Against American Isolationism

Last Sunday marked United Nations (UN) Day, which Harvard will celebrate this week with a series of events including a debate on Security Council reform, a student discussion of the future role of the UN, a Science Center exhibition, an international food festival and cultural show and a film screening. Each is intended to spark campus discussion of the United Nations' status today.

I recently argued with a Boston public high school teacher about the importance of American students, and especially citizens, possessing an awareness of international affairs. "Does it really matter to us what is going on in Kosovo or East Timor?" the teacher asked. The teacher decried the amount of American tax dollars devoted to supporting corrupt governments, sponsoring American military campaigns in other sovereign states or maintaining impotent international institutions such as the UN.

I was discouraged to hear this latent advocacy for isolationism, which seems so incongruous with America's interconnectedness with other parts of the world. But I have heard this teacher's view articulated by many of my classmates as well, suggesting that dominant public opinion towards the UN is either negative or just apathetic.

Clearly, the United Nations has not always successfully implemented its decisions. It suffers from the same ailments as any bureaucracy: slow response time, lack of follow-through on policy changes, insufficient accountability measures and internal performance incentives. And as a body of sovereign nation-states, the UN has limited power to enforce its measures.

But the UN has been successful in putting these issues on the table for international discussion, and in eliciting governments' pledges to change their own policies. Would the issues of poverty, environmental degradation, human rights, public health and disarmament be better addressed through bilateral mechanisms, or by countries on their own? No, they would not.

These problems involve the management of public goods and everyone benefits from a successful resolution. Unfortunately, few are willing to bear the cost of resolving the problems. Countries will not undertake the necessary reforms to mitigate global warming, curb population growth, implement legal frameworks that protect human rights or invest in universal vaccination programs to halt the spread of disease because the individual country would bear the cost of the reform without exclusively benefiting from the outcome.

The United Nations provides a way to resolve these collective action problems by bringing member nations together so they can voluntarily commit themselves to implementing a reform. This creates confidence that other governments will do the same and that there will be a distribution of the change's cost among those who will benefit. When multiple governments commit to combating a particular global problem, they hold each other accountable for their performance with diplomatic or economic pressure.

The UN's peacekeeping record is a point of contention in the the UN's efficacy as an institution. If peacekeeping forces are not supposed to use violence, how can they effectively keep the peace and credibly deter future violence within areas of civil conflict? But perhaps our own conceptions of peacekeeping must evolve before we evaluate a given operation's success.

I have heard Boutros Boutros-Ghali, UN Secretary-General from 1992 to 1996, justify peacekeeping neutrality despite violent conflict with a clear oppressor to retain the UN's status as an impartial mediator. Although frustrating to see violence continue amidst peacekeeping troops, the UN peacekeepers can lend stability to post-conflict areas, especially when coupled with other UN programs that monitor the evolution of political and judicial power and foster economic development.

To successfully implement its peacekeeping and humanitarian programs, the UN must have adequate funding. Member states that withhold dues until the UN proves its effectiveness create an inane irony--the UN cannot prove its effectiveness if it cannot afford food and medical supplies to equip peacekeeping troops or to pay its technical and administrative staff.

The United States has been one of the most delinquent donors to the United Nations, in part because of opposition within the Congress. This past June, the Senate finally approved almost $1 billion for arrears to the United Nations. While this is an important step to reestablish our credibility within the United Nations, it is still short of the almost $1.5 billion that the UN claims the US owes.

To argue that the United States should devote less financial and political capital to the UN is to shortsightedly confine the definition of American national interest to the present domestic agenda. While health care policy, campaign finance reform, social security surpluses and tax cuts deserve public discussion, we cheat ourselves if we believe that these issues are the only ones affecting America today. The true challenge for policy makers is not how to escape the entangling alliances of international institutions, but how to bring events in other parts of the world into the daily consciousness of the American people.

Without knowledge of other people and places in the world, we lack perspective on our own history and neglect the way that developments in other regions affects our own futures. America forfeits its claim as a leading democracy, concerned about the rights and welfare of its people, if it is not actively involved and supportive of efforts within the international community.

Continued political and financial support for the United Nations will come more easily from American politicians when Americans themselves are aware of the significance of international affairs in their daily life. Our first priority is therefore to integrate a more robust global perspective into our educational system at every level, beginning with the United Nations Week events on campus this week.

Sarah E. M. Wood '01 is a social studies concentrator in Currier House.