AID to Democracy NGOs: Mend it Don't End It Posted by Suzanne Nossel

There’s some interesting discussion at washingtonmonthly about the role of aid to NGOs and other civil society organs in the promotion of democracy.

Dan Drezner and Marc Lynch suggest that such aid is being over-emphasized in light of the problems associated with it. The problems include: that aid recipients get too closely associated with the U.S. which taints them and can undercut their relationships to local constituencies; that the wrong NGOs get funded; that its hard to know who to fund; and that local groups can wind up bending their agendas to suit funders, rather than the other way around.

The implication of their analysis is that NGO support should play only a bit part in efforts to promote democracy. The corollary is that there’s nothing wrong with the fact that Bush’s steamroll into Iraq was buttressed by only paltry efforts to build an infrastructure to support the democracy he claims to be trying to spread.

Its important to raise questions about how well ideas that sound great on paper actually work on practice.  But the better answer is not to scale back work to build civil society, but rather to rethink how we do it. I was very involved with a number of NGOs in South Africa in the early 1990s, a time when the civil society sector had taken over many of the functions of government –dispute resolution, law and order, city planning, economic development - filling the gap left when the apartheid state had been totally discredited, but elections to replace it had not taken place.

Virtually all the pitfalls Drezner and Lynch cite were manifest, albeit maybe not as deep as they are in the Middle East. But none of that negated the importance and value of support for local NGOs. The solutions are not simple, but how about looking at these for starters:

• funnel money through organizations that are seen as more independent and less controlling than the USG (for example, the American Bar Association, which has done a huge amount of valuable work of this sort, mainly in Eastern Europe, relying overwhelmingly on US government funding);
  
  
• set up a division of labor whereby the U.S. funds schools and businesses and the Scandinavians and others with less baggage focus on the NGOs;
  
  

• hire locals and those with language proficiency to conduct the program evaluations so that groups don’t feel they must over-cater to the West.

That there are problems with the way this work is done today means that we need to problem-solve, not that we should turn away from programs that are indispensable if the democracies the U.S. wants to claim a role in creating are to last.

ContortBolton.com Posted by Suzanne Nossel

I sometimes think we spend too much time in these forums arguing amongst ourselves, and not enough doing battle with those who truly hold opposing views.  Tonight Laura Rozen alerted me to a new piece published on confirmbolton.com.  I pulled up from my sprawled position on the couch, ready to go toe-to-toe with the other side.

The lead piece on confirmbolton.com was written by someone named Joel Mowbray, who also published it in the Washington Examiner (a freebie funded by a conservative Denver millionaire).  Mowbray argues that:

No better example exists of Democrats’ hypocrisy on the Bolton nomination than their treatment of Clinton’s last appointment to the very same position, Richard Holbrooke . . . . Despite substantial evidence [of possible ethical violations] being uncovered, Holbrooke got off with a slap on the wrist–and then Democrats didn’t even voice a whisper of concern about Holbrooke’s alleged “behavior.”

Mowbray claims that:

The divergent paths for each — Richard Holbrooke and John Bolton — reveal Democrats’ rabid partisanship and belies claims they oppose John Bolton on the grounds that “character matters.”

I was about to leap to google for a refresher on Holbrooke's confirmation battle, when I read on and realized I might not need to. 

Mowbray admits that Holbrooke was found guilty of no crime, yet maintains that his alleged ethical lapses far outweigh the allegations against Bolton and ought to have been taken more seriously. 

But his argument collapses of its own weight right out of the starting box.  So why didn't Holbrooke's nomination founder?  While Mowbray blames the Democrats for "hypocrisy" and "rabid partisanship" he admits that the GOP-led hearings turned into a "love fest" for Holbrooke.  He reports that Holbrooke's one critic, Jesse Helms, "appeared to bond" with the incoming Ambassador over stories of childhood visits to the UN.  He notes that Senators Daniel Moynihan (D-NY) and John Warner (R-VA) "lavished praise" on Holbrooke and that there was "nary a witness with any harsh words" for the nominee. 

He contrasts this to Bolton's hearings where Democrats have shown antipathy and Republicans "apathy."  He notes that Lugar seems "far more enthusiastic about Clinton's choice than Bush's." 

And your point is?  Democrats and Republicans agreed that because of his eminent qualifications and capabilities, there was little question that Holbrooke merited confirmation (it nonetheless took Holbrooke more than a year to get confirmed, though partly due to reasons having everything to do with unrelated to his own candidacy).   Now Democrats and some Republicans agree that based on his track record, there are serious grounds to believe Bolton should not be confirmed.   Let's see, Holbrooke helped end a genocidal war in Bosnia . . . John Bolton has helped end a bunch of arms control agreements.

