America Goes Missing in Action at the UN
Canada needs a new national sport: solo boxing. What could be more Canadian than beating yourself up?
The story of Canada's disappointment at losing the Security Council seat took a new turn Thursday: "U. S. State Department insiders say that U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice not only didn't campaign for Canada's election but instructed American diplomats to not get involved in the weeks leading up to the heated contest. With no public American support, Canada lost its bid to serve."
So reported Richard Grenell, a former press officer with the U.S. mission to the UN.
Grenell is right that Susan Rice was AWOL during the Security Council elections. She was travelling in Africa, which does seem a strange thing for an UN ambassador to do at such a crucial moment.
Others have suggested that the issue is one of competence. Susan Rice has not been receiving general good reviews for her UN service. Grenell goes even further: He scourges Ambassador Rice as "wildly ineffective," complaining (among other things) about her failure to produce tougher UN sanctions against Iran.
This last complaint seems unfair. Sanctions are negotiated at the highest levels: in Washington, Berlin, Moscow, New Delhi and Beijing, not at Turtle Bay. Anyway, the key decision moment for Canada's hopes for a Security Council seat was not last week at the UN. It was months ago, in Europe, when the United States and Canada should have persuaded one of the other Western contenders, Germany or Portugal to stand down. That way there would have been only two Western nominees for the two open Western seats.
So if a U.S. abandonment of Canada occurred, it occurred months ago -- and it involved many more people than just a single UN ambassador.
I've been working the phones to understand why the United States was not more active on Canada's behalf. I don't have an answer yet. But I do have a theory. It's only speculation, and could be wrong, but it's worth thinking about.
The theory starts in Latin America.
Of the five seats that open in January 2011, one belongs to the Latin American bloc.
This seat will go to Colombia. The seating of Colombia is a deserved accolade for a democracy that has successfully battled terrorism and drug gangs. Colombia's seating also represents a diplomatic victory for the United States: Colombia is a close U.S. ally and a target of subversion from Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.
How did the United States score this victory? Answer: with a lot of help from rising regional heavyweight, Brazil. (Brazil also helped the United States stop a Venezuelan bid for the Security Council back in 2006. The seat went instead to Guatemala.)
But when a country like Brazil offers help, it usually expects some kind of payback. Portuguese-speaking Brazil feels a special relationship with its former metropole, Portugal. And we know that Brazil campaigned hard for Portugal in the General Assembly vote.
So, let me spell out a possible solution to the case, Sherlock Holmes style:
In the early 2000s, Germany had launched a quixotic bid for a permanent Security Council seat. That bid went nowhere. But as a consolation prize the other European countries agreed to give Germany another early turn in a temporary seat -- even though Germany had had a turn very recently, in 2003-2004.
Accelerating Germany's next turn in this way threatened to displace small country Portugal, which had not had a turn since the 1990s. Portugal declined to stand down.
The United States might have tried to pressure Portugal -- but didn't, because it needed Brazil's help with the Colombian nomination. Thus, two Western European candidacies went forward at the same time as Canada's.
Although the United States preferred Canada's nomination over Portugal's, the deal with Brazil required the United States to stay neutral between Portugal and Canada both in Brussels and then at the General Assembly. As I said, this is speculation. I can't confirm it. But I do notice this: The U.S. government has kept awfully quiet about the suggestion that it went missing during the Security Council vote.
Not that silence proves a story true. But it makes you wonder. Of course, as sometimes happens with amateur sleuths, it is also possible that my solution is far too complicated. It is possible that the real answer is much more blunderingly simple. The Obama administration dropped the ball, went passive, couldn't be bothered. It was a botch, not a plan. That's the least interesting and least satisfying explanation, but maybe in the end, the most plausible.
Originally published in the National Post.