Delusional Politics

by Hardeep Singh Puri

  Some years later, in 2014, I was appointed the secretary general of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism (ICM). This was a two-year project by the International Peace Institute (IPI), a non-profit think tank, headquartered in New York and with branches in Vienna and Bahrain. The objective was to provide recommendations for the then-incoming UN secretary general to make the UN more ‘fit for purpose’. Although I left the ICM before the final report was produced, I spearheaded its activities during the most substantive parts of the project. The findings from hours of discussion and consultation with UN staffers, representatives of member states, NGOs, the private sector and civil society all reinforced the propositions I had made in 2011. As the propositions were relevant six years before this writing, so they will be six years from it. It is thus worth taking the time to deconstruct my arrival at these four propositions.

  Which UN?

  Only a few days before my departure from the ICM in March 2016, the New York Times carried a piece written by the former UN assistant secretary general for field support, Anthony Banbury. The stinging rebuke was titled ‘I Love the U.N., but It Is Failing’ 60 and marked his departure from the institution after having served in the UN for over three decades.

  In this opinion-piece, Banbury revealed his many grievances with the UN and how they climaxed in his departure from the institution. He criticized the UN’s ‘sclerotic personnel system’ ‘minimal accountability,’ and debilitating bureaucracy. His frustrations were not ungrounded, and I share some of the sentiments expressed on the UN’s ‘colossal mismanagement’.

  Many have made these criticisms before his exposé in The Times and many have made them after. But in his censure of the UN, he failed to clarify, as many often do: which UN is failing?

  A main driver of mismanagement within the UN arises from the conflicts of interest of the so-called three UNs and the failure to account for these differences. The ‘first UN’ is comprised, as observed earlier, of member states, with each state looking to best serve its own national interests. The ‘second UN’ is made up of employees of the UN Secretariat, working to serve the charter and agenda of the institution; they are committed solely to the organization, and do not, rather should not, answer to any government or authority. 61 The ‘third UN’ is comprised of organizations on the periphery of the UN, who work independently from the first and second UNs. The third UN is characterized by its impartial influence on the workings of the UN.

  At the core of each of the three UNs are ambitions that are at odds with one another and which ever so often work at cross purposes. The three UNs are acknowledged and prescribed roles when forming agendas, reviewing mechanisms, or proposing reform. But their conflict is seldom taken into earnest consideration, as Banbury failed to do in his New York Times piece.

  Reform is not a one-time affair. It is an ongoing process. Many good things have arisen from the UN’s attempts at reform and progress is being made. And yet, the more glaring anomalies remain. It must be accepted that the three UNs paralyse each other. Only after this fact is internalized can we move towards a process that is accommodating to all three and is, above all, sustainable.

  2015 Reviews

  In 2015, the UN undertook three major reviews to assess whether the institution is fit for purpose in its septuagenarian years, much like our intentions with the ICM. The reviews put under the microscope the UN’s peace operations and peace-building architecture, and the implementation of the women, peace, and security agenda. The processes through which these reviews gained concept, form, and implementation follow the same tune and fall into the same trap.

  High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations

  In 2014, the then secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, created the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO), which in June 2015 released its review of UN peace operations. Peace operations are by and large the costliest gear in the UN machine. The report placed the budget of peace operations at ‘more than four times larger than the rest of the UN Secretariat.’ 62 Bluntly put, this report was a result of frustrations with a bloated budget, bloated expectations of peace operations capabilities, and a bloating trend in civil conflict.

  The high-level panel was comprised of sixteen experts and chaired by Jose Ramos-Horta, Nobel laureate and the highly respected former prime minister of Timor Leste. He was the co-chair of the ICM and is someone I greatly admire. The report, aptly titled ‘Uniting Our Strengths for Peace—Politics, Partnership and People’ sought to examine the state of UN peace operations. 63

  In terms of the first P of the title, the panel suggested that ‘political solutions should always guide the design and deployment of UN peace operations.’ 64 This is not to undermine the UN’s protection mandates but rather to emphasize their exceptional nature. Any acts of militarism, if or when necessary, must fit into the mandate of the UN mission.

  The second P, partnership, emphasizes a ‘stronger, more inclusive peace and security partnership.’ 65 As I mentioned at the opening of this chapter, we live in an inescapably interconnected, interdependent world. There are goldmines of insight and knowledge at the local, national, and regional levels, which go largely unmined by those who shape the agendas of the UN missions. Sustainable peace is ruled out if local constituents are not consulted in the creation of the peace being delivered; sustainable peace is ruled out if the host country is not consulted in the type of peace it will inherit and must sustain once the UN departs.