Mowbray laments that no one seemed to take the charges against Holbrooke seriously enough.  He doesn't volunteer why Jesse Helms, not one known to back away from a fight with a Democrat, would have looked the other way had he seen anything approaching grounds to sink the nomination.

Mowbray kindly made my argument for me.  The reason there was bi-partisan consensus in favor of Holbrooke is that, politics aside, everyone agreed he was the right man for the job.  The reason Bolton is on the ropes is that, politics aside, serious people on both sides of the aisle have grave misgivings about how Bolton will perform in a critical role. 

Christopher Dodd has pointed out that he voted to confirm John Tower and John Ashcroft, much to the chagrin of fellow Democrats.    While Chuck Hagel and Lincoln Chafee are known as moderate Republicans and their skepticism toward Bolton does not come as a big surprise, the same is not true for George Voinovich and Lisa Murkowski. 

No one can claim that politics does not play a role here, but with the Democrats in the minority, Bolton would be entertaining in the Ambassador's suite at the Waldorf right now if partisanship were all that was at stake.

Conservatives are trying to keep up with the relentless drumbeat of Steve Clemons at theWashingtonNote.com and others who have marshalled argument after argument and fact after fact explaining why John Bolton is not the man we need in New York.  But given the case Mowbray lays out on confirmbolton.com he might as well have been writing for confirmbolton.org

Compassionate Conservatism Lite Posted by Michael Signer

In the C'mon-You've-Got-To-Be-Kidding category, a new report by the General Accounting Office on the Administration's Millenium Challenge Account, revealing that the Administration has obligated only 2% of the funds of the initiative to reduce poverty in the developing world. 

As Byron Dorgan's Democratic Policy Committee reports, the GAO shows the Administration's commitment to this crucial draining-the-swamp enterprise to be the peeling, plastic band-aid it is.  Their report:

Bush Administration has failed to deliver on its promise of "a major new commitment" to the developing world. On March 14, 2002, President Bush announced his proposal for the MCA, a major new initiative to provide foreign assistance to the developing world. The President promised "a major new commitment by the United States to bring hope and opportunity to the world's poorest people," and announced, "I carry this commitment in my soul." Three years after his promise, however, and two years after Congress passed the MCA into law, President Bush has yet to deliver on his promise. The MCA has not contributed a single dollar of foreign assistance to a developing nation. Furthermore, the President has not requested the $5 billion per year he promised for the account in any of the four budgets he has submitted to Congress after he announced the initiative.

In two years, the Bush Administration has obligated only two percent of MCA funds. The developing world is facing a series of destabilizing crises, including the AIDS pandemic, intractable poverty, floods of migrants and refugees, that not only cripple development efforts, but also represent threats to the security of the U.S. and the world. MCA funds could be a critical tool in confronting these crises; however, the Bush Administration has failed to get these funds into the areas of the world where they are needed most. The GAO reports that the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the agency responsible for implementing the MCA, has only signed an agreement with one nation, Madagascar, worth only $110 million. Worse still, this $110 million will be made available over four years, meaning that only $55 million - two percent of the $2.5 billion appropriated through two years by Congress - has been obligated for the MCA's first two years.

It might be said that shamelessness makes for good politics, and I've always felt that the Bush team's utter unabashed willingness to do politics for politics' sake has been the key to their greater political victories.  (The "Mission Accomplished" Affair being the most delightful instance of the approach backfiring). 

But even in a shameless politics, there should still be a line.  It's like if ESPN only showed quarterbacks throwing passes, not receivers catching them.  The lack of follow-through on the MCA follows a series of foreign affairs maneuvers where the inattention of the press can only be blamed for aggravating the Administration's already-egregious approach.

The recent "energy policy" -- which aims to build new refineries on military bases -- is the best example.  Two years ago, fighting off John Kerry, President Bush told us in his State of the Union address that energy independence through alternative energy was the way to go.  Even some conservatives wondered whether he'd "gone green".

Days later, his announced budget reduced funds for alternative energy projects.  Today, of course, we've all forgotten the original pump-fake.  The new energy policy aims to make us energy independent by "expanding capacity" domestically -- a reverse strategy from alternative energy, and one that would still enchain the domestic population to craven domestic energy policy. 

The election's over, his supporters are calling in chits, and the media's memory is again short-term.  Game on -- now cut to commercials. 

