Carnegie
Corporation
of New York
Spring 2006
Policymaking: Behind the Scenes
It’s a simple matter to promise unstinting support for the work
of the United Nations, but delivering on that promise can be a complicated
task. Making policies that prevent war and preserve peace is the UN’s
explicit purpose, but where and how this critical policymaking happens,
and whether other concerned parties can lend a hand in the process is
not always understood. This is true even when the need for support is
widely acknowledged within the UN and specific requests for assistance
come from officials at the organization’s highest level.
The Corporation has established close ties with a respected group of scholars who have deep knowledge of international peace and security matters. Through their affiliations with research organizations, think tanks, academic institutions and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) these experts strive to provide essential information at the optimum time to enable United Nations officials to forge policies for the world’s greater good. Many of these opinion shapers are Carnegie Corporation grantees continuing a practice of behind-the-scenes policy support that has been in place for decades.
One example serves to illustrate how these relationships work: Over twenty years ago, use of outer space for military purposes emerged as a major issue when President Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The Corporation, along with other national institutions and leaders, became concerned that this initiative, later popularly known as Star Wars, could have adverse consequences, and they raised questions about the feasibility of constructing policies that could balance military and civilian uses of space. Ultimately, this became an issue that called for UN involvement and the Corporation looked to a number of NGOs, including in the first instance, the United Nations Association of the United States (UNA-USA) as a means of bringing the issue to the fore in policy circles.
UNA-USA, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to strengthening the United Nations system and to achieving the goals of the UN Charter, was ideally positioned to undertake a comprehensive program of education, policy analysis and international dialogue aimed at assuring development of the resources of outer space for the benefit of all the world’s peoples. In 1986, Carnegie Corporation provided funding of $350,000 for this effort, involving key policymakers throughout the process and holding periodic briefings for UN representatives as well as the U.S. Congress and administration. In its final phase, the program’s multilateral conference on the militarization of space delivered its vital message to the United Nations, NATO, the Soviet Union, China, Japan and other nations.
The Corporation continued to support UNA-USA throughout the decade, especially after a new relationship began to develop between the West and the Soviet Union under the leadership of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, who had professed an increased awareness of the need for multilateral approaches to global security and—importantly—for greater emphasis on the role of the United Nations in resolving regional conflicts around the world. The Soviet Union (USSR) had, among other indications, asked to join UN-sponsored organizations it previously ignored and pledged to pay all its back dues. The USSR’s shift toward the UN happened at a time when the United States, in contrast, had ceased to be the world body’s strongest supporter, and had withdrawn from several UN organizations and withheld its dues in order to pressure the UN into carrying out needed reforms.
In response to these changes, UNA-USA launched a project aimed at testing the motivations behind the USSR’s new outlook, stimulating new Soviet and American thinking in these areas and exploring how the UN might enhance its role as a central mechanism for managing conflict with U.S.-Soviet cooperation in mind. Carnegie Corporation underwrote the process of holding U.S.-Soviet dialogue, conducting research and producing and disseminating publications resulting from the project. A three-year grant of $300,000 allowed UNA-USA to assemble a group of experts on American and Soviet arms control, security issues and international affairs led by respected UN representatives from both countries, who explored how the institution could become more effective in these critical areas.
Because, through the Aspen Institute (which organizes international, bipartisan conferences for Congressional leaders), the Corporation is involved in bringing together Soviet and American decision makers, scholars and even generals, it was well positioned to help UNA-USA continue the process of bridge building. Topics investigated during this grant included: the role of the secretary-general in preventive diplomacy; peacekeeping operations in regional conflicts; terrorism; the World Court and multilateral arms control. Of particular note was the influence grant-related meetings had on shaping Soviet policy at the UN during a crucial period in that country’s history. The final report quotes Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev’s comment that the program “has for many years been bringing together key thinkers and policymakers, thus making an important input into the foreign policy of Russia and the United States.”
Corporation grantees gave numerous media interviews and produced articles and op-eds in publications ranging from the Washington Quarterly to The New York Times to the Christian Science Monitor, which kept the interested public informed on grant-related activities. In 1989 UNA-USA and UNA-USSR issued their Joint Statement, “The UN’s Role in Enhancing Peace and Security,” which was widely disseminated at the highest levels of the UN and the U.S. government. Senator Sam Nunn, then chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, considered the publication well timed to coincide with “a year of resurgence and revitalization for the United Nations…. In the years ahead, there would appear to be increased opportunities to call on this crucial organization for assistance in maintaining global stability, especially in the areas of nonproliferation, peacekeeping and termination of regional conflicts,” he wrote.
Most dramatically, it was (according to the final grant report) at a UNA-USA/UNA-USSR joint session in November of 1991, after the collapse of the USSR, that representatives of six republics gathered to discuss the transformation in the Soviet Union and its impact on the UN. In the words of Sergei Lavrov, later deputy foreign minister of Russia, “All those who participated in that meeting remember that it was there that the concept of Russia as the continuing state to the USSR in the UN and its Security Council was in fact born.” Finally, a detailed analysis of evolving policy appeared in the book Soviet–American Relations After the Cold War, edited by Robert Jervis and Seweryn Bialer, Duke University Press, © 1991. Written by Toby Trister Gati, UNA-USA senior vice president for policy studies, the chapter, “The UN Rediscovered: Soviet and American Policy in the United Nations of the 1990s,” provided “ongoing insight,” according to a review in the periodical Foreign Affairs.