the Council which were also members of the Commonwealth, and a somewhat less enthusiastic agreement from our Latin-American colleagues, who were unfamiliar with Commonwealth practices, but we got a flat turn-down from the USSR and China.
My Soviet colleague told me that participation in discussions of this sort was foreign to their way of operating. But even if they were willing to play, it wouldn’t work vis-a-vis the Chinese. He revealed that Gromyko didn’t even like to attend the Secretary-General’s annual dinner with the Permanent Members of the Council. This was confirmed by the Chinese Ambassador, who said that they weren’t prepared to give up any opportunity to slang the Russians.
Times have changed. It seems that it has become acceptable for the Council president, during his or her month in office, to put forward subjects for wide-ranging discussion. Presumably this has become possible because with the end of the cold war, the main issues these days are concerned with internal or regional disputes of small nations, or the shortcomings of the UN itself. The airing of such matters, at least in some cases, may serve a useful purpose, but as a rule, I would guess that its main purpose will be to satisfy the government concerned that it is exercising suitable vigour in pursuing its efforts to make the world a better place.
In 1977-78, the problem of Lebanon became a critical issue, with the result that the Security Council approved the despatch of a peacekeeping force. Apart from that, and contrary to our expectations, the Middle East, so far as the UN was concerned, was relatively quiescent. Then, as today, African issues preoccupied us. The most contentious single issue facing the Council was apartheid and the associated problem of Namibia. The predominant view was that Chapter VII of the Charter should be invoked against South Africa. For a variety of reasons this was unacceptable to the Western Powers, which attempted to placate African opinion by trying to achieve a settlement of the Namibian issue. The negotiations proved to be long and complicated, and involved the Western delegations in a close collaboration that extended over many months. We were known among our colleagues as “the gang of five.” As a side note the Chinese Foreign Minister told me that we should call ourselves the “gang of four plus one.” Ten years passed by before Namibia finally attained its independence, but I was pleased to see that when the moment came, the plan of execution was the one we worked out.
The present-day Security Council has been confronted with an entirely different set of issues, again mainly concerned with African affairs, related to the internal problems of member states, and the call for UN intervention — all too often carried out inadequately. This is due to a combination of factors — timidity and inefficiencies within the UN Secretariat and troop contributors, lack of adequate political and financial backing by major contributors, failures in implementing sanctions, and fears of becoming involved in difficult internal disputes.
Undoubtedly, the most important single factor has been the action of the U.S. Government in withholding payment of its assessments, to the point where Article 19 of the Charter threatened to become applicable. Jesse Helms, in a recent visit to the United Nations Security Council, confronted its members with some unpleasant but realistic facts of life. He made it plain that the United States (and although he didn’t say it, the other permanent members of the Council) regards the UN, and the Council in particular, as just one of the avenues at its disposal for carrying out its international goals. When it can convince a sufficient number of other governments to go along with it, the UN is doing a good job. When the UN, as dictated by the number of votes cast, is either diffident or opposed, then it doesn’t merit support by the United States. It was evident that in his view the UN has only marginal value in achieving US aims.
The United States has been laggard in paying its dues for many years, alleging that the Secretariat is in need of reform, and that the scale of assessment is unfair. It has also imposed unacceptable limitations on the use of funds it has made available. The UN has attempted to meet US demands for reform, and in fact, the Under-Secretary concerned with administrative matters has almost always been a US nominee, but this has not satisfied the Congress.
The USA has taken stop-gap action by paying enough to avoid the possibility that it would lose its vote in the General Assembly, but the Congress is still set on insuring that its contribution is not used for programs of family planning, and it insists that its assessment must be reduced from the existing rate of 25 per cent of the total for the UN. Moreover, it wants its share of the special peacekeeping budget reduced from 30 per cent to 25 per cent.
Certainly, the U.S. Government attaches more importance to the UN, and is more supportive than Jesse Helms, but there is an essential element of truth in what he had to say.
All governments try to influence the UN in directions they feel it should go. The more important the government, the more weight must be given to its wishes. If it can’t have its way it is inclined to say a plague on the UN.
Frustration over perceived shortcomings in what can be accomplished have, from time to time, led political leaders from all quarters to question the usefulness of the UN in general, and the Security Council in particular. This is surely a short-term view. The major issues dividing the peoples of the world are there because they defy easy solution. The problems of the Middle East have been on the UN agenda from the beginning. They have yet to be solved, but the basis for an ultimate settlement is now foreseeable. Colonialism and the blot of apartheid seemed incapable of resolution, but in the end they came to an end. Progress in achieving progress in economic, social, humanitarian and legal affairs leaves much to be desired, but progress there is, and the UN does provide the incentive for advancement in these areas.
Thus it is, that over the years, the decision of every member-government has always been that with all its faults, and with all the compromises that must be made to meet the realities of world politics, the UN is an essential actor on the world stage. The UN Charter states that the Organization is to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of the common ends set out in that document. In the course of seeking that harmonization, channels of negotiation outside the UN are more often than not, called into use, but when final agreements are to be concluded, the UN, as the organization of reference and cooperation, usually proves to be the most generally acceptable.
When we criticize the UN, we should never forget that the achievements (and the failures) of the Organization are a direct reflection of the level of agreement between member-governments. Its failures are our failures. In the words of Pogo, “we have met the enemy and he is us.”
In the days when I was making speeches about the UN I used to close by quoting from an address by the late Hume Wrong at the final meeting of the League of Nations, when it was passing the torch to the new UN. It should be required reading for every Foreign Minister on taking office. “Disillusion, in its literal sense of the absence of illusions, is a good thing. It should mean that we see more clearly, not that we have lost hope.” In all my years at the UN, I never ceased being impressed by the fact that, almost without exception, every delegate believed in the Organization, and in his or her way, tried to make it better. I have no doubt that is still the case today.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2000) — Spring 2000 // Printemps 2000, pp. 29–31. Read the rest of this issue →
