Tharoor’s Is A Simplistic View Of Superpower Diplomacy

It was to realise this goal that we built the solid constituency of Non-Aligned Movement/G-77, not through coercive means or blandishments, but by fighting for key issues affecting them. Thereafter, we won every election (including to the ecosoc and Human Rights Council) with the highest number of votes, leaving China, France, Japan, the UK and the US way behind. We could get any candidate elected by the General Assembly. Our strategy was shaped not by nostalgia for the past but by necessity in the present.

Now, the contentious election of the Secretary-General (S-G) in 2006, which Tharoor refers to in his rejoinder to Outlook.

Not on My Say-So

The references to my UN race in your article are utter nonsense. I did not throw my hat in the ring as an independent candidate; elementary research can prove that the announcement of my candidacy was made by New Delhi, not by me. There can by definition be no independent candidates for the S-G, since every candidate has to be nominated by a government. Nor did the US ask me to run or ask India to nominate me, as your article says. On the contrary, as then US ambassador John Bolton’s memoirs have revealed, they were committed to Ban Ki-Moon throughout.

At present, the UN Security Council (UNSC) chooses the S-G from candidates nominated by various countries (it isn’t necessary for a country to nominate its own citizen). The name of the S-G the UNSC chooses is then sent to the GA for a formal endorsement. The Permanent Five (P5), especially the US, chooses the S-G and the GA rubber-stamps the choice. This power of the P5 does not flow from Article 97 of the UN Charter, but from GA Resolution 11/1 of 1946 which allows the name of only one candidate to be sent to the GA. In 1946, it was difficult enough for the US and the erstwhile ussr to agree on even one name and hence this provision. With the Cold War long over, this provision is obsolete. This is all the more so because it is through the S-G that the P5, especially the US, control the UN. The S-G and his secretariat’s reports and briefings invariably shape UN actions. He who chooses the piper calls the tune.

The only way to make the S-G responsive and accountable to the developing countries, including India, was to amend Resolution 11/1: the UNSC would have to send a panel of names to the GA, which would then actually choose the S-G. There was colossal momentum behind the amending of this resolution, which was drafted by us and circulated by Malaysia, as the chair of the Non-Aligned Movement, early in summer 2006. The West was divided. Canada tabled a similar paper; a deeply respected former British under-secretary-general, Sir Brian Urquhart, publicly called the S-G’s selection process “murky and sordid”; US civil society was supportive through its two NGOs—the World Federalist Movement and the US-UNO, whose report (signed by Ambassador Thomas Pickering, no radical) wanted the UNSC to submit two or three names to the GA for a final decision. We required only a simple majority to have our resolution adopted, but we actually had the support of two-thirds.

In politics, whether in a country or in the UN, timing is critical—after all, there “is a tide in the affairs of men....” In his memoirs, then US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, simply says that the revolt of the peasants was easily crushed. His memoirs are what he wants the world to believe. His classified cables to his government (published by Wikileaks) are what he really believed and conveyed to the state department. These show his panic and desperation at the prospect of the P5, especially the US, losing influence. He refers to the US defeat in an unprecedented vote on Management Reform in the Fifth Committee (which usually works by consensus). Incidentally, it is only through such an outcome that we can revitalise the GA and have a radical reform of the UNSC, including expansion of permanent membership. Changing the procedure for electing the S-G is thus both a feature and instrument of reform. My brief from the Indian government was to work towards UN and UNSC reforms. One of the objectives of being a Permanent Member should be to empower the marginalised. There is not much point in becoming a permanent member in order to simply replicate existing P5 behaviour.

The real point is not the date of the Indian government’s announcement (June 15, 2006), but its timing and impact in the sequence of events. As soon as the announcement was made, Pakistan’s UN ambassador convened a press conference saying that India could no longer lead the movement for empowering the GA to elect the S-G since there was a conflict of interest. Without our leadership, nam simply did not have the strength to go through with the resolution, which was consequently never put to the vote in the GA.

Tharoor has a simplistic view of superpower diplomacy when he argues that the US was committed to Ban Ki-moon and therefore would not favour his candidature. In fact, they would favour his candidature precisely because they were committed to Ban Ki-moon. By scuttling our resolution, they would both safeguard their long-term influence and achieve their short-term goal of getting Ban Ki-moon elected by the UNSC through an unchanged selection process. It was Asia’s turn, since regional rotation is a convention, but Bolton broke it and encouraged Latvia’s former president to contest in order to put pressure on Russia to vote for Ban Ki-moon. What’s more, the convention is that permanent members do not put forward candidates for S-G. Tharoor’s candidature confused our supporters who frequently asked him whether India was no longer an aspiring permanent member.

Bolton’s memoirs clearly show that Ban Ki-moon’s election by the UNSC was a product of Sino-US collaboration as were the attempts to prevent the expansion of UNSC permanent membership, which we saw clearly and repeatedly. Russia was to subsequently rue its decision—Ban Ki-moon would later make a mockery of the UN Mission to Kosovo to facilitate Kosovo’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence, compelling Russia’s ambassador to nato to call for his impeachment and removal.

It may be argued that we should respect the core interests of P5 but should they not respect ours? We got nothing in return for abandoning our resolution, not even a single concession on UNSC reform. Before the Indian government’s announcement of Tharoor’s candidature, the P5, in their desperation, would have made concessions; after it, they had no reason to. Tharoor may have entered the race as a government candidate but he withdrew as an “independent” candidate after the first informal veto by the US. The timing of his withdrawal should have been decided by the Union ministry of external affairs and announced either in New Delhi or by the Permanent Mission in New York. We still had diplomatic instrumentalities to get something in return, but we learnt of his withdrawal only from his press conference. The mea was surprised and dismayed.

In case we wanted the UNSC to continue to select the S-G, we should have secured US commitment to not vetoing him before nominating Tharoor; alternatively, we could have chosen a candidate as intelligent and articulate as Tharoor but as trusted by the US as Ban Ki-moon. Of course, the other and better way of ensuring victory “had we but courage equal to desire”, in Yeats’ phrase, was to have waited (nominations were coming in till Autumn 2006) till we had changed the election process.

Tharoor says that the US was committed to Ban Ki-moon. Then why did Tharoor stand? It may be said that this was known authentically not in June 2006 but in July. Why then did we not withdraw his candidature? Incidentally, in 2006, there were government-nominated candidates, but there’s nothing to prevent any of the P5 from going against this convention as the US did against regional rotation. Moreover, the convention is about nomination by any government: small (especially small island) states and their organisations are willing to nominate independent-minded candidates. What is more, under GA Resolution 51/241 of 1997, the GA, through its president, can suggest names to the UNSC. There is nothing in the unsc’s Provisional Rules of Procedure to prevent the P5 acting as they see fit. These rules, after 65 years, have remained provisional to ensure untrammelled power to the P5—one of the very reasons the UNSC has to be comprehensively reformed.

(A career diplomat, Nirupam Sen was India’s Permanent Representative to the UN from 2004 to 2009.)