FOLLOW US
E.C. Luck: American Politics and the United Nations: Old Divides and New Opportunities
Written by Edward C. Luck, Director, Center on International Organization, Columbia University
Wednesday, January 23, 2002
Delivered at an International Symposium on the United States and the United Nations, “Exploring the Future of U.S.-U.N. Relations,” January 23, 2002
I would like to address first, where the United States fits, in terms of its attitude and policy towards the world organization, and how one might try to characterize this. I will address the history and the sources of what I see as the essential ambivalence that our country has really always had towards international organization. Then I will talk about what public opinion and attitudes say about the opportunities that exist in the post-September 11 situation, hopefully for improving relations.
False choices
First, I think we should be very aware of false choices. Through the years many people from the U.N. diplomatic corps and the Secretariat have asked me why the United States is so anti-United Nations or whether things could be done to make the United States more pro-United Nations? I do not think these are very useful categories. People from other parts of the world, especially officials, are not always used to such criticism, while Americans tend to be critical of so many institutions, including their own. People at the U.N. often feel defensive, as if they have to respond to every criticism. You end up with a very stilted dialogue that makes you think you have to choose sides.
The United Nations is a fact of life. It has withstood Democratic administrations, Republican administrations, wars, recessions, terrorism, and whatever. It is part of the international fabric. Certainly I believe those who support the organization ought to be the first to try to reform it and make it more effective, because we care a great deal about what it does. It is not a question of whether it is a good organization or a bad organization or whether the United States should or should not be affiliated with it. There is no real choice.
American pragmatism
Second, you often see this debate characterized as one between isolationism, on the one hand, and unilateralism or multilateral-ism on the other. This is not a good age for “isms.” If there is any “ism” that U.S. foreign policy responds to, it is pragmatism. I do not think the United States worries very much about whether its foreign policy is unilateralist or multilateralist. The term isolationism is not appropriate for this country’s policies and probably has not been since the 1930s. It certainly does not characterize people who happen to be critics of the United Nations. If we look at U.S. policy choices, they are a sort of mix and match, with a little bit here that is unilateralist and a little bit there that is multilateralist. As a nation we are very much focused on results, not process. We live with institutions but we do not really live through institutions. Whether the process is right matters a lot less to us than where we come to at the end of the day.
For smaller countries, process matters a great deal. We think we are powerful enough, big enough, that we can live without process. For other countries, these things matter a lot more than they do to us. People at the U.N. are surprised to hear that outside of a small circle of people in Washington, D.C., whether the United Nations benefits from a particular U.S. policy is not really of much interest to the American public and to the media. It really is beside the point. If the United Nations can be helpful in meeting our national goals, that is great. If not, then we will find other ways of doing business. But fundamentally we are not in the business of supporting or rejecting the organization. It just is not that essential to our policies and priorities.
Moreover, in this regard, I would suggest that the United States does not see a need to choose between embracing the United Nations or rejecting the United Nations. It is just not that essential to our foreign policy and the way we think about things. Even if we wanted to choose between these two polar opposite views, we really could not, because our public and our policy-making establishment fundamentally have been divided on these questions for as long as one can remember. In addition, the realities of global engagement and the nature of our national interests are such that we really do not have a choice in seeing the United Nations go under. It really is a question of trying to make it more effective for what we want.
Understanding the divide
To me, the essential characteristic of U.S. policies and attitudes towards the United Nations is ambivalence. As I suggested, this has very, very deep roots, and it is important to understand them. In researching my book, Mixed Messages: American Politics and International Organization, when I went back and looked at why Americans are so ambivalent, I kept finding the same pattern repeated again and again. The discussions and the debates in the U.S. Senate and elsewhere that led to the rejection of U.S. participation in the League of Nations are exactly the kinds of debates we hear today. Fundamentally, we had this divide throughout the twentieth century, other than in those very unusual circumstances that occurred in the mid-1940s when the United Nations was founded. That was the only time there was any real convergence. There were only two negative votes in the Senate against United States participation in the United Nations. That was an unusual circumstance.
The convergence in views was spurred by several years of growing public support during the Roosevelt and then Truman administrations, when it was widely believed that to abandon international organizations was to lay the ground work for the next world war, somehow pinning WWII on our rejection of the League of Nations. There was much pressure from the huge gathering of hundreds of NGOs, which the Roosevelt administration had encouraged to come to San Francisco. Very cleverly and wisely, they had brought a bipartisan Congressional group to San Francisco, where the important budgetary and administrative committee was led by Senator Vandenberg, a Republican. Really, in essence, they had made the U.N. a national cause. It was going to be our organization, founded on our principles and in our image, in which we would express our power around the world rather than see it constrained.
