Udenrigsudvalget 2019-20
URU Alm.del Bilag 186
Offentligt
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Event summary: Multilateral Institutions
indispensable or irrelevant to global peace and prosperity?
Monday 25 November 2019 at Hudson Institute.
By Liselotte Odgaard
Key take-aways:
The US public remains strongly committed to multilateralism, recognizing that international
cooperation is necessary to serve US interests.
The US has a tough love approach to multilateral institutions which combines engagement with
demands for transparency, effectiveness and burden-sharing.
A coalition of the willing that share the same values is necessary to reform the multilateral
institutions so they can effectively carry out peacekeeping and development in fragile states
where lack of legitimacy, trust, delivery of public goods and accountability now bedevil these
efforts.
Multilateralism is no longer an altruistic project, it is a project of enlightened self-interest, and
there is no other answer than to engage in it to make it better.
Kathryn Lavelle, Professor at Case Western Reserve University:
In some of their darkest hours, people have tried to figure out what to do about multilateral institutions.
This is the centuries-long history of multilateral institutions. Currently, the multilateral institutions have
to adapt to the global integration that has taken place in the digital era. Constituencies matter. We have
to explain to people in industrial democracies why institutions such as the UN and the World Bank
atter. Chi a s parti ipatio i a rules-based
system via multilateral institutions gives us leverage. For
example, when China participates in a World Bank package, the international community has
opportunities to influence Chinese policies. The institutions and the problems they deal with are
interconnected. For example, there is a lot of connections between environmental, climate, refugee and
human rights issues. Our system is ill-equipped for these institutions to interact with each other so they
can address these problems. Support for multilateralism remains strong in the US public because some
issues can only be addressed by the international community.
Eli Whitney Debevoise II, former executive director of the World Bank:
Why does China continue to borrow from the World Bank? It is time for China to graduate and pay for
development assistance. The World Bank director responsible for ethics is Chinese, but if he is found not
to do his job the president can fire him. New institutions are usually dependent on established
institutions for access to their facilities. For example, for access to the monetary facilities of the BRICS
bank, now called the New Development Bank, only 30 per cent can be taken with no questions asked,
the other 70 per cent requires an upper tranche IMF program. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
(AIIB) is largely populated with staff from old institutions such as the World Bank and they have co-
financing arrangements with these. China is setting up multilateral institutions in which they can be the
predominant voice. The position of US director of the World Bank is important to setting the tone as
competition unfolds around the world. The US has approved of the capital increase of the World Bank
this year, on condition that rich countries pay more for loans that poor countries, that the budget is cut
for top-level salaries, and a number of other reforms. This tough love approach is usually the most
appropriate for US engagement in multilateral institutions.
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URU, Alm.del - 2019-20 - Bilag 186: Endelig arbejdsrapport m.m. fra dansk sekunderet forsker ved Hudson Institute
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Blaise Misztal, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute:
90 per cent of conflicts today happen in fragile states,
years fro today per e t of the orld s
poor live in fragile states, making fragility an increasingly important issue for the UN and the World
Bank. Fragile states are drivers of major security issues such as terrorism, displacement of civilians and
pandemics. It has proved difficult to agree to apply traditional multilateral solutions to conflict and
poverty such as peacekeeping in fragile states, and when they are applied, they often fail to promote
peace and poverty reduction because they focus on issues such as infrastructure which has little to do
with the problems of fragile states. The lack of legitimacy, trust, delivery of public goods and
accountability in fragile states is now recognized by both the UN and the World Bank as key problems
that bedevil peacekeeping and development efforts unless they are addressed. The system of
multilateral institutions is built on the idea of following the rules and compromise, but these values are
not necessarily shared by those who are part of the system, such as China and Russia. The perfect
example of that is where the UN Security Council decides to send peacekeepers which is usually not to
fragile states. Fragile states are at the intersection of non-traditional and traditional security threats. For
example, in Syria, civil, ethnic, and tribal conflicts are taken over by transnational jihadi groups who are
armed for the purposes of geopolitically motivated actors. A growing problem is that intra- and
interstate wars are happening at the same time through proxies. Trying to address these problems by
using mechanisms based on the assumption that the members are going to adhere to the rules is going
to fail.
The US is not rejecting multilateral cooperation, but it is no longer willing to pay more to reach common
goals. Also, there are issues that seem to suggest that the true purposes of multilateral institutions are
being perverted, such as allowing Venezuela to be on the UN Human Rights Council despite a dubious
human rights record. These issues need to be dealt with. How we give development assistance is also an
important issue, and multilateral institutions can play an important role in being air traffic controller
coordinating efforts from different agencies and countries. For this to work, a coalition of the willing
which share the same values is necessary, and this is why the US in recent years have tended to rely
more on institutions such as NATO than on the UN.
Martin Bille Hermann, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Denmark to the United Nations:
UN peacekeeping troops cost about a quarter of a NATO soldier and they are deployed in areas where
there is no peace to keep. However, arguably there is value
i pea ekeepers o tri utio s to keepi g a
lid on conflicts. An interconnected world where threats spread quickly calls for more multilateral
cooperation, not less. China, India, Indonesia, Ethiopia, South Africa are all among countries that have
grown economically and politically, and it is no surprise that they demand more of a say at the table.
This creates aching pains in the institutions at a time when we have more global challenges than ever
before, but the answer is to stay in the game, not to walk away from it. Many of the new quasi-
multilateral institutions created by China and others have imported standard procedures and
approaches, preventing them from making the development mistakes that we have made in the old
institutions.
Multilateralism is not an ideology, it is a method of work that is not perfect, but I have yet to find
something better. The big change here is that it is no longer an altruistic project, it is a project of
enlightened self-interest, and there is no other answer than to engage in it to make it better. The UN is
a hybrid of universal values and state power. Change is inevitable, it is how we handle change that
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URU, Alm.del - 2019-20 - Bilag 186: Endelig arbejdsrapport m.m. fra dansk sekunderet forsker ved Hudson Institute
determines the future of multilateral institutions and the prosperity of our people. The current UN
Secretary-General is more committed to reform that any other Secretary-General in recent years, so
back him up.
A strong and committed US is necessary to achieve reform of the multilateral institutions, and tough
love as described by Debevoise is an excellent strategy to approach it.
The UN Charter starts ith e,
the people , ut ho estly for the past years it has ee
e, the go er e ts a d the UN has a
difficult time adjusting to a world where private sector corporations and non-governmental
organizations are often very influential actors.
Ho e er, i ter atio al ooperatio is ot a i e to , it is
a eed to .
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