The US and the UN: Happily Ever After?
The New America Foundation hosted a seminar last Friday on US counterterrorism policy. The seminar was jointly sponsored by the Better World Campaign, an advocacy branch of the United Nations Foundation, and the Center for Global Counterterrorism Cooperation, a nonpartisan research group working to improve internationally coordinated responses to evolving terrorist threats. Experts contracted by the two groups unveiled a paper they had produced, offering strategies for improving international cooperation on counterterrorism policy, which could enhance perceptions of the US abroad while promoting America’s own national security agenda.
In terms of proscriptive policy, the paper did not break new ground. Much of the advice echoes that of prominent US homeland security figures such as Michael Chertoff, as well as the leading presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain. The authors offered suggestions for ways in which the US could re-engage the UN and other multilateral bodies in creating and implementing counterterrorist policies, while providing sound justification for such re-engagement strategies. As a thesis, they offered the following:
“A robust military and effective covert intelligence gathering capabilities must remain at the cutting edge of our efforts to capture and defeat terrorists. Focusing on these measures alone, however, is not sufficient to address a multifaceted and adapting global threat. International cooperation on a broader range of approaches using a wide array of tools deserves greater attention and resources to improve collective efforts to address emerging threats. To protect America against another major terrorist attack, the new Administration will have to make strengthening international cooperation, including reasserting American leadership in the UN… a top priority.”
The suggestions offered by the group focused on creating human levers, strategically placed in the US government, to implement this ambitious campaign of international cooperation. Authors mentioned creating a white house “czar” for international counterterrorism policy, appointing a diplomat as the State Department’s Counterterrorism Coordinator, enduring ambassadorial level leadership on counterterrorism at the UN, and calling for the establishment of a global anti-terrorism organization.
These people, the authors argued, would be more effective, expedient instruments of change than using a resource-shifting strategy. Their reasoning is pragmatic, if pessimistic, given the difficulty (as 9/11 continues to recede in our minds) of convincing Congress to shift federal appropriations from well funded agencies with have neither the time nor manpower for such projects (such as DOD), towards more relevant would-be actors, such as the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau.
One cannot logically argue against the justification the authors provided. Multilateral bodies such as the UN could accomplish many things the US cannot, working unilaterally or bilaterally. For instance, the UN can implement legal frameworks for cooperative counterterrorism policy. It can enable technical cooperation between countries, working as both informational and operational hub. It can assist states in capacity building, and reduces the burden or onus for any one country in fighting the war on terror. Perhaps most importantly, it can transcend the political realities that ground the US time and again in multinational enterprises, by engaging with non-traditional allies.
All of the experts were well aware a new President will not necessarily find this proposal any more palatable than the current Administration. However, their point is that pessimism cannot keep us from lobbying for what we believe is the best course of US action. Their paper concludes: “While no American President should ever put alliances and international cooperation before the security of the American people, failure to provide the leadership needed today to strengthen counterterrorism alliances around the world…undermines the security of the United States.”
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