United Nations Relations with the United States: The UN Must Look Out for Itself

Author(s): John L. Washburn

Source: Global Governance , Jan.–Apr. 1996, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jan.–Apr. 1996), pp. 81-96
Published by: Brill

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27800129

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Brill is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Global Governance

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Global Governance 2 (1996), 81-96

United Nations Relations with

the United States:
The UN Must Look Out for Itself

John L. Washburn

With the end of the fiftieth anniversary year of the United Na

tions, UN relations with the United States are troubled yet full
of promise?broad, enthusiastic, and rapidly expanding yet
likely to break down in acrimony over narrow issues. Many in the United
States expected that this anniversary would confirm the renewal and begin
the fulfillment of the hopes of 1945. Instead, celebrations were marred and
overshadowed by congressional attempts virtually to wipe out peacekeep
ing and to micromanage the administration and organization of the UN.
The majority in Congress believes, with some justification, that this is
what the public wants. Indeed, as seen in foundations, talk shows, and
militias, many U.S. citizens reject both the government of the United
States and the UN as remote, uncontrollable, and sinister outside forces in
their lives. In response, the Clinton administration has abandoned "aggres
sive multilateralism" for harassed, sometimes panicky, damage control.
At the same time, at the end of the twentieth century, Americans par
ticipate in the work of the UN in numbers and in ways that would have
dumbfounded those solemnly gathered in San Francisco fifty years ago.
"We the peoples" was a nice initial flourish in the UN Charter in 1945.
Now, as Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has noted, it describes
the reality of worldwide popular participation in virtually all of the UN's
activities.1 This movement was largely created by American nongovern
mental organizations (NGOs). They are likely to remain among the move
ment's leaders as it expands and intensifies in the future.
Through their NGOs, millions of Americans have participated in the
conferences on environment, population, social development, human
rights, and women convened by the UN at the millennium's end. These
conferences have sharply affected domestic debate in the United States
and thus placed the UN in the consciousness of almost every American
who cares about these issues.
The contrast among official U.S.-UN relations, congressional behav
ior, and this private American support for and commitment to UN pro
grams and issues is part of the UN Secretariat's perception of the United

81

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
82 UN Relations with the United States

States.2 This perception, especially as it applies to official relations, is too

often narrowed by traditional inhibitions, colored by cultural disconnec
tions, and foreshortened by inadequate and untimely information. None
theless, with the help of its private American interlocutors, much of how
the Secretariat sees and thinks about the United States is, in a piecemeal
way, accurate and thoughtful, soundly based on the institutional realities
of the UN and correctly derived from its historical experience with the
United States and other member states.
UN officials share certain fundamental premises and experiences about
relations between the UN and all its members. The most basic of these is
that at the United Nations in all its aspects, countries pursue their individ
ual positions and objectives. This is clear and obvious in intergovernmental
organs such as the General Assembly, the respective councils for trustee
ship, security, and economic and social issues, and their subordinate com
missions and committees. These are parliamentary bodies, designed to rec
oncile national positions into agreements on collective actions or standards
through familiar processes of bargaining, compromise, and negotiation.
The story of the Secretariat is much more uncertain and difficult. Ar
ticle 7 of the UN Charter classifies the Secretariat, together with the Gen
eral Assembly, the councils, and the International Court of Justice, as a
"principal organ" of the UN. Article 97 defines the Secretariat as the "Sec
retary-General and such staff as the Organization may require/' Article
100 requires these "international officials" not to "seek or receive instruc
tions from a government or any other authority external to the Organiza
tion." They are to be "responsible only to the Organization." Moreover,
this article records the undertaking of each member state to "respect the
exclusively international character of the responsibility of the Secretary
General and the staff and not to seek to influence them in the discharge of
their responsibilities."
In fact, of course, almost all members of the UN constantly attempt
to influence UN officials in their favor.3 These countries do this even
while recognizing (at least most of them, most of the time) that the ulti
mate value, viability, and usefulness of the UN Secretariat depend pre
cisely on its impartiality, objectivity, and disinterestedness. For purposes
ranging from peacekeeping to population control, from human rights pro
tection to preservation of the environment, nations rely on and prize an im
partiality in the Secretariat not available elsewhere. A frequently partial or
biased UN would be self-defeating and eventually die.
In UN experience, this general question of influence exerted by a
member state on officials of an organization whose future depends on the
impartiality of those officials presents special problems in UN relations
with the United States. Many countries naturally are profoundly self
convinced of the Tightness of their causes and see perversity in those who
will not agree with or support them. However, in the United States this is

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 John L. Washburn 83

joined by a strong sense of possessiveness in attitudes toward the UN.