US Checkmated in the OAS Posted by Suzanne Nossel

For the first time in the body's history, the Organization of American States has elected a President who was not the U.S.'s preferred candidate.  The OAS is hardly the world's most influential multilateral organ, and the U.S. - as the forum's largest contributor and Member State - will not lose its say.  But still, this points to some larger phenomena we've been discussing here, including the waning of American influence in our own backyard, the need for a clear progressive agenda directed at Latin American, and the deterioration of our multilateral relationships and influence.  The U.S. put a lot into trying to get its candidates elected to the post, but the rest of the region opted to assert its preferences instead.    The Administration is going to pains to play up Rice's role in brokering the ultimate compromise that led to the election of Chilean Interior Minister Jose Miguel Isuza, but the development is still being widely reported as a signal of waning American clout in the region.  Not a good sign.

Debating Democracy Posted by Suzanne Nossel

There’s an interesting debate underway at the Washington Monthly about how much credit Bush deserves for the spread of democracy in the Middle East, a topic that has raised some passions here as well.  Our very own Heather Hurlburt contributed a great piece to their series.

One premise needs to be clear before embarking on this debate.

We should completely separate the question of whether the Iraq invasion was motivated by the desire to spread democracy from our evaluation of whether or not the war has had that effect.

Most of the contributors to the Monthly don't directly touch on the run-up to the war. But many of them reveal a perceptible expectation that the two sets of events will ultimately be judged together.

Nancy Soderberg, for example, tries to draw a sharp line between the policies that led up to the Iraq war and the agenda the Bush Administration is pursuing post-reelection, arguing that it is the latter that is bearing fruit. Just three months into Bush's second term, and with the signs of a policy turnabout ambiguous at best (see, e.g. the nomination of John Bolton) a diplomat as skilled and savvy as Nancy knows that its at best too early to make that case.

There seems to be an inclination to believe that if the positive developments in the Middle East are linked to Bush, this ipso facto legitimizes the war, notwithstanding the false pretenses under which it was waged.  Jonathan Clarke faces up to this in his piece, writing that if it is true that raw American power percipitated democratic transformation in the Middle East:

those of us who had opposed the invasion of Iraq will feel like chumps, though we will rightly remind ourselves that the debate over whether to bomb Baghdad was always about means, not ends.

In fact, the two issues are totally separate. For anyone who is not convinced, Kevin Drum offers clear statements by Bush’s top aides making clear that the justifications for the war were manifold, but had little to do with spreading freedom.

Bush turned to the rhetoric of democracy promotion only once all other rationales for the Iraq action had disintegrated. By the end of 2004 the immediacy and terror of 9/11 had also begun to fade, requiring that Bush pivot away from his appeal to fear and offer a more uplifting foreign policy message. The spread of democracy fit the bill perfectly, and so Bush forcefully appropriated a set of ideas that traditionally belonged to progressives.

One element (its by no means the only element, though it is the only one I'll deal with tonight) progressives hesitation to link the steps forward in the region and U.S. action in Iraq is an understandable fear that doing so will validate the way Bush went to war.  We don’t want to ratify unilateral action, the alienation of allies and foreign populations, reliance on spurious intelligence, deception, or poor planning.

We suspect that if Bush is credited with progress in the Middle East, the misdeeds that seem to have already been forgiven by the American public (note the remarkable contrast to the political weight still accorded to issues like truthfulness en route to Iraq in Britain) may wind up offering a template for future foreign misadventures.

That Iraqis may ultimately be better off for being rid of Saddam Hussein and even on its way to democracy does not excuse the betrayal of the trust leading into the Iraq War or the fact that American lives were sacrificed under misleading pretenses. The spread of democracy elsewhere in the region will likewise do nothing to redeem this betrayal. There is nothing inconsistent about cheering the emergence of a more accountable and legitimate government in Iraq, and decrying the erosion of accountability and legitimacy back home.

The counter-argument, of course, is that even though the American public should separate these things, they won't.   Bush's shenanigans in building the case for war barely moved the needle in the 2004 elections. There's something very American in the bland, unpenetrating optimism of an "all's well that ends well" outlook. 

The only way this distinction will be preserved and that in the public mind is to link Bush's duplicity, high-handedness, and crisis of delivery in Iraq to a much larger pattern of behavior, one that cuts across Cherif Bassiouni, Tom DeLay, the nuclear option, John Bolton, and PBS, just to list out a few of this week's outrages.  It will be up to progressives to draw that link persuasively.

More on these important topics later in the week.