But that was an unusual circumstance. What we have seen in most of the past century is a deeply divided public and a deeply divided political elite. Just about every public opinion poll today shows that the public is very supportive of the notion of the United Nations, but when it gets down to the details and questions about performance, you get much more mixed results. Even if it is a relatively small minority of 15 to 20 percent of Americans who again and again seem to reject participation in the organization, they appear to be much stronger in their opposition than the supporters are in their support. The strong supporters of the United Nations are probably not much larger in number than the adamant opponents, and there is a large middle ground of people who are not terribly taken with this debate one way or the other.
Notions of American power
You have to look back into the nineteenth century, to the first century of this country’s development, to get a sense of where these two strains of opinion originate. Even during that time the United States was not truly isolationist. The United States participated in a number of international arrangements, even if in a very selective way. Even George Washington did not say that we should avoid all foreign entanglements; he was talking about those that bound us in a particular way to foreign powers over the long term and of which we could not get out. In reality, we were somewhat engaged with the world during the 19th century, even as our power accumulated and our sense of national confidence grew.
By 1900, there needed to be an answer to two increasingly pressing questions: one, how was this growing American power to be used around the world and two, how were we going to preserve that power. If you look at Woodrow Wilson’s notions of how to respond, they took one course, and those represented by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge took another. The answer in the first case was highly messianic and in many ways highly idealistic, but also decidedly nationalistic. If you go back and read what Wilson actually said, he believed very strongly in our special mission and our superiority to other states. He said that he would never put U.S. troops under foreign command. If there were collective security engagements made by the League, in his view, they should be responded to first and foremost by local powers. To use an analogy, he said that he would not put out a forest fire in Wyoming by calling on the fire department in Kansas. Wilson assured his audiences that there would be no great danger of American troops being called abroad. He was idealistic and messianic in many ways, but he was also very much in the larger stream of American thinking, which was in many ways exceptional and nationalistic.
Lodge, on the other hand, was hardly the isolationist that many people have pictured him to be. He was in fact a unilateralist. He was someone who wanted to see U.S. engagement in many places, but on our terms. Some people might even say that sometimes his notions were a tad imperialistic. Neither one of them fit the stereotypes. Nevertheless, they differed sharply as to whether international organizations could be a way of furthering American power and values.
American political culture
You have to look to American political culture as well. There are things about our domestic politics that are reflected in the way we think about international institutions. One is our skepticism of government. This obviously waxes and wanes, but there is generally a sense that government spending has to be watched, government posts have to be watched, and potential encroachments on our individual rights and liberties have to be watched. The government is seen as necessary, important, very useful much of the time, but only if it is under firm citizen control. If you project this concern to a notion of international government, and the United Nations is nothing close to a supranational government, but if you look at that image, it looks very far away. It looks unaccountable. It does not look especially transparent. Most Americans know very little about such things and assume that they have little control over them. Even Congress feels that, if it is to have leverage, it has to engage in unilateral financial withholding, because it does not trust the executive branch to always follow congressional prerogatives in this area.
Second, in terms of political culture, there is in the United States a strong sense of independence and a real sense of distrust of other countries. We see it a little less today, although maybe after September 11 this tendency is making a comeback. If you look at the writing throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, you will find first and foremost a tremendous distrust of European leaders and the old European empires. There is a sense that we broke away, that we are different, and that others had best stay out of our hemisphere. Distrust of European governments was followed by enormous worries about communism and the spread of Soviet and Chinese power.
The next generation of concern focused on developing countries and their values, as well as on their seemingly automatic majorities in the General Assembly. Again, many Americans saw the United Nations as a rather foreign place, where others gathered to sap our wealth or values or power in the world. On top of that, I mentioned previously the messianic aspects of our culture with its missionary-type spirit. Again and again, these linkages among religion and values and government shaped much of American history. An international organization that does not seem to reflect that spirit may be seen as highly secular, and at times representing values that we do not entirely hold dear. If you look at the values and perspectives of the American heartland, it is easier to understand why there would be suspicion of distant international organizations and institutions.
Third, and very important from a strategic perspective, is the American position in terms of power and wealth and influence in the world. Even more than our own perceptions of how powerful and special and wealthy we are, the very facts of U.S. power suggest that we fit very uncomfortably, at best, into multilateral organizations that have rules based on sovereign equality and one nation, one vote. We have to compromise in those forums, sometimes more than we want to or think that we should. Meanwhile, most Americans believe that we have other options because we are powerful and we are special; so we neither want to compromise nor think that we have to.