  The third P reorients peace operations in the direction of being people-centric. The UN has entangled itself in politics and bureaucracy and has lost what the report calls the ‘human face’ and its ability to connect to local people to ‘better understand their concerns, needs, and aspirations.’ 66 The UN Charter prioritizes the people; the institution must do the same.

  Advisory Group of Experts

  In December 2014, the Secretary General nominated seven experts to form the Advisory Group of Experts (AGE) to review the UN peace-building architecture and provide recommendations for its betterment. This review was conducted at the request of the Presidents of the General Assembly and Security Council. The current architecture, they found, left ‘peace-building as an afterthought’. 67 In accordance with the UN Charter, which calls for sustainable peace, peace-building should ‘inform all UN activities before, during, and after conflict.’

  Chaired by seasoned Guatemalan diplomat Gert Rosenthal, AGE delivered the report titled ‘The Challenge of Sustaining Peace’ in June 2015. A good portion of the recommendations followed the same formula of the HIPPO report, emphasizing the importance of inclusivity, flexibility, and broadening partnerships. The report denounced the silos between the UN Secretariat, the rest of the UN and operations on the field, arguing that this fragmentation only further perpetuated the ‘generalized misunderstanding of the nature of peace-building’. 68

  WPS

  In October 2013, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon requested a review of the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security to mark the resolution’s fifteenth anniversary. The review, invited by the UN Security Council, commissioned seventeen experts to study the execution of Resolution 1325. I have had the pleasure of working with and gaining the friendship of several of the appointed experts in my long diplomatic career. Even with biases placed aside, I can say with confidence that the members of the study were chosen wisely.

  The pillars of Resolution 1325, in line with the UN’s peculiar predilection for the letter P, included prevention, protection, participation, and peace-building and recovery. It doesn’t take a group of experts to see that the gender equality in peace processes envisioned in Resolution 1325 has not yet been achieved. But the report highlighted some important global strides in the right direction: more policies to prevent sexual- and gender-based violence in conflict; a representative gender balance at the negotiating table; and the inclusion of women at the decision-making level not extended as a courtesy but rather as a necessity
for sustainability.

  The report further suggested that alongside lobbying to bridge the gaps in policy at the national level, the UN itself must also undergo some soul-searching. The gender perspective must be mainstreamed and better integrated into all sectors of the institution if it is to lead by example. The commitment and willpower to implement Resolution 1325 must be reflected in the resources and funds allocated to it.

  The Paralytic Ps

  These summaries are as encompassing of the reviews as can three paragraph abstracts encompass reports numbering more than a hundred pages. All three reviews share a common thread in the recommendations they put forth. But most importantly, the reviews underwent a common process that sheds light on the glaring structural blind spots of the UN. Returning to the concept of the three UNs, all three reviews were commissioned by the second UN (the UN Secretariat), executed by the third UN (independent experts) and laid before the first UN (the member states) for implementation.

  With the backdrop of the 2015 reviews, let us look at the paralytic nature of the three UNs using the beloved language of the UN: through three Ps. The reviews originated from the Secretariat, as represented and commissioned by the UN secretary general. The Secretariat’s ambitions mark the first P, persistence. The Secretariat is caught between two conflicting roles—one as a shadow-servant to the will of the most powerful of the member states and the other as a charter-abider ‘responsible only to the Organization.’ It is thus characterized in practice by its persistence in seeking institutional reform to free itself from this debilitating duality.

  Upon invitation by the secretary general, the reviews were tasked to the third UN, independent experts unaffiliated with the UN. Absent of influence from the institution or member states, these experts are driven by the second P, progress. The third UN holds no stakes in the UN and works solely to influence and better the institutional mechanism. Their legitimacy is derived from their neutrality (or rather, their assumed neutrality), which in turn allows for exclusive focus on progress. Their independence, however, invites its vices. Their powers extend only so far as to provide recommendations to the institution and to publicly name and shame. Their executive powers are non-existent; they are a brain without a body.

  Reform proposals are placed before the first UN, the member states, whose ultimate agenda is the final P, perseverance. In the hierarchy of the three UNs, the member states take the crown. After all, the institution was created by states to facilitate relations between sovereign and equal states. All executive action, including UN reform, is ultimately left at the mercy and will of member states. The status quo within the UN is etched into its foundation, with member states—most importantly the P5 69—on the winning side. It is fundamentally delusional to expect the greatest benefactors of the current system to shuffle the status quo around to their disadvantage. Thus, there remains little mystery as to why the recommendations were yet to be operationalized.

  The troika of perseverance, progress, and persistence holds immense potential to steer the UN towards reform that redeems its cowering credibility. But the three Ps’ current matching with the three UNs make for a combination hazardous to the legitimacy of the UN.

