The Year Non-Western Powers Rewrote the Rules at the United Nations

Artículo
World Politics Review, 19.12.2017
Richard Gowan, académico (European Council on Foreign Relations-NYU’s Center on International Cooperation) y profesor (Columbia University)

• One year ago, the United Nations appeared to be poised between a moment of renewal and a total meltdown

An energetic new secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, promised to revitalize the organization after a decade of drift under Ban Ki-moon. The former Portuguese prime minister talked about a “surge of diplomacy” and the need to prevent looming conflicts.

Yet he seemed doomed to run headlong into opposition from the administration of incoming U.S. President Donald Trump. The president-elect had repeatedly belittled and dismissed the U.N., and his nationalist advisers itched to slash its budgets. Diplomats and international officials in New York braced for a reckoning with the U.S., their biggest funder, that could leave the U.N. decisively crippled.

In the end, a multilateral apocalypse was postponed. Guterres and Trump effectively canceled each other out. The secretary-general, a canny operator as well as an idealist, blunted the new administration’s demands for budget cuts with offers of significant reforms to streamline the U.N. bureaucracy. The president aimed a series of symbolic kicks at multilateral cooperation, such as declaring his intent to quit the Paris climate agreement, but also promised to help Guterres deliver on his agenda.

The need to keep Washington onside has nonetheless consumed the lion’s share of the secretary-general’s attention, leaving him little time or political space to articulate his vision for the U.N. over the next five to 10 years. U.N. officials spend more time fretting about their job security than thinking about the strategic future of the organization.

As it turns out, that future may be slipping away from them. While Trump and Guterres spent much of 2017 figuring out how to coexist, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia were taking concrete steps to rewrite the ground rules of U.N. diplomacy.

Three stories reshaped international crisis management this year, and in each case non-Western powers determined the agenda. Russia gradually but decisively asserted its right to dictate the postwar settlement in Syria, at least as far as the U.N. is concerned, sidelining the U.S. and its allies. China acted, not entirely happily, as the arbiter of Security Council efforts to contain the North Korean nuclear threat. And Saudi Arabia kept up a brutal military campaign in Yemen that made a mockery of both the U.N.’s efforts to aid the suffering and Western governments’ commitments to human rights and protecting civilians.

All three countries may come to regret their behavior. While Russian President Vladimir Putin recently visited Syria to declare victory, his forces and those of his Iranian and Syrian allies face an ugly struggle to gain and keep full control of a country shattered by more than six years of civil war. Beijing seems unable to compel its clients in Pyongyang to moderate their atomic and missile programs, and Chinese officials appear to be undertaking contingency planning for a new Korean war. The Saudis are wading deeper into an expensive quagmire in Yemen with little sign of a political way out, while simultaneously ratcheting up tensions with Iran.

Yet while Moscow, Beijing and Riyadh may be pursuing self-defeating strategies, their maneuvers have already had a decisive effect on U.N. affairs. For many years, the Chinese and Russians have grumbled about the West’s ability to shape events in the Security Council. In 2017, they took advantage of international chaos and American domestic political anxieties to roll back Western influence.

China and Russia have a long track record of trying to constrain the U.S. and its friends at the U.N., but at the end of the day, Washington has usually been able to get its way. The Clinton and George W. Bush administrations were, for example, unable to get Security Council support for the Kosovo and Iraq interventions. They nonetheless persuaded Beijing and Moscow to support U.N. postwar reconstruction efforts in both cases. Chinese and Russian diplomats never cease to point out that the Obama administration misused a limited Security Council mandate to protect civilians in Libya in 2011 as an excuse to overthrow Col. Moammar Gadhafi. Yet they accepted that the U.N. should lead efforts to knit together some sort of functional post-Gadhafi state.

The U.N. has thus traditionally served to make peace on U.S., or at least broadly Western, terms. American, British and French diplomats draft the bulk of Security Council resolutions. From time to time, China or Russia has put its foot down to protect its allies.