Non-Pro Non-Policy Posted by Derek Chollet

The past few days have seen a confluence of disturbing events on what I believe, hands-down, is the greatest security threat to the America: the spread of WMD.

Let’s begin with the conference in New York that begins this week to review the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).  Last convened 5 years ago, this month-long arms control conclave will be the first opportunity to formally discuss the NPT since 9/11 – and since we made new discoveries about the limits of the current non-pro regime, from Iran and North Korea to Libya and the A.Q. Khan network.

One would think that given all this – and given the obvious flaws in the NPT that allow states to acquire the technologies needed to produce nuclear weapons capabilities legally– the United States would be heading into this important meeting with an ambitious, bold agenda to reform and strengthen the NPT for the 21st century.

Nope. 

Instead, it appears that the Administration wants to use the conference to defend its failing policies toward North Korea and Iran.  Who is leading the U.S. delegation to these talks?  Stephen Rademaker, the State Department’s senior non-proliferation official and, more importantly, one of John Bolton’s protégés and closest allies (and apparently one of the only friends he had in the Powell State Department).

If one is wondering why some month-long arms control conference might seem important, consider the stunning admission last week by Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lowell Jacoby that North Korea has the capability not just to produce a nuclear weapon (that we already knew), but to put that weapon atop a missile and launch it.  Hillary Clinton deserves credit for flushing this out of Jacoby during a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Remember folks, it was North Korea’s missile test in August 1998 that sent the Clinton Administration scrambling to design a missile defense system – an effort that the Bush Administration has pumped with steroids for the past five years, without much to show for it.   The concern then was that North Korea might someday be able to arm such missiles with nuclear warheads – well, at least now according to DIA, that day has arrived.

We might have consoled ourselves that North Korea’s missile program had for some reason gone dormant, but unfortunately Pyongyang’s missile test last Sunday was an in-your-face reminder that the threat is real.  And added to all this, there is growing concern – and apparently mounting evidence -- that North Korea will actually test a nuclear weapon sometime soon. 

So what’s the Bush team doing about this?  Well, the usual: a lot of talk but not much action.  Last week it sent Chris Hill – the senior State Department hand for Asia – to make the rounds in Asia, but he did not have any luck making lemonade out of the lemon of a policy he carried.  When asked for an “optimistic closing line” for the trip, Hill responded with characteristic candor: “give me a week and I will come up with one.”

The problem is not that our diplomats are weenies – Chris Hill cut his teeth dealing with Slobodan Milosevic.  The problem is that the Administration at the highest levels is either too internally divided – or it has no idea altogether – what our policy should be.  For an Administration that is usually criticized for not doing enough with other countries, in the case of North Korea, it is leaving everything up to others.

Now I’m not about to suggest that there is some magically easy answer to the North Korea problem.  It’s true that North Korea might not ever agree a deal that will require it to give up its weapons verifiably, but how will we know if we refuse to test them?  Even trying and failing would move the ball forward by giving us even more leverage to work with others to increase the pressure on Pyongyang.  For a more detailed set of ideas of how the U.S. could approach this problem, check out chapter 6 of this recent Carnegie Endowment study.

It’s bad enough that the Bush team lacks either the will or the way to deal with specific WMD threats like North Korea -- its broader approach to non-proliferation is uninspired and unimaginative.  And who is going to pay the price?  Us.   

To sum up, I can’t put it any better than one of the true leaders of non-proliferation efforts, former Georgia Senator (and now head of the indispensable organization, the Nuclear Threat Initiative), Sam Nunn: “With so much at stake, our citizens have every right to ask: ‘Are we doing all we can to prevent a nuclear attack?’  My emphatic answer is ‘no, we are not.’”

Weekly Top 10 List: Top 10 Things at Stake in the Bolton Nomination Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Top 10 Things At Stake in the Fight to Defeat the Bolton Nomination – I don’t want to overstate this because I think there’s something to the notion that had Cheney won out in his quest to name Bolton Deputy Secretary of State, the influence of both the man and the hard-line flank he represents would have been far greater than it will be at the UN. But there is more at stake here than one man with a mustache. There’s a reason why this fight has consumed so many of us for months, garnering the UN Ambassadorship more attention than its had in a long time, maybe ever. He’s a stab at some of the larger reasons why this matters.

1. The U.S. Relationship To the UN – We are at a cross-roads as the UN’s supporters and detractors both know. The road to the Iraq war alienated the U.S. from the UN and vis-versa to a degree never before seen. Neither John Negroponte nor John Danforth had the mettle or the mandate to repair the relationship. Bolton, with his avowed “America first” perspective (see the last line of today’s NYT profile) seems inclined to widen rather than bridge the rift.