Americans recall vividly that the United States was the chief creator of the
UN and that the similarity in names is no accident. This leads to the as
sumption that the United States is uniquely qualified to pronounce on what
the UN is and what it should do. Despite fifty years of intervening and in
structive events, far too many official and private Americans are still sur
prised and jolted by actions at or by the United Nations with which they
disagree. It seems to them that "the UN" is unnaturally and unfairly deny
ing the obvious Tightness of U.S. positions and refusing to endorse the full
freedom of action to which the United States is entitled.
It is clear to observers in the UN Secretariat that, in consequence, a
failure to agree with or support the United States delegitimizes the UN in
American eyes much more profoundly and with much more cumulative
damage than is the case with other countries. On most issues, the United
States tries to prevail on the Secretariat as well as in intergovernmental fo
rums. Thus when it fails, the country's sense of an obdurate and delegit
imized UN and the accompanying feelings of betrayal and mistrust are di
rected against UN officials, especially the secretary-general.
At the same time, UN officials remain aware to the point of awe of
the unique power of the United States over the UN. It is the host country,
the world's leading economy, and the home of the richest, largest, and most
influential of the NGOs that are now so central to the UN's work. It is
the remaining superpower, whose military is uniquely d?ployable, self
sustaining, and endowed with technology.
Clearly, the United States is the only country that can do fundamental
long-term damage to the UN?through deliberate neglect or open hostility.
Either of these situations would force the Secretariat to financial and op
erational expedients that would destroy the objectivity and impartiality
that justify its existence. The more likely possibility, however, is pro
longed misunderstanding and confusion in Congress and a continuing lack
of strategy in the administration regarding the U.S.-UN relationship.
Intergovernmental events regularly demonstrate to international civil
servants that the United States is the most important national center of in
ternational life and the one country to which others still defer. They have
also been observers of the accumulating evidence that this special U.S. sta
tus is diminishing slowly, but inexorably.
Despite these perceptions and information, the Secretariat is nonethe
less seriously hampered by long-standing restraints and inhibitions in un
derstanding the United States and managing relations with it. Now, how
ever, time, a new generation, and the obvious urgency and importance of
the problems are beginning to break down these barriers.
There is a long tradition in the Secretariat that its relations with mem
ber states should be only through diplomatic channels with their govern
ments. In particular, propriety and prudence dictated in the past that the

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
84 UN Relations with the United States

UN not try to influence domestic political processes. UN officials have

long maintained that this kind of "interference" invites recrimination and
lashback and that in any case international civil servants are unlikely to
be able to do this skillfully enough to be effective. Fear of U.S. power (es
pecially in retaliation), custom, protocol, and practicality commingle in
support of this position.
Many in the management of the Secretariat also find the U.S. politi
cal system complex and exotic. These sophisticated and well-educated
men and women nonetheless are baffled by the diffuseness of U.S. poli
tics, the committee system in Congress, the multiple and often unexpected
sources of power and influence there, and the dual appropriations and au
thorization processes. Constituency pressures and the ebbs and flows of
powerful political and public opinions, in a country whose size alone is in
timidating, are all hard to fathom.
Decisionmaking in the U.S. executive branch is also too often a mys
tery for UN officials. Compelling influences and key individuals in a par
ticular policy process often seem to appear and disappear suddenly and in
explicably. The interplay among media, public opinion, and political
actors is confounding. It is especially confusing in its intermittent and sud
den alternation of intense interest in or profound indifference to the UN,
both often accompanied by surprising ignorance and misunderstanding.
How, Secretariat people ask with bitterness, did the deaths in Somalia of
U.S. Rangers during a raid decided and led only by the U.S. military with
out consultation with the UN come to be blamed on the UN by public
opinion, Congress, and the administration in the United States? Such ques
tioners are often too limited in their understanding of American society,
their awareness of American life outside New York, and their experience
with Washington to be able to find the right answers and to fashion effec
tive responses for the UN.
An excellent example of this scenario was the initial difficulty of the
Secretariat in reacting effectively to the U.S. campaign to establish a UN
inspector-general with specified functions. Although it was obvious for
months that Congress would succeed in forcing the Clinton administration
to insist on this move, the Secretariat reacted with confusion rather than
with the firmness informed understanding can encourage. A crisis was fi
nally avoided through the skill of the United Nations Association of the
USA (una-usa) in helping the Secretariat comprehend the concept, role,
and functions of an inspector-general in U.S. politics and public adminis
tration, and the nature of the congressional pressure on the executive on
this issue.4 The Secretariat was then able to work with other countries to
make a counterproposal that was politically and administratively feasible
for the UN and, with the further help of the una-usa, to come to an agree
ment with the United States.