The current situation is different, however, as non-Western powers are increasingly showing that they, too, can define how diplomacy works and how major wars end. Perhaps in no case has that been clearer than in Russia’s involvement in Syria.

 

Russia Triumphant?

For most of the length of the Syrian conflict, which began in 2011, Russia at least pretended to want to cooperate with the U.S. through the Security Council and other mechanisms to limit or end the war. Just two years ago, Russia and the Obama administration were cooperating on a U.N.-backed cease-fire mechanism to control fighting in Syria that was being stoked by rivals such as the Iranians and the Saudis. Dmitri Trenin, a Russian analyst generally sympathetic to Putin’s policies, argues that Moscow was still genuinely open to working out a peace deal with the U.S. at that time.

Yet over the past year, encouraged by the Trump administration’s apparent disinterest in Syria, Putin has pushed for a far more decisive win.

While Russian warplanes and military advisers have led the charge on the ground, their diplomatic counterparts have aimed to stamp out the last vestiges of U.N. and Western influence over Syria in the Security Council. In January, the Russians launched a new diplomatic process to end the conflict with Iran and Turkey in Astana, Kazakhstan, marginalizing American and European diplomats and undercutting long-running U.N. mediation efforts over Syria in Geneva. Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. special envoy for Syria, has assiduously kept the Geneva process going, and there has been some pretense that it dovetails with Moscow’s initiative.

In reality, Moscow has asserted its ability to shape international discussions of Syria, including in the Security Council itself. Last month, Russia cast two vetoes to kill off a U.N. investigation of chemical weapons incidents that it claims is biased against Damascus. It is currently pressing the Security Council to water down a resolution, originally crafted by smaller members of the council in 2014, authorizing humanitarian agencies to help suffering communities without the Assad regime’s consent. The Russians say this would infringe on Damascus’ sovereignty. Western diplomats and aid officials see Moscow’s stance as part of strategy to cease all multilateral oversight over the last phase of the Syrian war.

This presents the U.S. and its allies with an unfamiliar and painful dilemma. Can they negotiate over a postwar settlement for Syria from a position of failure, after so many years of dictating peace terms from positions of strength? Will Russia allow U.N. agencies to keep operating in Syria if they promise to play by its rules?

It is arguable that Washington and European donors should hold their noses and offer postwar aid to Syria for humanitarian reasons and to retain some slight leverage over the Assad regime. But while Moscow would doubtless be happy for its adversaries to help out financially, it will ensure that it controls the overall terms of reconstruction—and regularly remind the West and U.N. of that hard fact.

This is not only an immediate challenge, but a precedent for U.N. engagement in other conflict zones. Most U.N. peace operations and attempts at preventive diplomacy adhere to liberal norms, talking up human rights and free and fair elections. But in an era of geopolitical competition in which the West will frequently struggle to define future peace deals, there is a high chance that the U.N. will face postconflict situations in which powers such as Russia and China insist on discarding such normative niceties.

Some of the ramifications of this state of affairs are already apparent. Chinese diplomats made a push at U.N. budget talks this summer to slash the number of human rights officers attached to blue helmet peace operations. And Beijing has refused to let the Security Council halt the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar, suggesting that outside powers should focus on economic assistance instead.

But while Western diplomats have harshly criticized Russia’s behavior over Syria, they have treated Beijing with considerably more caution.

 

China: The Adult in the Room? 

Moscow may have bludgeoned its way to diplomatic dominance over Syria in New York, but the Syrian file has suddenly slipped down the U.N. agenda. This is partially because of a general sense of Syria fatigue after six years of war, but the fundamental explanation is simple: the North Korea crisis.

Pyongyang’s flurry of missile and nuclear tests this summer forced the Security Council to pivot to Northeast Asia, casting China as the decisive member of the Security Council. Traditionally, Beijing has disliked controversy at the U.N., letting Russia do the dirty work in fights with the U.S. and its allies over issues like Syria. In recent years, Chinese diplomats have become more forceful when their immediate interests are at stake, but have still been willing to take a backseat role in most disputes to avoid unnecessary friction.