Fourth, one has to look at our constitutional structure, our separation of powers, particularly at the relationships between the legislative and the executive branches, which are very different from what exists in many other countries. Again and again you see this congressional suspicion, which at times seems to be as heavy toward the State Department and our own diplomats as it is toward international forums. Congress has responsibility for the purse strings, Congress is closest to the people, and therefore Congress should have control over what happens in New York as well, they say. You see members of Congress particularly resentful over being presented with bills and mandates, and being told by our diplomats that now we are committed to them. Members of Congress ask, “Hey, were we consulted properly? We do not like these things coming down as fait accomplis.” The very structure of our government’s war-making powers and other controversial issues makes it very difficult for the United States to fit into these kinds of international institutions in a smooth, fluid way.
A fundamental political divide
On top of that and I do not know why there has been so much partisanship about these issues when you look at public opinion surveys, there is a very consistent difference between Republicans as a whole and Democrats as a whole, although it is not a strikingly large difference. On the whole, Democrats are more supportive of international institutions and Republicans are more skeptical. It varies a bit from place to place around the country and it varies a lot with education level, but you will find that the hard core rejectionists of international institutions are by and large Republicans; not entirely, but by and large. When the Republican Party lost much of its internationalist wing, the so-called Rockefeller Republicans, and it became more influenced by the Far Right, the party became a lot less internationalist. There was a time in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when it was hard to tell the Republicans from the Democrats. In the last decade it has not been hard at all. It has been easy.
The other thing one notices is that when a Democrat is in the White House and there is a Republican Congress, it is bad news for U.S. relations with international institutions. This has happened only three times going back to 1900. One time was the rejection of the League of Nations. There was a Democratic White House, a Republican Congress, and a Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman who felt, I think quite properly, that he had not been brought into the circle and included in planning for the League. All the lessons that Roosevelt had learned so well in how he handled the creation of the U.N. after WWII, through his own ineptness Wilson had taught him.
The second time it happened was in 1947, just two years after the U.N. Participation Act had sailed through the Senate with only two negative votes. The target was the International Trade Organization, the next leg of what was supposed to be the international post-war structure. It was something the United States had initiated and was very strongly supportive of and which was very much a Western enterprise. The Soviets, in fact, boycotted the founding conference in Havana. Soon after the Republicans took control of Congress in the November 1946 elections, they scuttled the International Trade Organization. President Truman, who had presided over the San Francisco conference, could not get the International Trade Organization through the Congress two years later, even though it appeared to fit American values and interests very nicely. That was the second time.
The third time was after the congressional elections of November 1994, (comma) when President Clinton was in the White House. I would argue that Clinton already had pulled the rug out from peacekeeping efforts well before the Republican Congress had a chance to do it, but nevertheless there was tremendous skepticism on the Hill. You had a Democrat in the White House who was seen by some as too internationalist, too accommodating, and insufficiently appreciative of American power. When an administration talks about things like assertive multilateralism but is weak-kneed about support for international institutions, other than with rhetoric, you get both an opportunity and a target.
What followed was an enormous retreat from peacekeeping, additional financial withholding, and calls for cutting U.N. posts and programs. By the end of the ‘90s you could see Congress coming back a little from that position. You could see a growth in peacekeeping. You could see Congress and the Clinton Administration coming together over U.N. arrears and reforms and other things. Now, of course, with the Bush administration, there are new opportunities again. It is very important to bear these factors in mind as to why Americans are so fundamentally ambivalent.
That is not to suggest that Americans are particularly negative overall. Ambivalence has two sides, of course. We have to remember that this country, probably more than any other country, has been behind the building of international architecture and international institutions, and obviously the building of the United Nations itself. This is what is so puzzling to our friends abroad. How can we on the one hand be the biggest supporter and builder and on the other be the most skeptical when these organizations actually begin to act? It is again because of this fundamental political divide. You have the internationalists building the institutions and you have the skeptics trying to contain them.
U.N. caricatures and reality
I do not want to engage in that debate, but I do want to characterize it a little bit. I think the debate is far too much about symbols and far too little about substance. The United Nations is many things, but one thing everyone agrees on is that it is highly symbolic. Even the way it acts very often is through the invocation of symbols. There are grand initiatives, grand programs, but very little money, very little staff, and very little will to carry things out.