2. The Prospects for UN Reform – It is high noon for the UN when it comes to reform. But judging from his past, John Bolton’s concept of reform consists of punishing the world organization when it doesn’t hew to American interests. Condi Rice, her principal reform adviser Shirin Tahir-Kheli and other State Department officials appear to be advancing a reform agenda not unlike that of Secretary General Kofi Annan. Rice’s decision to appoint Tahir-Kehli to a newly created reform post within days of Bolton’s nomination was announced suggests that, despite deafening protests to the contrary, she too has misgivings about reform Bolton-style.

3. The Choice of a Successor to Kofi Annan – Annan’s term ends at the end of 2006. According to the UN’s rotation system, his successor should be from Asia. While current handicapping favors Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, its far to early to call the race. Iran has proposed its President, Mohammad Khatami, as a candidate. In recent years the U.S. has had a strong hand in trying to sway the selection of UN leaders’ that have our trust. But if the next ambassador fails to repair U.S. relations at the UN, we may lose influence over the choice.

4. The U.S.’s Commitment to Intelligence Reform – I have made this point before, but given the credible accounts of Bolton’s efforts to retaliate against intelligence analysts for refusing to kow-tow to his worldview, I don’t see how Bush can credibly claim to be fighting to reform intelligence while elevating Bolton. Failure to take adequate account of dissent in the ranks was one of the premier intelligence failings cited by the 9/11 and Silberman-Robb Commissions. Confirming Bolton would sanction such behavior.

5. The U.S.’s Position in the Multilateral Order – Bolton’s candidacy has evolved into a kind of referendum on the U.S. approach to multilateralism, going beyond the UN itself. At the start of Bush’s second term, a series of trips and statements seemed to signal rapprochement. In choosing Bolton, Bush seemed to shift into reverse. The world took it as a sign that hardliners indifferent to world opinion and prospects for cooperation were still very much in charge. Bolton’s appointment suggests that Bush may drift even further away from allies and agreements during his second term. Meanwhile, institutions like the ICC and Kyoto Protocol move on without us.

What We Stand For #2 Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Progressives stand for the victory of hope over fear.

NOT hope over experience. (That’s the idea that after the Iraq war, then the Euros will come around and send troops to be shot up by insurgents. Or that this time, calling the North Koreans names will make them drop the nukes.)

But for the very American sentiment that no one ever got anywhere worth getting by cowering inside, listening for the approach of terrorist feet and stimulating the economy by shopping on line.

Hope over fear means a worldview that acknowledges the importance of fighting AGAINST extremist ideologies, but puts that fight in the context of working and struggling FOR better futures for ourselves and others.

I could go on in that vein forever -- and it wouldn’t hurt progressives if we did more of that -- but for the purposes of this blog, I’ll suppress the ex-speechwriter in me and think a little bit about what that ought to imply for policy.

GWOT/GWOE -- at the risk of sounding Pollyannaish, thie fight against Islamic extremism is not the only thing happening in the world today.  Nor is it the only possible existential threat to our way of life (the Chinese economy, for example, or the spread of weapons of mass destruction, or global warming).  Progressives should say how we will fight the fight smarter and better, and without compromising core American values in the process.  But the more we let our entire international worldview be defined by this, the more we are on territory conservatives have marked out and own.  (see under: 2004 elections)

Global economy: Speaking of the global economy, I'll say again that progressives have got to get engaged in sorting out steps that will restore American eminence in technological innovation and product creation (whether the product is software or autos), significantly smooth the way for American workers who get hurt in the turbulence and transition (not $300 community-college credits), and help the poorest countries get their products into the world economy and lift their living standards along with ours.  Sounds like a fantasy, you say?  The reason for that is a lack of serious policy discussion.  Progressives need to define our goals for the 21st-century economy, and then take the discussion out of the clouds.  Jeff Sach's latest gig, lifting African countries out of poverty one demo village at a time, is a great example of how to re-invigorate non-ideological discussion around these issues.  Let's see what really works.

International institutions: Hope over fear means reminding our fellow-citizens why it was that the US pushed to found the UN almost 60 years ago, and why it still serves our interest. But it also means believing that we can work with others to make the UN and all the multilateral organizations new and relevant for a new century. Suzanne's agenda for UN reform? Have the IMF sell gold to fund debt relief? Convert the World Bank to grants-only, combined with new commitments in funding? This is where we ought to be debating really big ideas – and, importantly, looking across borders to build consensus on ideas that really work before alliances form around ideas that will disadvantage us.