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 lohn L. Washburn 85

Nonetheless, the availability of information about policymaking in

Washington and cooperation with counterpart officials and offices there
are beginning to improve for the Secretariat in particular. Too often, how
ever, it does not seem to know how to use these opportunities to integrate
this information and to follow and influence bureaucratic and political pro
cesses in Congress.
Most UN under-secretaries-general now know their U.S. opposite
numbers. In some cases, there are regular telephone exchanges and visits
to Washington and New York. Almost all senior officials have steady,
even intense, contact with American NGOs that are important to their re
sponsibilities. In this way they learn a certain amount about relevant
events in the U.S. government and Congress that are of concern to them
individually. Some American senior UN officials offer advice and insights
on Washington policymaking and politics to their Secretariat colleagues
and superiors. Two of these officals are special advisers for the secretary
general and have this among their formal responsibilities to him.
The Department of Public Information and the Office of the Spokes
man for the Secretary-General provide accurate but limited information on
and analysis of the American media. The United Nations Information Cen
tre in Washington covers Congress well within the tight confines of its
desperately limited resources, its broad responsibilities for public rela
tions, and its obligations to important visitors.
Exchanges of information and joint activities are especially well es
tablished and effective in peacekeeping and nation building. Senior UN of
ficials responsible for Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Central America have
particularly close contacts with their counterparts responsible for these
subjects at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
The cooperation between the Department of Peacekeeping Operations
(dpko) and the Department of Defense on specific peacekeeping opera
tions has naturally led to growing joint activities in training, doctrine de
velopment, logistics, and command and control.5 U.S. military officials, on
secondment, work in several dpko offices. As a result of these exchanges,
dpko probably knows more about its opposite numbers in the U.S. gov
ernment and has more influence with them than any other secretariat
department.
The greatest long-term potential for changes in the UN's management
of its relations with the United States is in the new generation of interna
tional civil servants and the technology they use. These lower-middle-level
and junior UN officials are much freer of the fears and inhibitions about
member states that were ingrained in their superiors by tradition and the
Cold War. Moreover, they are much less deferential to national govern
ments, very comfortable with the style and outlook of NGOs, and devoted
to the freedom, power, and knowledge conferred by electronic technology.

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
86 UN Relations with the United States

For them, the Internet and internal UN networks such as the Integrated
Management Information System have virtually ended the sense of dis
tance from national societies and politics that older officials too often
feel.6 In the expanding world of this new generation, the outlines of a
transformed UN in the future are beginning to emerge. Unfortunately, the
Secretariat cannot wait until the new generation takes over before con
fronting its serious problems with the United States.
In taking up this challenge now, the Secretariat must do some un
precedented independent thinking about the current state of U.S. political
and policy processes, not only in Washington but also across the nation. In
particular, there must be careful consideration of American public opin
ion about international relations and toward the UN itself.
This task will not be easy. Formal political analysis in the Secretariat
is almost always about conflicts or the management of economic and so
cial development. Nonetheless, the Secretariat is much more ready to do
this kind of thinking than it would have been only a few years ago. The
secretary-general has succeeded in getting his subordinates to practice his
principles of early warning and preventive diplomacy.7 Similarly, his in
sistence on nation building has required officials at all levels to accept as
a necessary part of their work that they must think about and act on the
functions and politics of democratic institutions in member states. Even
though the context is very different, these innovations have created a gen
eral openness to and experience with the kind of analysis the UN will have
to use in a more organized, calculated, and strategic conduct of its rela
tions with the United States.
The most serious problems in the relationship come from the expres
sion in specific situations of general U.S. indecision and confusion about
international affairs. The UN finds itself caught up in a murky and pro
longed American domestic debate over the nature, extent, and cost of U.S.
leadership in current world events.8 More than any other single interna
tional experience of the United States, the UN forces this domestic debate
to confront often unwelcome world realities: failed states, ethnic conflicts,
world poverty, overpopulation, degraded environments, and humanitarian
crises. The work of the UN reveals the shrinking possibilities for unilater
alism, even by the United States. It makes plain the necessity for collective
action and presents the excruciating frustrations in trying to achieve it.
Most of all, the United States and its people face the reality of change at
the United Nations, the same kind of change that Americans find so painful
and disorienting in their national life. They confront the changing world sta
tus of the United States, whose continuing power and influence nonetheless
ever more frequently meet effective and sometimes un?xpected challenges.
They see the deep alterations in values and styles of life represented by the
UN's work on issues such as the rights of the child, population control, the
status of women, and the role of government in social programs.

