MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Jerry Fowler speaks with Lee Feinstein of the Council on Foreign Relations about Ban Ki-moon, the new Secretary General at the United Nations and the idea of the responsibility to protect. Lee details how Ban Ki-moon came to the position, how this will affect his role and legacy at the United Nations, and where Darfur fits into the larger picture. He also defends the notion of the responsibility to protect and explains how it will change the fundamental principles of sovereignty at the United Nations.
TRANSCRIPT:
JERRY FOWLER: My guest today is Lee Feinstein. He is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former State Department official during the Clinton Administration. Lee, welcome to the program.
LEE FEINSTEIN: Pleasure to join you.
JERRY FOWLER: Lee, you just had an op-ed piece in the LA Times that said that Darfur will be the first test for the new Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, and I wanted to talk about that. First, could you just give us a little background? Ban Ki-moon assumed office on January 1st. Who is he? Where did he come from? How did he become Secretary General of the United Nations?
LEE FEINSTEIN: Ban Ki-moon is a South Korean. It was—informally—Asia’s turn to serve in the role as Secretary General. Ban Ki-moon was a former senior foreign policy official in Seoul. He worked very, very closely with the United States over the years, particularly on the issue of North Korea’s nuclear program. Unlike his predecessor, Kofi Annan, he is someone who not only understands the United States well—as Kofi did—but understands the United States government well and has worked with the United States government closely and at all levels. This gives him a real leg up in terms of your average or typical Secretary General. He was Washington’s pick, and he was also China’s pick. There are interesting new dynamics at the United Nations when Washington and Beijing agree on something, and then they usually can get what they want. Final thing I would say, by way of introduction of Ban Ki-moon, is that he was chosen by Washington and the Bush Administration and China because he was seen as somebody who would be more of an implementer than a speechifier. There was a feeling by this Administration that Kofi Annan was too outspoken, and they were looking for somebody who would be much more focused on management challenges and other reform issues at the United Nations, and they believed that with Ban Ki-moon, that is what they would be getting.
JERRY FOWLER: What are the consequences of someone who is more of an implementer in terms of what we will see from the United Nations?
LEE FEINSTEIN: First of all, it is a bit like choosing a Supreme Court justice; you do not know what you are going to get. My prediction is that Ban Ki-moon will not turn out as the United States and China had hoped. I do not think anybody in that job can really succeed if he is not setting his own agenda and using the bully pulpit to such a degree that exists for a Secretary General, but for what it is worth, Ban Ki-moon campaigned for the job and has said in his first statements on the job that he plans to push ahead of a reform agenda which Kofi Annan outlined but was unable to convert into practice. That goes to such mundane issues as United Nations reform to more elevated issues such as how do you operationalize this new norm agreed in 2005 at the United Nations to prevent genocide, which has come to be known as the responsibility to protect.
JERRY FOWLER: I want to talk about the responsibility to protect in a few minutes, but let me ask you this, the idea that in part, Ban Ki-moon was Beijing’s pick is a pretty new thing. The United States obviously has been influential and powerful at the United Nations since the beginning, but would this be really the first Secretary General that Beijing has had an instrumental role in selecting?
LEE FEINSTEIN: Two things; first, the Europeans wanted a much more activist person in the role, and they were really sidelined by this new dynamic Security Council which is a more assertive and activist China, often in agreement with the United States which under the present leadership is not interested in an active United Nations. You have first the sidelining of Europe as a major player at the United Nations and the emergence of China as a much more significant factor.
JERRY FOWLER: The implications of that, especially for the topic that we on this program are most interested in which is genocide prevention and human rights, does not seem good. China is hardly known for its concern or respect for human rights.
LEE FEINSTEIN: Right, I would say that at first blush, that is correct—whether that turns out to be the case is another matter. On the subject of Darfur, clearly China has been in the role of guardian angel.
JERRY FOWLER: Guardian angel for the Sudanese government?
LEE FEINSTEIN: Yes, guardian angel for the Sudanese government. It has blocked strong action by the Security Council on Darfur, and it has to be said that in the absence of any other government—including the United States which has been better than the others on this issue, really pushing for strong action—China has pretty much been able to dictate the slow pace of efforts to stop the killing there.
JERRY FOWLER: With the new Secretary General, who was in part Beijing’s pick, that would not seem to augur well, but you argue in your LA Times that Darfur will be his first test. What did you mean by that?
LEE FEINSTEIN: It may not be fair, but the success or failure of any Secretary General turns on his response to a mass atrocity, and you only have to look to the example of Kofi Annan if you want proof. Annan was the Director of Peacekeeping Operation when the Rwandan genocide unfolded, and his ten years as Secretary General can really be seen as an effort to exercise the ghosts of Rwanda. He was always tainted by the United Nations failure, and the truth is that it was in part the United Nations’ failure, but largely a collective failure because there was no state that was prepared to take action in Rwanda to prevent the killings. I think the same can be said of Darfur as well, but fair or not, how a Secretary General responds to this kind of a test will largely determine his ability to be successful.