Non-proliferation: In the years since the atom was split, we've had more successes in preventing weapons' spread through negotiation and the creation of international rules than through the use and threat of force.  Neither will do it alone.

Our neighbors to the South:  whatever happened to that wonderful new relationship, full of new ideas, that Presidents Bush and Fox were supposed to create? How is it that the U.S. Secretary of State now flies around South America, besieged by the two-bit Hugo Chavez?

You get the idea.  Hope over fear is just a framing device, but it's a useful way of re-examining bad habits US foreign policy has sunk into -- and then drawing the nation's attention to how we might get better results.

*****                   *****                   *****                   *****                     *****

Our readers made some thoughtful comments about Michael’s installment #1, putting into words a vague feeling I had: too much emphasis on probity for its own sake just gets you in trouble. Remember how Newt Gingrich got hoisted on his own “doing things differently” petard. And how often we recall W.’s call for a "humble nation" during the ’00 campaign.

Progressives don't have to blather about being humble, but it's still good advice.

Praktike came up with the crispest formulation: we have to deal with Russia, China, Cuba, too. And we will.

UN Members, Reform Thyselves Posted by Suzanne Nossel

An addendum to my last posting on the topic of UN reform.   This week Zimbabwe was elected to a three year term on the UN's Human Rights Commission.  For reasons covered in our discussions of the Zimbabwe election, the outrage is obvious.  Sure enough the U.S. and Europe are once again up-in-arms. 

Why did it happen?  Because each regional group nominates its own candidates for membership to the Commission, and within the African group, it was Zimbabwe's "turn."  The group has been loath to allow considerations like fitness for service to enter into the calculus, preferring a strict rotation that allows even the most egregious rights violators to sit in judgment of others.  The situation illustrates why Annan has called for the disbanding of the Commission and its replacement by a Human Rights Council that would be elected in a different way.

But here's the problem: whether you call it a Commission or a Council, if the membership does not recognize the need to populate a body charged with upholding human rights with countries that themselves adhere to those principles, the forum will never regain its credibility.   To his credit, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs, Mark Lagon, understands this and is trying to figure out what a more workable system of selection would look like.

Inevitably there will be line-drawing exercises.  China has been on the Commission on Human Rights uninterrupted since 1982.  Given their status as a permanent member of the Security Council and their influence in their region and beyond, its hard to imagine they won't be part of a new Council.  Cuba has been a member of the Commission on Human Rights since 1989.   In that case, a broader and more flexible system for selecting members could well freeze the Cubans out.  For a historical view of the membership, see here. 

But no system of voting, no matter how artfully rigged, will put the right countries on a human rights body unless the Member States who do the voting make a genuine attempt to avoid putting violating foxes in charge of the human rights hen house.

This ties into a broader point about UN reform.  Most of the proposals under debate deal with new institutions and systems:  the Human Rights Council, Peacebuilding Commission, augmented oversight office.  But the most serious problems at the UN stem from the membership:  their obstructionism, indifference, double-standards and petty-politicking.  Unless the UN's member states are prepared to reexamine their own role in paralyzing and undercutting the organization, a reform package may be nothing more than old wine (or whine) in new bottles.

Kofi Annan can't make this happen.  Even if he weren't beleaguered, the member states call the shots for the UN Secretariat and not the other way around.  Ordinarily the U.S.,  as the biggest turtle in the bay, should take the lead. 

The problem is that while we fixate on Zimbabwe on the Commission on Human Rights and French and Russian companies' alleged skimming of the oil for food program, the rest of the membership is instead fixated on how we have manipulated the system. 

Colin Powell's mortifying powerpoint presentation to the UN Security Council purporting to prove Iraqi WMD is exhibit A (the stuff is all still on the State Department website, interestingly), but it doesn't stop there.  Going back to the issue of human rights, just last week the U.S. pressed for the ouster of a distinguished UN human rights rapporteur responsible for Afghanistan, Professor Cherif Bassiouni of DePaul University literally one day after he released a report detailing how Americans running prisons in Afghanistan had circumvented the law "by engaging in arbitrary arrests and detentions and committing abusive practices, including torture."  Bassiouni documented this despite being denied access to U.S. military prisons in country.  The State Department used the excuse that the human rights situation in Afghanistan is so good it no longer needs to be monitored.  The New York Times finally reported on this this morning, though the incident happened a week ago.