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 lohn L. Washburn 87

Since the function and future of the UN itself is in contention in this

U.S. debate, the Secretariat cannot be a bystander. The U.S. government
and the media can be helpful, sometimes indispensable, but will never be
enough. Moreover, each has its own agenda, misunderstandings, and limi
tations. The UN must find a way to transmit to the debaters its own voice,
modestly but firmly and clearly, through those who respect and support it.
The current state of the debate shows that this will not be easy. For
eign policy was virtually ignored in the congressional elections of 1994.
The only international issues in the Contract with America have to do with
the funding and use of the U.S. military, including its UN peacekeeping
activities. These are covered in a single chapter, "Strong National
Defense."
This asserts that the Clinton administration has been "raiding the de
fense budget to fund social welfare programs and UN peacekeeping" and
claims that "for the first time in our history, American troops have been
placed under UN command." This has happened, the chapter says, because
"the United States participates in a number of peacekeeping operations
worldwide, most of which are organized, carried out, and paid for by
America in association with UN efforts. . . , The United States has thir
teen ongoing missions . . . and the United States also funds peacekeeping
operations through mandatory contributions to the UN."9
At about the time the Contract with America was being written, the
Congressional Research Service, a source presumably easily available to
the drafters, made it clear that the service of U.S. soldiers under UN com
mand was not a Clinton administration innovation. It reported that there
were then sixteen peacekeeping missions, of which six included U.S. sol
diers. Five UN peacekeeping missions established in 1992 or earlier have
had U.S. soldiers serving under UN command. Of these, the UN Military
Observers Group in India and Pakistan and the UN Truce Supervisory Or
ganization (untso) were established in 1948. untso still has seventeen
U.S. officers under a UN commander.10
A "Myths Versus Facts" section at the end of the chapter proclaims
that "the Clinton Administration appears to salute the day when American
men and women will fight and die 'in the service' of the United Nations.
President Clinton has not led great coalitions of countries as did George
Bush of Desert Storm or Dwight D. Eisenhower of D-Day. Instead, he ei
ther asks the UN permission first before defending U.S. interests, or uses
its token support to mask the tragic international adventurism of his ad
ministration."11 This argument is now being repeated by Republican pres
idential candidates.
Despite its inaccuracies and limitations, the chapter conveys the very
important unspoken message that experience with UN peacekeeping has
brought home to the Contract with America's supporters in Congress. This
is that the UN Charter in fact curtailed traditional U.S. sovereignty when

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
88 UN Relations with the United States

the United States signed it. In particular, and even worse from their point
of view, the United States, in accepting the UN Charter, agreed to legally
mandatory financial obligations to the UN and to its fellow members.
These to some extent limit the exercise by Congress of its constitutional
powers over appropriations and the budget. The majority in Congress
whose views are expressed in the Contract with America simply will not
have this.
To their credit, Ambassador Albright and the president have opposed
head-on the legislation supported by this part of the Contract with Amer
ica.12 She has testified and stumped the country, and he has confirmed the
possibility of a veto.13 However, a successful defeat or veto will not pro
vide the money owed to the UN, nor will it stifle the furious reaction
against the very idea that there are UN Charter obligations Congress is
bound to honor. The damage to the U.S. relationship with the UN, and to
the UN as an institution, will continue.
If it is to frame a better strategy for managing the relationship, the UN
must understand how accurately or not the Contract with America reflects
actual public opinion, determine the other trends in popular attitudes, and
decide how long and in what form all of these are likely to last. Polls taken
since 1989 provide much of this information.14
Although these polls vary in scope and techniques, many of them, es
pecially those by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and the Uni
versity of Maryland, have been carefully designed to avoid tendentious
ness and excessive generalization. Moreover, they present a remarkably
consistent set of findings and themes. The public broadly supports the UN
and U.S. participation in it but knows very little about its activities other
than peacekeeping. Inevitably, therefore, public attitudes toward the UN
are sharply affected by current news about peacekeeping. However, per
centages of support for the UN increase significantly after polltakers de
scribe its important programs for drugs, the environment, and crime. This
is consistent with uniform poll findings that Americans care much more
about domestic issues than international matters and give first priority in
foreign policy to the global aspects of national problems.
Americans strongly prefer U.S. participation in UN peacekeeping over
unilateral action by the United States, even when this involves U.S. sol
diers serving under UN command. At the same time, however, the first
foreign policy priority for Americans is staying out of the affairs of other
countries. According to the polls, Americans also want to pay no more, or
less, in mandatory contributions to the UN regular budget and peacekeep
ing. They favor other ways of raising money for the UN, such as taxes on
the international arms trade and air travel. In the meantime, however, they
want the United States to pay what it owes the UN.
At the same time, the public believes that the United States is the lead
ing country in the world, wishes it to continue as such, and predicts that it