JERRY FOWLER: Dealing with Darfur would be a daunting task for any Secretary General, as it was for Kofi Annan, but Ban seems in a particularly difficult situation since one of his patrons, as you said, has worked hardest to slow down the pace of a response.
LEE FEINSTEIN: Let me try to make the bright side case. On the bright side, it seems to me; one, Ban Ki-moon is new; two he was put in place by Washington and Beijing, and therefore, he has some measure of influence with them, and I said in this op-ed, and believe, that he ought to use that to get Beijing and Washington much more active on Darfur. For the Chinese, it seems to me, Ban ought to go to China and get a Chinese commitment to pledge troops to this United Nations force which was approved in August, but has not yet been accepted by the government of Sudan. There are very, very few volunteers for this force, the force was authorized at a strength of over 20,000, but there are well under ten percent of that number pledged, and none of those are ready to be deployed when and if the government of Sudan says that it is ready to accept them. It seems to me that if you have a strong force in waiting that is diverse and that includes the Chinese who are the major protectors of Sudan so far—certainly on the Security Council—that sends a really strong message of seriousness to Khartoum. For the United States, it seems to me what Ban ought to be doing is not looking for troops because the United States is occupied elsewhere, but get Secretary of State Rice to pick up the phone and solicit troop contributions from some of the North Africans and some of the NATO states which still have spare capacity.
JERRY FOWLER: You referred to the fact that one thing that has the deployment of a force on hold is that it is conditioned on the agreement of the Sudanese government which so far they have basically withheld, but this issue of countries not volunteering troops, why is that? Is that because Sudan has not consented yet, or does it represent a deeper reluctance to get involved at all?
LEE FEINSTEIN: I think it is a deeper reluctance to get involved at all, and I think it is reinforced by a certain resignation, and the resignation is where are these troops going to come from? Even if the government of Sudan were to say, “Okay, send in the troops,” who is going to go? There is a certain chicken and egg quality to this. If there are contributions, concrete troop contributions by the nations of the world who will participate in this peacekeeping force, then Khartoum will take it more seriously, and everyone else will take it more seriously as well. It is hard to convince people to fight and advocate for a theoretical proposition.
JERRY FOWLER: One thing that you referred to earlier is the idea of the responsibility to protect which was a doctrine that Kofi Annan devoted a lot of time to, especially in the last few years. First, could you just give us a broad description of what the responsibility to protect means?
LEE FEINSTEIN: The responsibility to protect is the idea, most fundamentally, that mass atrocities, mass killings, including genocide, that happen in one place are the responsibility of all of us. That is the most fundamental principle. Breaking it down a bit further, it has two parts. The first part is that every state, every government has a fundamental responsibility not to do genocide, and not only that, to protect people within their own borders from being subjected to war crimes and mass atrocities. That is the first and really the most important part of the responsibility to protect, and it is sometimes overlooked; just simply, do not do genocide. This is not an acceptable security strategy and the world will not tolerate it. The second piece of this is that if a government does not fulfill the fundamental responsibility, then it sacrifices some of its sovereignty, and a secondary responsibility is triggered for the rest of the world to take action. It does not necessarily mean sending in the marines, but it means respond, and preferably responding as early as possible because an early response is likely to be the most effective. First and fundamentally, the minimum standards of behavior for states and then the international responsibility of the world to take action when states fail to meet that responsibility.
JERRY FOWLER: What is the status of this doctrine, this responsibility of its adoption by governments?
LEE FEINSTEIN: Amazingly, in 2005, at what was called a World Summit at the United Nations which was supposed to focus on United Nations reforms, and it did not in truth produce as much as people would have liked on management reform and other structural issues at the United Nations, but it did endorse the responsibility to protect with very, surprisingly clear and uncompromised language, and this is significant because the United Nations, for most of its history, has been a refuge of scoundrel states, right? It has been all about the state, and states could and did until very recently say this kind of criticism of how we treat people in our societies is none of your business; “it is illegal interference into our domestic jurisdiction,” to quote the words of the United Nations charter, and what the responsibility to protect does, having been unanimously endorsed by the General Assembly, is that it turns it on its head, and it puts people at the center of the international system, rather than states. Instead of states being able to do as they please, being the fundamental principle of the United Nations system, with the adoption of this, at least in theory, the most important right to be vindicated by the United Nations is the right to live.