In remarks made on April 19, 2005 Deputy Assistant Secretary Lagon spoke of the need for measures that go "Beyond institutional fixes, in the Commission or a Council, democracies must seize the initiative to save the UN human rights apparatus from utter disrepute."  But by ousting Bassiouni, the U.S. is engaging in precisely the type of behavior that it purports to decry:  shenanigans that undermine the credibility of UN human rights mechanisms.  It is also undercutting its own ability to call on other Member States to take the high ground, putting human rights principles above regional loyalties or narrowly-defined self-interest. 

True reform at the UN will be reform not just of the world body's commissions, committees and councils, but also of its Member States, whose behavior is at the root of the problems that bedevil the organization.  The U.S. should lead this process, but cannot do so unless other see that it is willing to look in the mirror first.

Beyond Bolton Posted by Suzanne Nossel

At the margins of the Bolton debate, and for those of us who may not last another two weeks of speculating over the names in those mysterious NSC excerpts, an interesting and ultimately more important set of questions has emerged.  They deal with whether the UN is important and why, and what UN reform means and should mean.    Kudos to Joseph Britt at Belgravia Dispatch for raising this question and to the Washington Post for looking at the disconnect between what Bush and Annan mean when they say reform. 

I move that we spend at least part of our time over the next few weeks debating these issues, and throw a few things out to get the ball rolling.

Why is the UN important?  I thought Bush gave a good answer to this tonight at the press conference, commenting that UN Envoy Terje Roed-Larsen is doing a good job verifying Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon and noting this as an example of the kinds of valuable roles the UN can play. 

There are thousands of things just like this that the UN and its agencies do day in and day out:  providing food aid in Darfur, coordinating relief and rehabilitation post-tsunami, coordinating elections in Afghanistan, caring for refugees, immunizing children the world over, treating AIDS victims and preventing HIV-AIDS transmission, settling intellectual property disputes, operating peacekeeping missions in parts of the world like Sierra Leone and Congo when no one else is looking and much more.   Look at the UN and UN Foundation websites for details.  In short the UN performs an array of tasks that no other entity or agency is equipped to do.  As Holbrooke used to put it "if it didn't exist you'd have to invent it."

Another key element is that the UN is the only body in the world with near-universal membership.  When it comes to building truly global support for a policy initiative - like the attack on Afghanistan right after September 11 - there is no other single place to turn.

Despite its diversity of membership, since its founding 60 years ago the UN has helped advance a set of universal values that also happen to be principles the U.S. holds dear.  There's no question the organization has been passive aggressive, hypocritical, and uneven in its application of these ideals, and that's deeply disappointing.  But its also clear that concepts like human rights, democracy, and the rule of law have been elevated throughout the world in part because of the UN's role in spotlighting these issues (if the Bush Administration didn't believe this, they wouldn't have proposed that the Democracy Fund they want to create be housed at the UN).

Why Does the UN Need Reform? 2 main reasons:

1) To Become a More Effective Foreign Policy Instrument – The UN's decision-making structures, bureaucracy, and field operations suffer from administrative and political weaknesses that undercut their their effectiveness and reliability. They are bureaucratic, inefficient, slow-moving and subject to infighting.  As a result, the UN often falls short.  This makes it impossible to advocate a broad UN role in a tough situation, Iraq for example, without worrying about whether the world body is up to the task;

2) To Restore the Organization's Credibility - One need only to look at what's happened to Enron, Fannie Mae and AIG to understand why an organization perceived as corrupt and mismanaged cannot be effective.  To play its myriad of important roles, the UN needs to rebuild the trust of its membership, including particularly its largest contributor and host country, the United States.

What is Meant by Reform?  Different things to different people.

The Bolton View:  When John Bolton served as Assistant Secretary of the State Department's International Organization's bureau, reform mostly meant withholding U.S. dues to the UN in an effort to force through various bureaucratic reforms, like zero-based budgeting and getting the UN staff to make good on their commitment to serve abroad.  Some of the specific reform measures advocated made senses, but the steps were for the most part seen as made-in-the-USA demands being foisted on an unwilling membership.   The result was scorched-earth -- a reflexive hostility among the membership to even the word reform.  By the time I got to the UN the U.S. delegation couldn't chime in at a meeting without being told that before opining we ought to pay our dues "on time, in full, and without conditions." 

The Annan View:  Since entering office, Annan (the U.S.'s pick, in large part because he was seen as a reformer) has made efforts to modernize the UN's human resource system and, more successfully, to augment the organization's peacekeeping capabilities.  But Annan left many of the worst entrenched bureaucrats in place, looked the other way as scandals like oil for food and peacekeeping sexcapades unfolded, and steered clear of the most politically charged issues like seating the likes of Sudan and Libya on the UN's Commission on Human Rights and the persistent bullying of Israel.