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 lohn L Washburn 89

will be an even more important global leader in ten years. Americans want
their country to be active, preeminent, and deferred to internationally.
All of this is less contradictory than it looks. Americans do not want
the United States to be drawn into expensive, long-term international mil
itary commitments. They see the United States as a leader of other coun
tries, which as followers will share much of the burden of creating a stable
and prosperous world.
The polls also highlight characteristics of public attitudes toward in
ternational affairs with which the UN must reckon in making changes in
the ways it deals with the United States. In a number of polls, "elites" or
"leaders" were interviewed separately from the general public, and the re
sults show sharp differences of opinion between leaders and the public,
some of them counterintuitive. Asked to name their most important for
eign policy goals, 53 percent of the public but only 30 percent of leaders
listed "strengthening the United Nations."15 While the public split evenly
(44 percent-44 percent) on accepting UN command of U.S. soldiers, 61
percent of leaders were in favor.16 A full 73 percent of the public, but only
43 percent of elites, believed that the United States will be a more power
ful world leader in ten years.17
The polls portray Americans in general as poorly informed on inter
national events and about the UN. These results seem to suggest that this
ignorance may be deepening as the public concentrates on domestic con
cerns and prefers local to international news. Nonetheless, explanations
and information conveyed in the polling often had a sharp before-and-after
effect on answers. When information was provided, it not only increased
support for the UN generally but also turned a 59 percent response that the
United States was spending too much on UN peacekeeping into a decision
by a 42 percent plurality that the U.S. contribution was too small.18 Ex
planations also converted opposition into support for the economic and so
cial programs of the UN and markedly increased support for the activities
and objectives of the UN in Somalia and Bosnia.
In fact, this aspect of the polling leaves a strong impression that
Americans are preoccupied with their national concerns but are responsive
to convincing information about international events when it comes to
their attention. Most important, they want to feel that international actions
by their own government or others are related to their long-standing val
ues, standards, and interests and are based on and informed by an inte
grated understanding of world forces and events. This may spell occa
sional trouble for a U.S. government that seems to have decided to handle
international political and security issues case by case.19 It may also offer
opportunity to a UN whose management has already made strenuous and
largely successful efforts to establish for its own work a coherent global
vision that integrates political, economic, and social issues and to derive
strategy and tactics from it.20

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
90 UN Relations with the United States

As presidential candidates have learned (to their cost), polls can be both
inherently deceptive and easy vehicles for wishful thinking. Nonetheless,
the continuity of the trends, oddities, and attitudes just described, and their
confirmation by current political events in the United States, strongly sug
gest that taken together they constitute a reasonable description for the UN
of much of the challenge it faces in coping with American society, govern
ment, and politics until at least the end of the next secretary-generalship.
The UN cannot meet this challenge with the old customs, practices, and
shibboleths. The individual senior UN officials who have found their own
ways to power centers in Washington, to timely information, and to those in
terested in and expert about their issues across the United States have al
ready shown that they understand this and are devising new solutions.
However, some of the concerns behind the traditional inhibitions re
main valid and need to be heeded. In defending its viability by influencing
U.S. political processes, arousing public opinion in its favor, and achiev
ing early warning and practicing preventive diplomacy in Washington, the
UN must know that it runs the risk of retaliation and recrimination. It must
recognize that peacekeeping has become a political football in Congress
and in the 1996 presidential campaign. American ignorance of world
events and issues makes public support of any international undertaking,
including the UN, fragile and problematic.
Nonetheless, making the most of the value of that support in securing
the future of the UN through a more stable and rational relationship with the
United States will be largely up to the UN itself. The best possible relations
with the executive branch are still indispensable but no longer sufficient. At
a time of enormous change in fundamental political and governmental rela
tions and responsibilities?federal/state/local, congressional/executive, pub
lic/private?no administration by itself will have the self-confidence, the
power, or the will to reverse the kind of anti-UN trends in Congress and
public debate represented by the Contract with America. This will be so
even when, as now, an administration recognizes the necessary potential
support and interest among the American people. The best the UN can hope
for is effective resistance, such as that the Clinton administration has been
mounting against the antipeacekeeping legislation, to a few especially vi
cious and menacing specific threats. However crucial, this is damage con
trol, not a foundation for the kind of dynamic, positive, symbiotic relations
there should be between the world's most important country and the UN.
The Secretariat also cannot wait passively for the information it needs
to understand and prepare for U.S. actions and positions. As foreign diplo
mats in Washington frequently marvel, the U.S. government is unusually
open and its officials normally respond helpfully to inquiries. However,
they cannot in most cases be expected to volunteer information, and they
will usually be reticent about how, when, and by whom decisions and poli
cies are being made.