This has not been an option over North Korea, as the U.S. tabled two major packages of Security Council sanctions against Pyongyang in August and September. Beijing’s positions on these resolutions proved decisive, apparently unnerving Russian diplomats who saw their leverage weaken as the Americans and Chinese shaped negotiations. The fact that China was willing to engage constructively on both rounds of sanctions, agreeing to serious penalties, captured the imagination of Western diplomats in New York.

It remains to be seen whether the Security Council will continue to cooperate over North Korea, or whether sanctions will change Pyongyang’s calculations. The Chinese have consistently resisted U.S. claims that they can unilaterally fix the situation on the Korean Peninsula. It is possible that their willingness to bargain in the Security Council implies that Beijing has no clear strategy and is simply playing for time. But even if it is just trying to keep a lid on the crisis, a lot of other countries are desperate for it to succeed. Juxtaposed with Trump’s bellicose rhetoric toward North Korean leader Kim Jong Un—Trump’s “little rocket man”—China’s willingness to compromise through the Security Council looks like the apex of diplomatic responsibility.

Whereas Western officials once cast their Chinese counterparts as cautious and inexperienced, many now speak admiringly of their “flexibility” and commitment to stability, in a sharp break with Russia’s crude assertiveness. Reinforcing this contrast, China has partially distanced itself from Moscow’s positions over Syria, abstaining rather than vetoing U.S.-backed resolutions relating to chemical weapons.

So while Russia has used hard power to boost its position at the U.N., China has used a softer approach to assert its leadership. If the North Korean faceoff ultimately leads to war, these tactics will be rendered irrelevant. If it proves possible to resolve the crisis, or at least contain it indefinitely, Beijing’s status as a reliable referee of high-stakes U.N. diplomacy will only rise.

Although this could be an important contribution to global stability, it would likely have downsides. Keen to lock China into multilateral cooperation, U.S. and European diplomats would almost certainly have to play down tensions over human rights and crises such as the situation in Myanmar. Over the long term, this could have as detrimental an effect on the U.N.’s commitment to liberal values as the more immediate problem of dealing with Russia’s role in Syria.

 

Untouchable Saudi Arabia?

Before we get too lachrymose about the decline of liberal values at the U.N., it is worth asking how seriously Western powers are standing up for them now. The evidence of 2017 is not utterly reassuring.

When the Trump administration took office, some analysts feared it would dump all talk of human rights at the U.N. in favor of transactional diplomacy. This has not been the case: Nikki Haley, Trump’s representative in New York, has frequently talked about the importance of rights and humanitarian assistance.

But the U.S. and its allies have only put their values into practice patchily. Aid donors were slow to react to warnings early in the year of man-made famines looming in conflict-ridden areas of Nigeria, South Sudan and Somalia. The Yemen crisis has cast Western powers in an even worse light. Over the past year, the Saudi coalition fighting the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen has resorted to heavy bombing of civilian areas and imposed an air and sea blockade that has stopped humanitarian supplies from reaching millions of civilians facing famine and endemic diseases, including cholera. The Saudis have not only received military assistance from the U.S. and the U.K., but also avoided real censure at the Security Council.

While the council has received multiple briefings on the crisis from despairing U.N. officials, and made pro forma calls for all sides to “de-escalate,” the Americans and British offer Riyadh diplomatic cover for their operations. Russian officials cite this to defend their obstructionism over Syria, and they have a point.

This is not the only recent case in which the U.S. and other U.N. members have appeared guilty of applying a double standard. In 2016, for example, the Obama administration repeatedly hammered Russia in the Security Council over the siege of Aleppo, a vicious operation that claimed thousands of lives.

Yet the U.S. and the Security Council as a whole offered strong support to the Iraqi army’s efforts, backed by U.S. forces, to drive the self-proclaimed Islamic State out of Mosul in the first half of 2017, an operation that also left thousands dead. Once that assault culminated in ousting the Islamic State from Mosul in July, the council released a statement welcoming this “important milestone” in the global fight against jihadism. China’s ambassador, who happened to be in the Security Council chair, read it out. Some U.N. observers fear that the only thing the organization’s most powerful players will be able to agree on in the future is the need to kill off terrorists.