Now, partly as a way to try to salvage his tenure after the Iraq fracture and the oil for food debacle, Annan is pushing for far broader reforms.  He's finally cleaned house, sweeping away the worst of the apparatchiks.  He's called for enlargement of the UN Security Council, a new treaty on terrorism, strengthened counter-proliferation measures and a new Human Rights Council that would exclude rights violators.  For more see here.   

The Bush Administration View:  What do President Bush and Condi Rice mean when they talk about the need for UN reform (as they do unfailingly when stressing how vital it is that Bolton be confirmed)?  To find out I went to the USUN website and read a speech given on April 7 by Shirin Tahir-Kheli, whom Rice appointed her Senior Adviser on UN Reform within days of Bolton's nomination.

The speech supports most of the important ideas contained in Annan's reform report, including the terrorism treaty, the revamped Human Rights Council, the creation of a new Peacebuilding Commission and the strengthening of UN non-proliferation instruments.  Tahir-Kheli sidesteps a series of other issues, like demands for more development aid and a call for reform of the UN Security Council (she says the U.S. supports such reform, but offers no view on a formula).

In short, while the brouhaha over Bolton unfolds, Condi has her woman quietly advocating a reasoned reform agenda.  But what's virtually missing from Tahir-Kehli's speech is any concept of a reform agenda that goes beyond what Annan advocates.  The one exception is a reference to a UN Democracy Fund, an idea Bush first floated last fall. 

For all their criticism of Annan and their outraged calls for wide reform, the Administration's vision for change dovetails very closely with the Secretary-General's.  It's also worth noting that despite the White House's sense of urgency to get Bolton to NYC to start reforming, Tahir-Kheli made clear that Bush rejects Annan's proposal to try to agree on a package this September, and thinks the reform process should not be subject to "artificial deadlines."  If reform can wait, why the pressure last week to ram through Bolton?

Remarkably, despite all the ink and angst over the oil for food affair, the only reference to managerial accountability in Tahir-Kheli's remarks is a short paragraph recommending the strengthening of the UN's office of internal oversight.

The Nossel View:  One of my very first posts on Democracy Arsenal was devoted to urging the Bush Administration to back key elements of the Annan reform package.  They've now done so and I applaud it.  But the reform effort needs to go farther in several respects:

Oversight:  The office Bush wants to strengthen has always been relatively toothless and that's unlikely to change even with more resources or new leadership.  The UN needs an independent, outside audit function akin to what US private companies have.  It needs to hold individual managers personally responsible for strict accountability, a la Sarbanes-Oxley.  Managers also need viable whistleblower protection against meddling Member States, and the Member States themselves should be called to account when they play a role in misdeeds.  This won't be easy to accomplish, but it is essential to keeping hands out of the till andsustaining the UN's credibility long-term.

We should take a hard look at what's going on now with defections from the Volcker Commission and figure out once and for all how the UN can credibly be investigated.  The organization cannot afford another big scandal, and preventing one will require major structural and cultural change.  It's surprising that the Administration has not come up with more concrete proposals here.

Safety and Security:  The UN's inability to deploy last year in Iraq due to lack of adequate safety contributed to widespread loss of life as the anti-U.S. insurgency escalated.  The UN is the intervenor of last resort in many of the world's worst spots, and needs commitments of adequately trained and equipped troops to enable the organization to deploy wherever it is needed.

Early Retirements:  One of the best proposals contained in Annan's reform package would offer generous early retirement packages to large numbers of UN personnel, clearing the way for the organization to be invigorated by a diverse staff not stuck in old mindsets.  The Administration should jump on this.

Overlap, Duplication and Obsolescence:  The UN has a multitude of offices tasked with similar roles.  The functions of the Political Affairs Department and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations often coincide, as do those of UNDP and the UN's various economic organs.   Many of these offices provide comfortable NY-based resting places for former ambassadors and the like.  In tandem with the buy-out effort, offices that have outlived their usefulness should be shut down.

The reform effort should also go beyond the Secretariat itself, and encompass efforts undertaken within the membership to enable the organization to mature and realize its potential.  Most important are these:

- Remedying Israel's isolation at the UN once and for all (I have an article coming out soon in Dissent that talks about why and how to get this done);

- Starting to unravel the UN's regional group structure by picking off countries that no longer have a policy interest in siding with a one-dimensional developing world bloc (for more see Retail Diplomacy - the section on unlocking bloc politics).  The Bush Administration wants to do this, but its relationships are too frayed to try right now.