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 lohn L. Washburn 91

Similarly, the trends in U.S. politics that threaten the UN are too seri
ous to be ignored or left to press and public relations efforts only. Ameri
cans who value the UN for any reason must make themselves felt directly
at the local level and in the constituencies to which Washington now re
sponds more than ever.
For both purposes, and to avoid repercussions in pursuing them, the
Secretariat needs help from private Americans. This assistance is readily
available from NGOs in the United States, many of which have long been
frustrated in trying to offer it. As noted earlier, among the scores of mil
lions of Americans who are underinformed about international affairs,
there are lesser numbers of millions who care greatly about particular
global issues and the UN programs dedicated to them. Organizations serv
ing these supporters range from small, new, and intensely focused groups
to large institutions such as the international service clubs. The latter?
Lions, Rotary, Kiwanis?worked with Eleanor Roosevelt at San Francisco
to create Article 71 of the UN Charter, which provides for the recognition
of NGOs by the UN. All three of these are formally committed to sup
porting the UN and have international health and humanitarian programs
that cooperate with and depend on counterpart activities of the UN.21
The enormous range of American NGOs attuned to the UN also in
cludes universities, foundations, humanitarian relief agencies, foreign pol
icy associations, conflict resolution centers, and societies of professionals
(e.g., statisticians, international lawyers) as well as some less apparent
ones such as trade associations (e.g., cooperatives), national groups of
state legislators, the American Association of Retired People, and religious
denominations. Obvious and noteworthy in addition are those organiza
tions specifically dedicated to the UN: the una-usa, the Academic Coun
cil on the United Nations System (acuns), and the Business Council for
the United Nations.
The times make it exquisitely appropriate for the UN to turn to these
groups now for assistance in its relations with the United States. There is
already broad and intense cooperation with them. They are omnipresent in
the work of the UN and in its negotiations, conferences, and regular inter
governmental meetings. The UN could not carry out many of its programs
without NGOs as partners?this applies especially to economic and tech
nical assistance, humanitarian relief, human rights, and election monitor
ing. Although Secretariat officials sometimes have mixed feelings about
NGOs and their representatives, their indispensability is acknowledged
and usually welcomed. In fact, NGOs now form, along with international
civil servants and missions of governments, an accepted and nearly equal
element of the "UN community" in New York. The UN has formally rec
ognized this through a unit in the Department of Public Information de
voted to assisting NGOs with access to the Secretariat, with briefings, and
with physical facilities. Other departments also have special arrangements

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
92 UN Relations with the United States

and officials responsible for liaison with and assistance to NGOs interested
in or participating in their work.
More broadly, in this new millennial era, NGOs have come into their
own in the conduct of international relations globally and in the making of
foreign policy in the United States. Track Two diplomacy and private con
flict resolution have taken a legitimate place in international responses to
most crises alongside more conventional efforts. Implementation of peace
settlements, and compliance with international agreements on subjects
ranging from drug trafficking to whales, now usually depends on complex
combinations of intergovernmental, national, and NGO actions and initia
tives. This is the new international "civil society" that has been so widely
noted and described.22 It is the global extension of the rich texture of
groups and organizations that have long participated in domestic gover
nance in many nations and have become even more important in the last
fifteen years.
Thus, the U.S. government uses private expertise, organizations, anal
ysis, and programs as never before in making and carrying out foreign pol
icy. Like the UN, the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International
Development, the Department of Defense, and the National Security Coun
cil rely on NGOs for such activities as policy analysis, technical assis
tance, and human rights and peacekeeping training. (In many cases, of
course, the same NGOs are involved with both the UN and the United
States.) To recognize and encourage this, the State Department has pro
claimed a New Partnership and a New Diplomacy. This new turning to the
private sector in the United States for support and participation in manag
ing sharply changing international relations is, of course, closely related to
general trends of privatization, reorganization, and reduction in U.S. poli
tics and government. It will be seen as natural for the UN also to do even
more of this, and for additional purposes, as it continues its own reorgani
zation and confronts the new challenges in its relations with the United
States.
To this end, the Secretariat needs the help of American NGOs both in
Washington and across the country. In the capital, NGOs can use their par
ticipation and access on the UN's behalf in Congress and by tracking the
emergence of issues and policies in the executive. Local and countrywide
private organizations can identify grassroots trends that are likely to sur
face later between the UN and the United States, counter ignorance and
disinformation, and?most important of all?work in the constituencies of
key senators and representatives. There will be the inevitable and sometimes
virulent critics of this approach in Congress, the press, and foundations.
However, they will be undercut by the thoroughly American character of the
well-known and often powerful NGOs that will be making these efforts.
A few NGOs have long helped the UN in this way, and many more
have joined them recently. All are frustrated by the lack in the UN of any