  The global crises today serve as a litmus test for the effectiveness of the institution in its current form. Clearly, the UN is not succeeding. The only road forward is reform to reconcile the three UNs. If any or all of the UNs are unwilling to commit to a unified agenda, all UNs must accept their obsoleteness and step aside. To do otherwise is to entrench the UN deeper in delusion.

  Management Reform

  Standing before the General Assembly on 12 December 2016 to take oath of office, Secretary General-elect Antonio Guterres mused, ‘Looking at United Nations staff and budgetary rules and regulations, one might think that some of them were designed to prevent, rather than enable, the effective delivery of our mandates.’ 70 Addressing the observation by the chief executive of the UN is critical in order to create an environment that facilitates the recommendations of the 2015 reviews.

  Secretary General Guterres, since beginning his tenure in January 2017, has kept true to his campaign promise to prioritize management reform and reform of the peace and security architecture. 71

  Management reform has been long-sought, rightfully so. His commitment to management reform has been received popularly in a letter dated 18 July 2017. A group of thirty-seven permanent representatives to the UN—including two P5 representatives from the US and UK—had the following to say to the secretary general:

  We encourage you to establish a bold strategy whereby you use your executive authority to advance organizational reforms. We will support you fully in exercising such authority—and urge you to reclaim the powers that have been eroded over time. 72

  And yet, this is likely to go nowhere in the absence of clear thinking and a hard bargain. It is almost a cliché to say that the current composition and architecture of the UNSC does not reflect the reality of today. Equally, all the efforts in the final year of the Ban Ki Moon administration to revisit various peace-related processes, covered in some detail on previous pages, individually and collectively amount to very little in the absence of the fundamental reform required of the body designated to deal with issues related to peace and security and the only one designated to make a determination of where such a threat exists. More importantly, it is the only body that has the formal sanction and authority to do so.

  One only has to take a good hard look at all the conflicts raging around the globe today to get a fairly accurate picture of the relevance of the UNSC. The fact that nation states are allowed to wage war either in self-defence or only with the specific authorization of the Security Council where the council has been consulted, or in some other way involved, shows the council in very poor light. In most of these cases—Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine—the council’s involvement, in whatever form, has had an exacerbating rather than an ameliorating effect. The only one among these cases—Libya—where the use of force was specifically sanctioned by the council is in a shambles with little or no governance. In the case of Syria, the council failed to act in the light of repeated vetoes by two of its permanent members.

  What is it about the UN Security Council that appears most at risk as we are about to enter the third decade of the twenty-first century? My submission is that what is most at risk is the one unique power that the council has—of being the only designated entity in the international system which can make a determination on whether or not there exists a threat to international peace and security. Having made that determination, it is the council alone that can authorize countervailing measures or the use of force. And this is perhaps the most worrying of all trends. Countries big and small, the powerful and not so powerful, use both covert and overt means to declare war on other countries without feeling the need, let alone the compulsion, to make a reference to the council.

  India and the United Nations

  India’s engagement with multilateral diplomacy began even before we attained freedom from the Raj. On 1 January 1942, India become one of the founding members of the UN as it signed the Declaration by the United Nations in Washington DC. 73

  The context of India’s entry into the UN, in fact that of the establishment of the UN itself, needs to be recalled to better understand the relationship that the two share today, and how it can progress in the years to come.

  The UN Charter was negotiated during a three-year period when the World War II was still being fought. As the preamble makes clear, the objective of such a multilateral institution, since the time of its inception, has been: 74

  To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind

  To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small

  To establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treati
es and other sources of international law can be maintained

  To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom

  These lofty ambitions resonated with India’s own nationalist movement. After two hundred years of imperial rule, which included forced participation of Indian troops in both World Wars, it was only natural that India would not only sign the Charter, but also help shape the foundations of any global institution that resonated with its own civilizational ethos—‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam [the whole world is one family]’.

  India’s post-independence Constitution, anchored in justice, liberty and equality, too echoes much of the idealism of the UN Charter. And given India’s multicultural, multi-ethnic and multilingual ethos, it would safe to dub the nation a mini UN of sorts.

  Over seventy years on, the significance of a multinational, multilateral institution to India’s position in the world, and its growth trajectory, remains seminal. And conversely, the world’s largest democracy and a country on the cusp of great power status, is critical to maintain the credibility and legitimacy of the UN.

  Global conversations, like the post-2015 development agenda, international cyber norms, UN conventions on terrorism and global finance and trade rules, will have as strong a bearing on India’s future as any domestic regulation to reform the country’s economic and social landscape. And India too enjoys a de-facto veto in vital global conversations—the climate negotiation at Paris is one such example. COP 21 would not have achieved the success it did, had India not shown leadership and driven the negotiations towards an outcome which was agreeable to 193 nations.