AUDIO RELEASE: Ambassador, Congressman, Experts Assess Politics and Priorities at the UN Summit (**Updated**)
This week, the UN General Assembly annual meeting in New York is shining a national and global spotlight on international diplomacy. On a press call with the National Security Network on September 24, Congressman Adam Smith (D-WA), House Armed Services Committee ranking member, Ambassador Thomas Pickering, former U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations and co-chair and signatory to The Iran Project report on “Weighing the Benefits and Costs of Military Action in Iran,” and Heather Hurlburt, National Security Network executive director, previewed the UN summit and laid out top benchmarks and opportunities for U.S. leadership and multilateral efforts in Iran, Syria, Africa and Asia.
Listen to the call HERE.
Ambassador Thomas Pickering emphasized non-military options for confronting challenges in the Middle East, Africa and Asia; and how UN processes support US interests in facing these challenges:
“I think the president’s primary message ought to be support for the United Nations’ processes that serve American interests and there are many that do that… the notion of moving early to use of military force is a mistake there [in Syria], particularly when there are other opportunities that may be taken. …One would want to see him take full advantage of the opportunity to point out that things have changed in Myanmar, that things may be able to change in Mali, that things have changed in Sudan, they’re not perfect there… And I think the United Nations is in a strong position to move to try to deal with that. … And finally there’s the world economic problem, which hasn’t disappeared either in this country or beyond. I think it is very important that the President articulate the message that he’s going to continue to work in that area.”
Ambassador Pickering expanded on the non-military options in Iran specifically:
“[My colleagues and I] produced within a week and a half ago a report on the costs and benefits indeed of using military force against Iran…[that] makes it very clear that while the benefits would be limited –and that the value of military action would be setbacks of four or maybe less years, under the best of all possible circumstances– the costs would be very high. … There remains a significant amount of time available to use other steps… –sanctions, and the question there is a very important one: sanctions for what?… Negotiations have not yet proved that they can work miracles in this particular situation, but the process will continue and there is in my view, a very serious opportunity after the U.S. elections –perhaps before the Iranian elections or leading up to the Iranian elections will take place in June—but certainly over the next six to nine months to make progress.”
Representative Adam Smith (D-WA) underlined the importance of international institutions like the UN in serving American interests:
“We tend to look at the UN and see the things we don’t like and be critical of what they can’t do. … Now we will always be dissatisfied with the problems we don’t solve. But there actually have been some successes so I think the President restating the importance of trying to make that process work. When we look at the world today, we desperately need that type of international cooperation. There are a ton of very violent situations out there that we would like to reduce. But you can also imagine the number of scenarios where things could get worse if we aren’t really careful and we don’t keep up this type of dialogue.”
Representative Smith batted down criticism of ‘daylight’ between the United States and ally Israel:
“There’s really no daylight in the public positions of Israel and the U.S. in terms of how we should confront this challenge [of Iran]… So in that sense, whether President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu meet or don’t meet is really largely irrelevant. Israel and the U.S. are constantly in contact on this issue.”
Representative Smith downplayed recent political speculation about whether Sufyan Ben Qumu, an ex-Guantánamo inmate released into Libyan custody in 2007, is considered a “person of interest” in a US government investigation into an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last month:
“Whether or not he was directly involved with the people engaged in the attack, there’s no evidence of that… It is fairly disturbing the number of Republicans who have leapt to erroneous conclusions about what this means and have missed no opportunity to bash on the president rather than try to find a common approach to this… That has been extremely unhelpful.”
Heather Hurlburt explained how the international and domestic audiences for President Obama’s address to the UN have convergent interests:
“Although there is no question there are two distinct audiences, in fact there is one message. Because if you look at the latest domestic polling from the Chicago Council on International Affairs… there’s remarkable consistency among the American public for a kind of global leadership that says we want the U.S. to play a positive international role but we don’t want to be out there going it alone, exposing ourselves to unnecessary risks, putting our treasure where others don’t follow. So if anything there’s a moment, you wouldn’t necessarily know that from our political discourse, but the underlying views of the majority of Americans from across the generations is really interesting. There is I think a moment for the President here to say I hear Americans, this is what they’re saying, and not only do I want Americans know but the rest of the world to know that despite some of the more unpleasant campaign rhetoric we’ve had over the last year, this really is where the U.S. as a society still is and why we come here even during campaign season when we’re only here for a day.”
Hurlburt pointed to Burma, South Sudan, Mali and the Ivory Coast as examples of how united action with allies has changed the world for the better:
“The first thing that’s happening in New York this year that’s really quite remarkable, that everyone ought to pause for a moment and appreciate, is that you have both the leader of Burma and Aung San Suu Kyi in New York at the same time. Aung San Suu Kyi as a member of an elected Burmese Parliament… So whenever we face an issue and say oh that’s too hard, it will never be solved, this is really a moment to stop and be really inspired and not give up as easily or be as cynical as we’re all I think, want to do on a daily basis.
In addition to that at the UN this year we have an independent South Sudan and an independent Sudan who have gone through a pretty rotten year but are not at war with each other. We have an Ivory Coast whose legitimate government was installed thanks to UN peacekeeping efforts less than two years ago. You have a new government of Libya similarly.
… You don’t have Gaddafi. You don’t have Mubarak. You don’t have Assad. You don’t have the former autocratic rulers of Yemen and Tunisia. And all of that adds up to really a fairly dramatic change of character of who sits around the table in New York from the last few years.
… That [the situation in Mali] really underlines what the UN is good for. In Mali you have a horrible humanitarian situation, a drought across the Sahel region that borders the Sahara that Americans will be responding to through their churches and civic organizations because it is really a terrible humanitarian situation. But also a really frightening security situation because it’s providing a foothold for Islamic extremists, groups that either are linked to al Qaeda or want to be linked to al Qaeda, groups that are engaging in drug smuggling, in human smuggling, in undermining legitimate governments.”
Hurlburt contrasted the costs and benefits of united action in Iran, Syria and Mali through the UN with unilateral U.S. endeavors in Iraq and beyond:
“Many of the other countries I named off — Those are places that Americans don’t want their country unilaterally intervening in. That we don’t want to see American ground troops in. … That we don’t want a repeat the mistakes of the last ten years, particularly in Iraq. So thank goodness we have, for example the ECOWAS regional organization looking at how to deal with Mali coming to the Security Council, there will be a discussion of that this week. There will be a special session convened to pull together all the countries who have security, economic, and humanitarian issues in Mali so the U.S. isn’t left in the position of having to choose to go it alone or do nothing.
And that’s really the central question that we’re going to confront on Syria where on the one hand no one, as the Congressman and Ambassador said, is satisfied with the situation but at the same time nobody thinks it would be wise or that frankly it would achieve the desired effect to have the U.S. charge in and do something alone. So as unsatisfying as the UN is, it is the place where we can work toward finding an actual solution that will actually stop the killing and ensure stability in the region.
Similarly on Iran where we have to remind ourselves that we have a really amazing degree of global solidarity around these sanctions on Iran that four or five years ago nobody thought was possible. And we know that those sanctions are biting the Iranian people and their government rather badly. And the choice we have before us is do we keep working through, do we take the time, do we have the patience to keep working in ways that have created a situation where the Iranians know that there is no wiggle room for them with the international community? Or do we go off in a direction that actually allows the Iranians again to start trying to play major powers off against each other?
… The UN has been so helpful for American interests and such a multiplier of American power over the decades that if it didn’t exist we would still, with all its flaws and limitations, choose to invent it today.”