It is an organization that just invites caricature. To some people the United Nations is the beginning of a new order, a new sense of international law and order, of which the United States is presumably a part. Many of these same people actually are very skeptical of nationalism. They feel that the United Nations is an alternative to nationalism, an alternative to national power, and they feel they have to choose between one and the other. For them, the United Nations symbolizes one direction. For others, the United Nations symbolizes similar things, but in a very negative way. It symbolizes global government, the trampling of national sovereignty and individual rights, and the curtailment of American power and options.
Critiques of the United Nations now are coming from both sides of the political flank. You have Ralph Nader, on the one hand. In the 2000 election, he claimed to be something of an internationalist, but was highly skeptical of the United Nations, the Bretton Woods Institution, and the World Trade Organization because they were going to lower our standards for consumerism, and be completely unaccountable. Then you also got the kind of rhetoric we heard from Pat Buchanan. There was a certain meeting of what I would call the extremes.
All of this very much is dealing with caricatures. None of it has much to do with what the organization actually does or might do in the foreseeable future. An organization that struggles to get a few iotas of reform and change is an institution that is highly inertia driven, if that is not an oxymoron. It is an organization tied to precedent. It is an organization that is tied to staying what it is at the moment, because that is the one way that all the different forces and all the different views somehow can come together. You cannot disturb that mix dramatically without upsetting the complex political mix within the institution. It is not an organization that is about to become a global government, as very few governments would put up with it.
One could argue that in many ways the United Nations is the friend of sovereignty, not the enemy of sovereignty. Only by some kind of cooperative enterprise can you allow sovereignty to succeed in a world that is potentially so dangerous in terms of weaponry and environmental problems and other things. In fact, organizations like the United Nations are perpetuating the nation state era. They are not an enemy but a friend to sovereignty. Nevertheless, rather than talk about the way the organization is, people like to talk about what it might become. It is in some ways a myth. The United Nations is a series of fears and dreams in terms of American politics. What it does actually is something that only a relative few have actually paid attention to.
Opportunities for the future
Now a word about September 11, 2001. As I mentioned, public attitudes in the United States towards the U.N. are somewhat divided, but there are certain things you can discern. Steadily, large majorities have said we should stay in the organization, that it should stay in the United States, and that we should cooperate with it. However, when you ask people whether the United Nations is doing a good job, how it is performing, support bobs up and down a lot. It tends to have a lot to do with what it did recently and whether that fits peoples’ preconceptions of what is in their interest.
One of the high points of American public support for the United Nations was during the term of George H. W. Bush. Once again we had a Republican president from the internationalist wing, someone who actually had been U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Faced with an international crisis in the Persian Gulf, he saw the United Nations as useful and he very effectively used the organization. In the process, public attitudes rose dramatically in support. It is particularly striking that the groups that showed marked improvement were Republicans, men, conservatives, and Caucasians. Groups that traditionally are most supportive of the United Nations are women, Democrats, liberals, and minorities. This all turned around during the Persian Gulf War because of the elder President Bush’s leadership.
Today we have another opportunity with George W. Bush because of September 11. It is again a time when the United States feels threatened, when it feels its interests are threatened and it sees some utility in using the United Nations and the Security Council. Once again, the United Nations has been responsive, and much more uniformly so than it was during or after the Gulf War. Before the Gulf War, Security Council resolutions got a few negative votes and a few abstentions along the way. This time the two Security Council resolutions 1368 and 1373 just flew through the Council without opposition.
Resolution 1373 is quite remarkable. It is the first resolution by the Security Council that is not issue or case or geographic specific. It is about any terrorism, anywhere, anytime. It requires all member states to report regularly what they are doing to combat terrorism. It forbids them to fund or give aid and comfort to terrorists and it does not worry how one defines terrorists, unlike the General Assembly, which has debated for many years what constitutes terrorism. It just does not matter so much. The resolution says you have to stop terrorism, period. Today, every part of the U.N. is asking what it can do to discourage terrorism, something the United Nations never paid much attention to before, other than with the dozen norms that went through the organization. In an operational sense, it really had no particular role until today.
So, there really is something of a choice. My guess is that again we will muddle along with more positive opinion polls about the United Nations, and U.N. support will probably begin to fade over time just as it did after 1991. But there is an opportunity to turn around the situation in important ways. Administrations can give sustenance to U.S.U.N. relations, a foundation that is bipartisan and that involves both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. They can respond to the realities of the organization as well as to the realities of American interests, instead of responding to our fantasies about what the United Nations might or might not become.