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 John L. Washburn 93

designated office to work with them and to make fully effective use of
their help. Organizations with long experience at the UN and sophisticated
understanding of its bureaucracy can find UN officials with whom to co
operate informally in specific situations such as the antipeacekeeping leg
islation. However, this also makes them constantly aware that the UN does
not cope in an integrated way with the reality that this legislation, the with
holding of contributions, and assumptions that the Secretariat should al
ways be impartial in favor of the United States are all parts of one problem
that pervades a broad and complicated, but unified, U.S. political process.
To help the UN, American NGOs therefore badly need a locus of con
tact and coordination in the Secretariat. This "focal point" (in UN jargon)
would identify priorities, coordinate initiatives, provide information and
answers, and prepare analyses and warnings for senior management. With
the support of computers and colleagues, it would be small, discreet, and
versatile.
The accelerating tendency of American NGOs with related interests
to combine in coalitions will help the focal point very much by reducing
the number of organizations and individuals with which the UN will deal
directly. For example, the American Foreign Service Association (afsa)
leads the Coalition for American Leadership Abroad (colead), a group
ing of twenty organizations committed to improving U.S. foreign relations
that has support for the UN as one of its stated primary principles. The
una-usa, which has joined colead, also has a 136-member Council of
Organizations.
This approach would be a new departure for the UN. It would benefit
from and support the greatly improved press and public relations activities
of the Department of Public Information and the Office of the Spokesman
for the Secretary-General. As an effort to work with NGOs on behalf of
the UN, the focal point would complement the existing programs of the
Secretariat that assist NGOs in pursuing their interests there.
This effort should support and not interfere with the numerous current
independent activities in the U.S.-LJN relationship by certain senior offi
cials and the secretary-general. The work of the focal point should
strengthen and supply information to these activities, while providing all
in the Secretariat's management who want it with the data and analyses
they need to understand and be forewarned of U.S. actions and positions
that concern them.
The UN, the United States, and the world are passing from the post
Cold War period into a millennial era. As the least damaged of the two
former Cold War rivals, the United States as a government and a polity is
finding it especially hard to abandon the habits and thinking ingrained
over most of the life of the UN.23 The UN itself, in its fiftieth-anniversary
year, sees this era more clearly than perhaps most of its member states,
but is balked both by its own limitations and by the lack of the material,

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 94 UN Relations with the United States

psychological, and political resources it needs to overcome them. As the

UN and the United States struggle to understand this new time, cope with
their frustrations, and redeploy their strengths, they now need each other
more than ever?in the service of their shared and several objectives and
for the collective action that alone can address the world's most insistent
problems. The moment is too short, the times are too different, the need is
too great, and the danger to itself is too serious for the UN simply to wait
for more favorable circumstances in its relations with the United States.
The UN has the right and duty to take the initiative now. ?

Notes

John L. Washburn served at United Nations headquarters in New York in the Ex

ecutive Office of the Secretary-General and in the Department of Political Affairs
between 1988 and 1994. Earlier, he was a U.S. foreign service officer specializing
in international organizations and multilateral affairs. During that career, he was
for two years the member of the State Department Policy Planning staff responsi
ble for those issues.
1. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, speech delivered to the World Economic Forum in
Davos, Switzerland, UN press release, SG/SM/5531, New York, 24 January 1995.
2. Observations on attitudes and perceptions in the UN Secretariat are drawn
from my service there during 1988-1994 and from fifteen unattributable interviews
I conducted with Secretariat officials during 1994-1995.
3. Thomas M. Franck, Nation Against Nation (New York: Oxford Univer
sity Press, 1985), p. 223.
4. Jeffrey Laurenti, Strengthening U.N. Fiscal Oversight Machinery?The
Debate of an Inspector-General (New York: United Nations Association of the
United States of America, 1994); "una-usa?The Year's Highlights," The Inter
dependent 21, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 10.
5. For conceptual background on this cooperation, see Robert B. Oakley,
Indar Jit Rikhye, and Kenneth M. Jensen, eds., The Professionalization of Peace
keeping (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 1993).
6. Advisory Committee for the Co-ordination of Information Systems, The
Internet?An Introductory Guide for United Nations Organizations (Geneva:
United Nations, 1994).
7. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, "Supplement to An Agenda for Peace," in An
Agenda for Peace 1995 (New York: United Nations, 1995), pp. 13-15.
8. Warren Christopher, "America's Leadership, America's Opportunity," and
Bob Dole, "Shaping America's Global Future," Foreign Policy 98 (Spring 1995):
6, 29.
9. Ed Gillespie and Bob Schellhas, eds., Contract with America (New York:
Random House, 1994), p. 91.
10. Marjorie Ann Browne, United Nations Peacekeeping Operations 1988
1993: Background Information (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Ser
vice, 1993), pp. 5-8.
11. Contract with America, p. 109.
12. Madeleine K. Albright, "The United States and the United Nations:
What's in It for Us?" a speech presented to the Emerging Issues Forum, North

