Samantha Power in Louisville

I attended this talk by Samantha Power on Monday at the University of Louisville:


I'm not sure UN Ambassador Power said anything really new about American foreign policy, but news reports tended to emphasize two points -- her call for bipartisan foreign policy and her argument against new Congressionally-imposed sanctions on Iran.

If you were not paying close attention, her arguments about the value of economic sanctions seemed to be inconsistent. She criticized the economic embargo against Cuba, claiming that after more than 50 years of failure, the Obama administrations simply wants the U.S. to try a new approach. Yet, at the same time, she praised the success of economic sanctions against Burma (a pet issue of host Senator Mitch McConnell) and other recent sanctions against Iran.

Power argued that unilateral sanctions on Cuba had failed, while collective sanctions on Iran had succeeded. She didn't really talk about this distinction vis-a-vis Burma, but I know the EU also sanctioned Myanmar (Burma). On Cuba:

Even though the Castro regime has been repressing the Cuban people for decades, it is America that has been seen as Goliath picking a fight with David. I’ve seen this first-hand at the United Nations. Last October, for the 23rd year in a row, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to condemn the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Out of the UN’s 193 member-states, we were only one of two that voted to defend the embargo.

As for Iran, Power argued that the international sanctions regime is largely responsible for bringing Iran to the bargaining table, where it seems willing to limit its ability to produce nuclear weapons. However, new sanctions would backfire, undermining the collective sanctions that she claimed are "exponentially more effective than bilateral sanctions alone."

If we pull the trigger on new nuclear-related sanctions now, we will go from isolating Iran to potentially isolating ourselves. We go from a position of collective strength to a position of individual weakness.

All of these points were framed around a theme of bipartisanship. Power repeatedly emphasized that Republicans and Democrats in Washington fundamentally agreed about the goals of American foreign policy, even as they disagreed about the means to achieve them:

But what is often lost in the coverage of these debates is the fact that they’re disputes about means, not ends; about tactics, not objectives; about how America can tackle complex global challenges, and not whether we ought to try. As Thomas Jefferson once put it, “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.”

In the introductory remarks, University of Louisville President James Ramsey introduced a visiting Army War College Fellow who is auditing my graduate IR seminar this spring.


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Interviewed About Syria, Use of Force, and Norms

Monday, Christopher Flavelle of Bloomberg interviewed me about the various norms at stake in the Syria debate. We discussed international norms limiting the use of force and the implications of using force to punish chemical weapons use. I'm not confident that a US retaliatory strike would meaningfully deter future use of chemicals. It might be an effective military action in Syria (by destroying capabilities), but would future dictators be deterred?

Flavelle ended up quoting me in his story published September 10:

In fact, the norm against the unauthorized use of force may be more important than the norm against chemical weapons, which are held by a small number of countries. By contrast, "norms limiting the use of force are seen as centrally important to most states," according to Rodger Payne, chairman of the political science department at the University of Louisville.

I was accurately quoted, though Flavelle and I talked about the problem of Security Council authorization. Essentially, one permanent member can block action desired by a global consensus.  The international community needs to figure out a way to authorize the use of force that is at least somewhat less onerous than the current procedure. States acting collectively ought to be able to prevent future Iraq-type invasions, if opposed by a very large number of states, but allow potentially desirable actions, such as limited interventions to protect civilians or prevent certain kinds of terrorist or WMD attacks.

Also, we didn't really talk about this, but chemical weapons are relatively easy to manufacture (their use dates back a century, after all), which means that dozens of states could make them if they wanted. That means the proposed strike might have implications for many other states in the future.

Finally, I also stressed that the norm against chemical weapons has actually been solidified if not strengthened these past few weeks by the fact that so many members of the international community are outraged by the alleged Syrian use. There are many other ways to signal the international community's displeasure, including sanctions, resolutions condemning the action, etc.


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The Good Club

In an age of austerity, what global political actors will have the resources and willpower to tackle major problems such as poverty, hunger, global warming, inequality of wealth, etc.? 