JERRY FOWLER: You say that it was adopted rather unequivocally. It was kind of my impression that the first part of the responsibility that you described—that is a state’s responsibility to protect its citizens—was adopted fairly unequivocally, but the second part, the responsibility of the rest of the world to come to the aid of civilians who are not being protected by their states was a little equivocal.
LEE FEINSTEIN: I know some people like to say that the second part of the responsibility to protect was watered down, but I think that this is really a quibble. I do not think that anybody going into these negotiations—and they were very labor intensive negotiations—could have expected this language to come through as strongly as it did. I have a little bit of experience in this because I served in the role of Staff Director of a task force report on the United Nations that Newt Gingrich and George Mitchell did together, and I worked very closely with both of them, and we made the responsibility to protect the centerpiece of our reform agenda, and I have to say we were unable to get language that was as strong as the language that came out of the General Assembly. Just looking at the language—I could quote it for you now—but it is very, very strong. “We are prepared to take collective action, in accordance with the United Nations charter on a case by case basis”—ok you could say that that is watered down; I would not disagree with any of those points—“Should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities be unwilling to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity,” so this is very significant. First of all it does not limit international action to the high threshold of genocide. It includes a very, very broad range of crimes, which do not necessarily meet the genocide definition, and it threatens the use of force. There is no automaticity, but frankly, having automaticity in an international treaty or law is of very little consequence because what is going to force anybody to do anything? There is no compelance in international laws, so the fact that it does not say this will happen in this case is really beside the point.
JERRY FOWLER: Another question that has been raised about it, or a criticism I should say, is that in the language that you just read and in the concept itself, the primary responsibility for protecting civilians rests with the state, and then this international responsibility arises when a state is manifestly unwilling or unable to fulfill its responsibility, and the criticism is that all this change in terminology has done, or this new terminology has done, is just displace the old debate onto new terms such as whether or not the state is manifestly unwilling.
LEE FEINSTEIN: I guess you could debate whether a state is manifestly unwilling, but let us speak very concretely about Darfur. There was a Security Council Resolution last August which specifically invoked the responsibility to protect in the context of Darfur, so that is an example of China, which has not played exactly a benign role in all of this being prepared to say that the responsibility to protect applies in this case of the Sudanese government’s complicity in mass atrocities. The real challenge is how you convert these words into deeds, and that of course is much more difficult.
JERRY FOWLER: To what extent do you think that this new concept has changed the way that—practically, concretely—the United Nations or other nations have responded to Darfur. I think a lot of people would say that they do not see much difference.
LEE FEINSTEIN: First, I would say that the words that were used were pretty strong, and having stronger words would not necessarily change the reality which is that there has been no country—including the United States unfortunately—that has worked consistently and effectively to stop the killings in Darfur. I guess what I would say is that this is a long process, unfortunately, to change international behavior, to change the behavior of states, but I look, for example, at the precedent of the Helsinki Final Act and the context of the former Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc, and the fact that these countries signed up to principles which they were very, very far from implementing.
JERRY FOWLER: This is in 1975?
LEE FEINSTEIN: Right; and then being held up to the standards that they themselves signed onto. That, I think, is the principle behind this. I also think that the responsibility to protect will be seen as a watershed historically; from a state-centered international system to one where the individual is at the center of the system, and individual rights are at the center of the system. I think it is very significant; this idea that sovereignty is not immutable, but that it is a condition of state behavior. You do not get to enjoy sovereign rights as a state if you do not fulfill your minimum responsibilities, and this of course is the most basic responsibility of a state. I think that that is very significant. The fact that it is significant does not change the reality which is first that states continue to practice ethnic cleansing and genocide as a national security strategy, two that the international system does not have a capacity that can be easily and readily mobilized to back it up. There are specific things we can talk about in the Darfur case, but over the long term, I think what needs to happen now in order to convert the responsibility to protect into a program of action is to build up some institutional capacity, principally at the United Nations, but also at NATO, at the European Union, in the African Union, and also nationally so that there is an ability, a capability to do something at an early indication of a crime about to be committed.
JERRY FOWLER: Just very quickly because we are running out of time, when you say a capability, are you talking about a military capability or something broader than that?
LEE FEINSTEIN: Part of it is military, no question about it; getting some type of a standing international capacity to still be run by the nation states and to be subject to their national decisions, but some kind of idea of earmarked forces that train together, that exercise together, or are trained to international standards that could be available if the state wants it to an international operation to prevent mass killing. That is certainly part of it, but there is a whole range of other stuff: making the Human Rights Council genuinely effective, expanding the role of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations in terms of being able to deploy people into trouble spots before there are mass killings, human rights training, basic good governance work; all of these things need to be part of the solution.
JERRY FOWLER: My guest has been Lee Feinstein. He is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Lee, thanks for taking the time to be with us.
LEE FEINSTEIN: My pleasure.
