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Working Lunches with the Permanent Representative of France to the UN, Ambassador Gérard Araud
By Miriam Schive and Michael Vaislic
On Friday, January 29th, 2010, a group of 20 SIPA students joined Ambassador Gérard Araud, Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations in New York, for a lunch talk on “The Security Council seen by a Permanent Member.” The Ambassador graciously hosted the luncheon in his residence, where he spoke candidly, and answered numerous questions in between bites. The lunch was organized by the Director of the United Nations Study Program, Professor Elisabeth Lindenmayer, and the UNSP Program Assistant, Carina Lakovits.
In preparation for the lunch, students were asked to think about and come up with questions for the Ambassador about the role of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the role of France as one of the Permanent Five members, in particular. Before the students even had a chance to ask a question, the Ambassador laid down some fundamental notions about the UNSC. First off, most resolutions stem from the Permanent Five members (P5: China, Russia, United Kingdom, France and the United States). The E10 (ten elected member states, that rotate every two years) are often presented with a resolution that has already been agreed upon by the P5 and therefore the pressure to concur is immense. As for who actually proposes the resolutions among the P5, it is usually the P1, the United States as the driver of the agenda, with France or the United Kingdom acting as the ‘penholders’. China and Russia almost never propose resolutions. The French and British delegations are happy to have the important role of drafting almost all resolutions, as they are under the most pressure to prove the legitimacy of the permanent seat. Furthermore, “the UNSC is really an African security council,” he said. “Africa takes up 70% of UNSC time,” noting that most of the resolutions relate to conflicts in Africa.
During lunch many questions focused on the same issue: reform of the UNSC. The anachronistic structure of the UNSC (which consists of five permanent and ten elected members) dates back to its creation in 1945 at the San Francisco Conference. The Council - intended as an executive committee to help streamline decisions – needed to provide incentives for the major powers to remain on board, and so the permanent seats with veto power were created for the most powerful countries of the world at the time – the victor’s of World War II.
As the Ambassador admitted, the need to reform the anachronistic power structure of the UNSC is obvious: the number of UN member states has risen to 192 from 45, and new states, such as Germany, Japan, and India have all grown more powerful. Although everyone recognizes that the power distribution in the international system has changed, and that the UNSC must be reformed in order to remain legitimate, it has been impossible to find agreement among the member states. Reform proposals have spanned a wide spectrum – ranging from an increase in the number of elected and permanent members, to elimination of veto powers, to the creation of rotating regional seats, to the establishment of a third tier of semi-permanent members. Due to the understandable hesitancy of the other permanent members, who fear that they stand to lose power if they have to share their ‘club’, France and the UK have been pushing an intermediary solution: the establishment of a third category of ‘longer-term’ members (where ‘longer-term’ has been kept vague on purpose, lest it spark disagreements already before it has become concrete), with the possibility of being re-elected. But the problems of reform are multi-fold: the Chinese are against Indian and Italy opposes rival Germany’s candidacy, the Africans are unable to designate a candidate, the US wants only 19 members at most, and the list goes on. The US is largely opposed to an expansion of the UNSC to 24 member states (as proposed by Kofi Annan in a High-Level Panel Report in 2005), because this would make it more difficult for them to use their influence to create a ‘minority blockage’ to resolutions.
“France, on the other hand,” the Ambassador responded, “ is willing to take the risk of less influence in order to have more influence” by enlarging the number of UNSC member states, the representativeness of ‘global’ opinion and thereby the legitimacy of the Council. “It makes no sense, for example, not to have an African state as a SC member.”
In talking about the relationship of France with African states, the Ambassador mentioned that this falls outside of the strict interpretation of French foreign policy, which is to protect its national security. Rather the special relationship is built upon historic legacy of colonialism, the cultural and human ties, as well as the desire by the French public for France to play an active role in Africa.
Other topics discussed were the likelihood of an European Union seat on the Council, the relationship between the UNSC and the International Criminal Court, the similarities between the mood in the SC pre-Iraq War and now on the Iranian nuclear crisis, the UNSC strategy on Afghanistan, the role of the G-77 group (which actually consists of 132 members) in influencing decisions, the failure of Copenhagen, the notion of a North-South divide in the UN, the role of civil society in the international system, as well as how the UNSC plans to deal with the new challenges and threats ahead to come in the 21st century.
On all of these issues, Ambassador Araud gave remarkably open answers replete with humorous analogies. In closing, a student asked about UNSC Resolution 1887, which resolves “to seek a safe world […] without nuclear weapons.“ The Ambassador, who is an expert on issues of nuclear proliferation, did not mince words: while the ambition certainly is to reduce nuclear warhead stocks and move towards a world without nuclear weapons, that quote is mostly for primetime TV. Naturally, he said, no politician can argue in favor of nuclear weapons to their public. However, what happens, if no one has nuclear weapons, except North Korea? “We’re not all Switzerland,” he joked. So for the time being, he sees no chance of completely ridding the world of nuclear weapons. Instead, he argued, the focus should be on stopping the flow of conventional weapons. Providing one last lesson to the students, he told them to pay attention to the structure – domestic politics and culture – in order to fully understand a country’s foreign policy, for “it’s not always logic.”