A recent issue of The Nation featured a book review by Mark Mazower that included an interesting anecdote about the super-wealthy people who seek to address world problems via their philanthropy:

In 2009, for instance, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and David Rockefeller called a meeting of their fellow super-philanthropists—people like George Soros, Oprah Winfrey and Ted Turner—to discuss what they could do in response to the global financial crisis and the longer-term environmental and health problems facing the world. When the participants gathered at an Upper East Side residence in New York on May 5, the meeting was shrouded in secrecy. It was scarcely surprising: the combined wealth of the people in the room was reckoned to be around $120 billion—and that was after already spending billions in the previous twelve years. Such sums dwarfed the social spending budgets of most member states of the UN down the road.

The so-called "Good Club" apparently had an important agenda at this private meeting -- though no one is precisely sure of the details. Most importantly, Mazower notes that the super-rich cannot solve global problems. That is a job better left to various international institutions: 

...did they decide, as some newspaper accounts have it, that it was up to them to tackle the threat of planetary overpopulation—probably the top global fear of wealthy American philanthropists for about a century? We cannot know. But we have learned enough about the history of private wealth to know that these do-gooders alone are inadequate vehicles to supply the global public goods that well-run multilateral international institutions can handle more systematically and openly.

Incidentally, the piece also discusses the work of NGOs and provides some interesting data. For example, 90% of NGOs have been formed since 1970 and "two-thirds of EU relief goes through them." Since 2003, these NGOs have been distributing more money globally than related UN organizations.


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Blogging update

I continue to guest blog over at LGM.

Saturday, May 19, I posted "MSF's Foreign Policy" at both LGM and the Duck of Minerva. The post concerns the foreign policy of the new French government.

Tuesday, May 22, I posted "Security threats and what to do about them" at LGM. It is about US nuclear strategy and the threats referenced to justify policy choices.

Today, I posted "Condi's dream and 'the second surge'" -- at both LGM and the Duck of Minerva. It is a followup to Saturday's piece, with an emphasis on new US plans to "internationalize" Iraq.


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Irrelevant?

When President Bush was making the case for war against Iraq, he warned the United Nations that it should act with the US or become "irrelevant." Specifically, here's what he said:

"The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations, and a threat to peace. Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?"

Apparently, even though the UN did not support the US/UK invasion of Iraq, the President has decided that the UN remains relevant after all. As I've written before, the US is seeking cash and troops from other states -- and Bush realizes that other states want UN authorization before providing this assistance:

"Some countries have requested an explicit authorization of the United Nations Security Council before committing troops to Iraq."

And so, this past week, Secretary of State Colin Powell has been trying to convince US friends that they should cooperate with the US at the UN. Clearly, the administration is trying to convince states like Germany and France that they have a common interest in such multilateral action:

"I recognize that not all of our friends agreed with our decision to enforce the Security Council resolutions and remove Saddam Hussein from power. Yet we cannot let past differences interfere with present duties. Terrorists in Iraq have attacked representatives of the civilized world, and opposing them must be the cause of the civilized world. Members of the United Nations now have an opportunity -- and the responsibility -- to assume a broader role in assuring that Iraq becomes a free and democratic nation. "

Some media reports, including one from the Associated Press, suggest that the negotiations are making progress -- and that the US has "flinched." However, other reports (including the NY Times, which requires registration to view) suggest that states like Germany and France require a greatly diminished role for the US. They want Iraqi self governance very quickly -- and for the UN, not the US, to supervise the transfer of power.

To me, the most interesting part of all this is that the UN's chief role in world politics is becoming quite evident to everyone. It conveys political legitimacy on genuinely multilateral operations. Many countries will simply not line up behind the US to provide political cover for its foreign policy:

'''The fact the U.S. is coming back to the United Nations at this point is itself an indication the U.N. did not become "irrelevant,"' said Yale University scholar James S. Sutterlin, a former top U.N. political aide.

The world body 'has a unique capacity to mobilize money and legitimize the use of troops,' he said."

This political legitimacy, of course, was lacking in the war itself.