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 John L. Washburn 95

Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, 13 February 1995; press re

lease, U.S. Mission to the United Nations, USUN #25 (95).
13. William Clinton, "Remarks by the President in Freedom House Speech," a
speech presented to the Freedom House conference on foreign policy, Washington,
D.C., 6 October 1995, press release, Office of the Press Secretary, the White House,
pp. 2-9.
14. "US Public Attitude on the United Nations-?A Poll Conducted by the Roper
Organization Sponsored by the United Nations Association of the USA, March
1989," press release, United Nations Association of the United States of America,
New York, 3 May 1989; "Public Opinion in the United States About the United Na
tions," press release, Department of Public Information, United Nations, New York,
May 1989; "National Security and the Corporate Community: A New Agenda for
the 1990s," Emmes Executive Memo, vol. 2, no. 1, Foundation Emmes, New York,
July 1990, poll of 1,000 chief executive officers conducted in late 1989; Jeffrey Lau
renti, American Public Opinion and the United Nations, 1992 (New York: United
Nations Association of the United States of America, 1992), poll conducted by the
Roper Organization of 1,997 adults in March 1992 (this also usefully describes and
analyzes preceding polls); Robert C. Toth, America's Place in the World (Washing
ton, D.C.: Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press, 1993), a very detailed
poll of 2,000 adults from the general public during 9-15 September 1993, and of 649
"influential Americans" during 7 July-26 August 1993; Steven Kull and Clay Ram
say, US Public Attitudes on Peacekeeping (Washington, D.C.: University of Mary
land, 1993), a poll of 700 Americans conducted 9-13 February 1994 by the Center
for the Study of Policy Attitudes and the Center for International and Security Stud
ies, School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland; Steven Kull and Clay Ramsay,
US Public Attitudes on US Involvement in Bosnia (Washington, D.C.: University of
Maryland, 1994), a poll of 700 Americans conducted during 5-8 April 1994; Amer
ican Public Opinion on the United Nations, survey no. 25, Social National Surveys
of American Public Policy Issues (Washington, D.C.: American Talk Issues Foun
dation, 1994), a poll of 1,000 adults during 18-29 June 1994 (the results are partic
ularly interesting regarding UN functions other than peacekeeping, changes in atti
tudes on funding after information is provided, and alternative ways to fund the UN);
"Results of National Opinion Survey on US Foreign Policy," press release, Foreign
Policy Association, New York, 1994 (an analysis of 35,000 opinion ballots cast by
Foreign Policy Association members before 30 June 1994?the results are especially
significant on peacekeeping); John E. Reilly, ed., American Public Opinion on US
Foreign Policy 1995 (Chicago: The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, 1995), a
poll of 1,492 American men and women conducted by the Gallup Organization dur
ing 7-25 October 1994 (a sample of 383 Americans "in senior positions with knowl
edge of international affairs" [p. 5] was conducted during 26 October-7 December
1994; the differences on the UN between the general public and the leadership re
spondents are particularly important); Who Will Reconnect with the People: Repub
licans, Democrats, or?None of the Above? survey no. 28, Serial National Surveys
of Americans on Public Policy Issues (Washington, D.C.: American Talk Issues
Foundation, 1995), telephone survey of 1000 adults, conducted 10-28 June 1995.
15. Reilly, American Public Opinion on US Foreign Policy 1995, p. 15.
16. Ibid., p. 8.
17. Ibid., p. 33.
18. Kull and Ramsay, Attitudes on Peacekeeping, p. 8.
19. For example, Christopher, in "America's Leadership," makes an effort to pro
claim strategic principles but quickly reverts to the consideration of particular cases.

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
96 UN Relations w?h the United States

20. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace; Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda

for Development (New York: United Nations, 1994); Boutros-Ghali, Building
Peace and Development (New York: United Nations, 1994).
21. "Fact Sheet from Rotary International," press release, Rotary Interna
tional, Evanston, Illinois, 1994; "The NGO Explosion," insert in Monday Devel
opments 13, no. 8 (April 1995) (this is the newsletter of InterAction, a coalition of
more than 150 private voluntary organizations working in development, humani
tarian relief, and public policy). InterAction and its members participate in both
usaid and UN programs.
22. Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighborhood (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 32-35, 56-57.
23. Dole, "America's Global Future," p. 43: "We must look to the lessons of
the Cold War to guide our future foreign policy."

This content downloaded from

103.243.237.9 on Sat, 25 May 2024 16:15:30 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms