Canada and the United Nations: Setting the Record Straight

Abstract

In response to the 2023 report, “Canada and the United Nations: Rethinking and Rebuilding Canada's Global Role,” Jack Cunningham argues that Canada should instead marginalize the United Nations. In response, this rejoinder maintains that, while the UN has weaknesses, the world would be a worse place without it. Look to the UN's work to close the hole in the ozone layer, deliver life-saving vaccines to millions, or give food and shelter to the displaced. The UN has been a remarkably successful norm-setter, creating vital international standards on issues that range from the more political to the technical. Cunningham favours a retreat by Canada to smaller clubs of like-minded states, without explaining how this retrenchment might produce more effective results on global issues, such as climate change. He offers no alternative to the UN. It is hard to see how abandoning the field to China, Russia, and Iran, would serve Canada's interests.

In response to our 2023 report arguing for a robust Canadian reengagement with the United Nations (UN), ¹ Jack Cunningham has argued provocatively that Canada should instead marginalize the UN. For Cunningham, the UN is ineffectual, lacking sufficient uniformity of values and interests among its membership. As a result, he maintains, the UN's value as an instrument of Canadian foreign policy is marginal. The historic importance attached by Canadian leaders to the world body has been overstated, he argues, contending that it has always been secondary to institutions dominated by likeminded states, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

His arguments are compelling, but suffer from three main flaws. First, Cunningham reduces the UN as a whole to the Security Council and other UN political security functions, overlooking the successes of the rest of the UN system. While the UN has always had its weaknesses, the world would be a much worse place without it. Look to the work of the UN that closed the hole in the ozone layer, the hundreds of millions of children's lives saved by UN vaccines, or the 122.6 million displaced people in the world currently given food and shelter by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. It has been a successful norm-setter, creating standards on issues that range from the more political – such as human rights or the Sustainable Development Goals – to the technical, including GPS or postal services. Second, Cunningham appears to favour a retreat by Canada to smaller clubs of like-minded states with similar values, without explaining how this might produce more effective results on global issues that cross borders and engage regions around the world, such as climate change. He offers no alternative to the UN. It is hard to see how abandoning the field to China, Russia, and Iran, would serve Canada's interests, or those of the liberal west. Third, Cunningham's argument tends to make “the perfect the enemy of the good.” To take his argument to its conclusion, “if the UN can’t do everything right, it should do nothing.” As an example, he cites the fact that, while Lester B. Pearson's work to help resolve the Suez Crisis might have aided in the creation of UN peacekeeping, it failed to resolve the Israeli-Egyptian conflict. But when the UN fails, it is usually the member states that are failing. Just because member states do things that are contrary to UN rules, principles, or values, does not lead to an ineluctable conclusion that the rules themselves are not sound. The UN's perceived weaknesses mirror the state of the world. This is not a new phenomenon nor is it an argument for Canada to abandon ship and sit in the corner while the rest of the world engages.

In our short rejoinder, we make two main points: the UN is much more central to world order than Cunningham allows, and Canada has a strong interest in making the UN work.

The central pillar of the rules-based international order

The UN is indeed a frustrating instrument of foreign policy. Reaching agreement among 193 member states lends itself to enormously complex and protracted negotiations. Yet, as we show in our report, the UN remains essential to a world order that benefits Canada. The UN Charter sets out the basic legal context and foundation for all other international institutions. It is the world's operating system. Without it, international order loses its functional core. Far from peripheral to the creation of the existing order, as asserted by Cunningham, the UN has been central. Alternative systems, like NATO, did indeed emerge to fill gaps left by the limitations of the UN, but they still operate within a system that relies on the UN to legitimize the use of force and often to complement NATO's military role with humanitarian and development support in countries in conflict. The IMF and the World Bank, two other organizations cited by Cunningham as more central to the liberal world order than the UN, are themselves UN specialized agencies. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which was ultimately transformed into the World Trade Organization, had its origins in discussions at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment.

While the Security Council has undoubtedly faced considerable challenges, particularly owing to the P5 veto, it has served as a vital—and underappreciated—outlet for US-Soviet/Russian conflict resolution and de-escalation during some of history's most dangerous moments. During the Berlin blockade in 1948, for example, the US pushed for and succeeded in referring the issue to the Security Council. There, de-escalation was aided greatly by the efforts of UN Secretary General Trygve Lie, and the president of the UN General Assembly, Herbert Evatt. ² During the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world perhaps came closest to a nuclear exchange, US President John F. Kennedy chose to work closely with UN Secretary General U Thant to craft his messages to the Soviets. Both the Soviets and the Americans employed the secretary general as a crucial intermediary. ³ Thant's quiet role was later acknowledged by Kennedy, who noted that Thant had “put the world deeply in his debt.” ⁴

Understanding the useful role that the UN security apparatus played during the Cold War is of growing relevance today. As Bruce Jones notes in his excellent recent paper, in an era of renewed great power tensions, the importance of the Security Council could grow in a manner analogous to the way that body was used as an instrument of Cold War de-escalation. In the coming years, Washington, Moscow, and Beijing may well rediscover the need for diplomatic instruments capable of serving as a guardrail against escalation. In this effort, Jones notes, middle powers and the UN secretariat are likely to play an outsized role in reinforcing the centrality of the UN, prodding superpower diplomacy toward the UN. ⁵ Canada has played such an active role in the past and can do so again.

Cunningham's argument also points to violations of international law as evidence that the UN is ineffectual. While violations of treaties attract a lot of attention and give the impression of a lawless international system, the fact of the matter is that that there is a high degree of compliance with international commitments. International agreements are self-enforcing. ⁶ To make an analogous domestic law argument, this point is like saying that Canadian criminal law is ineffectual because people still commit crimes. Yes, international law does not have the same policing and prosecution functions to enforce compliance as domestic legal systems, but that does not mean that the international law system does not ‘name and shame’ countries into fulfilling their obligations. The fact is that multilateral norms can blunt extremes of state behaviour and force states to at least explain if not curb their actions.

When governments wish to undermine the multilateral process, they are quite able to do so. This is by design. It is a feature, not a bug. The UN is most relevant when the major powers want it to be. After all, the UN is an intergovernmental organization. Rather than stepping back in the face of challenge, we see it as a reason for governments to make multilateralism work better.

Canada's role

Frequently, skeptics of international institutions present their approach as more realistic, emphasizing great power politics and interests. Cunningham, for instance, calls for a “realistic appraisal of the UN's place in Canadian foreign policy.” From a Canadian perspective, the attraction to a realist worldview is puzzling to us. As noted in our report, a world dominated by big power politics is hardly a favourable one for middle and smaller powers. Recent experience with steel and aluminium tariffs and hostage diplomacy are illustrative of the implications for Canada of a world where the constraints on big states are loosened. The increased skepticism shown by the largest states regarding dispute resolution mechanisms within international agreements is a worrying trend. Such mechanisms ensure that disagreements are settled on their merits and not on the whims of more powerful actors. Evidence of big powers throwing their weight around should be unwelcome in Canada.

A realistic approach for smaller states such as Canada, it seems to us, is to seek to strengthen the existing international order, characterized by agreed norms, rules, and procedures. Close ties with the world's most important actor, the United States, are essential for Canada. Yet, it is naïve to believe that the US will sacrifice its own interests in its dealings with Canada, simply on account of friendship between the two countries, especially amid intensified global competition. It is for this reason that Canadian governments of all political stripes have sought strategically to manage our asymmetric relationship with the US through institutionalization. ⁷ Agreed rules and procedures help to ensure that Canada has a seat at the table and guaranteed channels of influence. ⁸ At times, they have allowed Canada to differentiate itself from the US or to seek to blunt extremes of US positioning.

Our report advocates building and sustaining a wide array of connections across the UN system, investing in Canada's capacity for influence within the world organization. Rather than “friend-shoring” Canada's foreign policies and simply tightening links with likeminded actors, an approach recently advocated by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and supported in Cunningham's analysis, we propose that Canada strengthen ties with diverse actors across the UN system. ⁹ Often, Canada's domestic aims have preoccupied its foreign policy and successive governments have not spent enough time listening to what the rest of the world has to say. We believe that this needs to change, with Canada doing a more consistent job of engaging countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Effective diplomacy also involves “talking to enemies,” a pragmatic instrument to influence behaviour in service of Canadian interests.

We believe that a truly multilateral approach is essential to tackling the existential threats of our times. First among these is climate change and, more generally, the world environmental crisis. Recent reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UN Environment Programme are quite clear: emissions reductions are well behind what is necessary to meet the Paris Agreement targets. Any solution to the climate crisis will involve working closely with China and other undemocratic states in the UN context. Cooperation on global health and pandemic preparedness will require similarly global collaboration, as will any effort to govern emerging technologies. A common approach to Artificial Intelligence will be especially important. While valuable, cooperation within smaller circles of likeminded countries cannot effectively address these problems, especially as global power diffuses away from the west.

A focus on existential threats does not, moreover, underestimate the challenge posed by a revanchist Russia, an assertive China, or other illiberal actors. Yet, in this context, it is important to recognize that—despite its flaws—the UN's basic wiring is liberal and democratic. This is a major advantage in our global competition going forward. Those seeking to alter existing institutions fight an uphill battle. Democratic countries should take full advantage of these baked-in advantages going forward, reinforcing key UN rules and norms.

Conclusion

While the UN has its flaws, very ably pointed out in Jack Cunningham's article, it has been the central pillar of a rules-based world order of great interest to Canada. As detailed in our report, we believe the government should significantly increase its focus on Canada's UN diplomacy.