The InterDependent

As Republicans in the House of Representatives gear up to fundamentally change Washington’s relations with the United Nations, the Obama administration’s top official dealing with international organizations struck back forcefully last week, calling critics out of date and a threat to American policy gains.

Assistant Secretary of State Esther Brimmer, head of the department’s bureau of international organization affairs, told an audience at the Brookings Institution on Feb. 1 that “we once again are hearing criticisms from a bygone era.” Calls for an end to mandatory United States dues to the UN – a system that Congress has no technical jurisdiction over – and a “pick and choose” approach to which UN bodies and programs to support would reduce, not enhance, the influence of the US globally, Brimmer said.

“In short,” she added, “engagement cannot be à la carte.”

In her speech, Brimmer, who joined the State Department in 2009 from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, outlined the administration’s commitment to numerous international bodies, beginning with the UN. “This administration’s engagement at the UN is at the core of our efforts to build a global architecture to address the challenges of the 21st century” she said.

“We’ve elevated the G-20, to successfully promote economic coordination in response to the world economic crisis,” Brimmer said. “We are renewing US leadership at the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development], multilateral development banks and the IMF [International Monetary Fund]. And we’re working with important regional organizations in East Asia, Africa and elsewhere. Yet the United Nations continues to be the most important global institution, and our robust engagement across the UN system remains essential to achieving US foreign policy goals.”

US State Department

Esther Brimmer, a US assistant secretary of state, told an audience at the Brookings Institution that the UN "continues to be the most important global institution" that the US works with to advance its foreign-policy goals.

Brimmer cited credible elections in Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire and Sudan among the goals enhanced or achieved with the UN, as well as cooperation on combating nuclear proliferation in Iran, North Korea and Syria.

“Dangerous nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, international terrorism, Afghanistan, Iraq,” she said. “Addressing these national security challenges requires cooperation, and our work in the UN system is key to that common response.”

Brimmer strongly defended US membership in the UN Human Rights Council and argued that Washington, which was already having an impact on the Geneva-based group, could not walk away because the cast of characters was often antithetical to American values.

“Now, some condemn our broad multilateral engagement because some UN member states are, to borrow terms used recently, ‘bullies, thugs and dictators,’ she said. “But a key part of our work every day is standing up to adversaries across the UN system. If we can’t persuade them to change their behavior, we outmaneuver them, and we achieve results. We’re tireless, because we have to be. We know the consequences of disengaging. If we cede leadership at the United Nations, other states will rush in to fill that vacuum – and they will not act in our interest.”

Responding to critics who point to what they see as the Human Rights Council’s obsession with anti-Israeli meetings, resolutions and reports at the expense of time that could be spent on dealing with abusers of human rights in many other nations, Brimmer said that “since the United States joined the Human Rights Council, it has not held a single special session on Israel – but it has called special sessions to address pressing human rights situations in Haiti and Côte d’Ivoire.”

Turning to UN management reform, Brimmer said that the administration led the campaign to open an ethics office, with an American in charge, and supports the often troubled Office of Internal Oversight Services, an inspector general’s office. The administration pressed for improvements in peacekeeping missions and lobbied for establishing the new superagency, UN Women.

Brimmer, who worked on policy planning at the State Department in the 1990s, rejected outright calls for reneging on UN dues. “As someone who worked on multilateral issues in the Clinton administration, I feel a little bit of déjà vu,” she said. “The same calls were made 15 years ago, and then as now, they were supposedly called ‘UN reform.’ ”

Gutting assessment payments is not reform but just shortchanging the UN and the US in the process, Brimmer said. “And trying to avoid paying our bills hurts our ability to deliver results at the UN that the American people want and that the United States needs.”