 

The New Power Politics at the U.N.

If you look closely at how Russia, China and Saudi Arabia have played the U.N. game in 2017, much of the rest of the institution’s activities seem insignificant by comparison. This is unfortunate. The U.N. has scored some respectable successes over the past year. Peacekeepers have packed up, or are in the process of packing up, after long-running missions in Cote d’Ivoire, Haiti and Liberia. Although the reputation of the mission in Haiti will never recover from the fact that a Nepali unit brought cholera to the island, killing thousands, the U.N. should take some satisfaction from these operations. In each case, the departing blue helmets are leaving behind more-or-less functional states after a decade of grinding attempts to stabilize and consolidate peace.

Other U.N. operations are teetering on the brink of failure. Dozens of peacekeepers have died in insurgent attacks in Mali, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Trump administration has tussled with France over the value of these missions, looking for financial savings that could play well in the U.S. but put more blue helmets at risk. These debates have consumed a lot of time in the Security Council, and left many diplomats in very bad moods.

Yet these disputes and crises are ultimately just part of the regular hustle and flow of U.N. crisis management. The U.S. and France are almost always locked in some sort of dispute over who should pay for operations in Francophone Africa. Far-flung U.N. units in theaters such as Congo and the Sudans are always scrambling to handle local crises. The men and women who represent the U.N. on the ground deserve more political and operational support than they get, but resources will always be thinly spread. These are just recurrent flaws in the U.N. model.

Developments over Syria, North Korea and Yemen this year, however, represent fundamental challenges to that model. Russia’s diplomatic victory over Syria rests on a very shaky foundation, but Moscow has achieved its long-standing goal of reasserting itself as an equal to the U.S. and other major powers in the Security Council. It is liable to keep exploiting strong-arm tactics to retain this status.

China’s handling of the North Korean crisis rests on equally fragile underpinnings. But it has signaled a fundamental shift in the balance of power in the U.N. toward Beijing.

Saudi Arabia’s grim campaign in Yemen will not win it an equal level of recognition in New York. But Riyadh, which stunningly refused to take up a seat on the Security Council in 2013 in protest over U.N. inaction on Syria, presumably does not care. Its blunt disregard for humanitarian norms and Security Council statements of concern has demonstrated the organization’s limitations in the starkest way.

The U.N. has always been a venue for power politics, but the power games in Turtle Bay are growing increasingly costly and fraught. Trump’s bluster about multilateralism has distracted not only Guterres but also many U.N. officials and analysts more generally from these deep-seated shifts in U.N. diplomacy.

This is understandable. Washington remains the paramount player at the United Nations. Had the Trump administration followed through on its most aggressive threats to undercut the institution’s diplomacy and operations, the U.N. might be in an irretrievably dire state. Trump has often absorbed the U.N. into his gameshow style of politics, exploiting moments such as his statement on leaving the Paris agreement and September’s General Assembly session for maximum media impact. U.N. officials worry that the president will pursue his promises to undermine the Iran nuclear deal increasingly energetically next year, creating deep rifts in the Security Council.

But while Trump has veered between weakening the U.N. and working with it, China and Russia have begun to reshape the institution by asserting their capacity to influence the main crises of the day, albeit with different styles and methods. Their efforts may backfire. In a year, Russia could find itself trapped in a corrosive conflict in Syria and Beijing could be scrabbling to manage the fallout of a war on the Korean Peninsula. The stakes of U.N. diplomacy are certainly rising.

As of now, the U.N. seems to be headed toward one of two future scenarios. It will either have to adapt to a world in which China, Russia and other authoritarian powers are increasingly able to curtail its promotion of liberal values. Or the U.N. will need to find a place in a world reshaped by a massive, and almost certainly nuclear, conflict in Asia.

The first scenario would be unfortunate. The second is simply unimaginable.