International Organizations

I sat down today with my colleague Stewart M. Patrick to preview the G7 Summit, which kicks off tomorrow in Taormina, Italy. We discussed the G7's relevance, its evolution, and some of the issues that are likely to dominate the conversation at the meeting. Two fun facts: 1) The G7 countries produce roughly half of the world's global economic output. 2) Four of the leaders headed to Taormina—Donald Trump, Theresa May, Emmanuel Macron, and Paolo Gentiloni are making their first appearance at a G7 meeting. So the newcomers will outnumber the veterans.  You can watch the video of our discussion below or on Facebook. (And I urge you to check out Stewart's books Weak Links: Fragile States, Global Threats, and International Security and Best Laid Plans: The Origins of Multilateralism and the Dawn of the Cold War.)  Note: If the video is not displaying in your browser, please click here.  Corey Cooper assisted in the preparation of this post.

To preview the Group of Seven (G7) Summit, which will be held in Italy from May 26 to 27, I sat down with my friend and CFR colleague James M. Lindsay, senior vice president and director of studies. We discussed the significance of the G7 and major issues on this year's agenda, which include climate change, migration, terrorism, and trade.  You can check out the video of our discussion below or on Facebook. You can also learn more about the G7 by reading the CFR backgrounder.

Venezuela announced this week that it will withdraw from the Organization of American States, deepening its isolation and intensifying the sense of crisis there. In recent months, Venezuela has descended into economic, political and moral chaos, punctuated by the arrests of hundreds and the deaths of dozens of protesters during marches on Caracas and surrounding cities. Venezuela is a test for the new Trump administration, which has declared it "a mess." To stop the worst hemispheric crisis in decades, President Donald Trump needs a policy that includes not only tough words but also concrete actions. But the United States can't do it alone. To help rather than hurt U.S. interests, the United States – the historic regional hegemon – needs to tread carefully and build a supportive coalition. View full text of article, originally published in U.S. News

This afternoon I joined James M. Lindsay, senior vice president, director of studies, and Maurice R. Greenberg chair at the Council on Foreign Relations, to discuss the political and economic crisis unfolding in Venezuela and what we can expect in the coming months. You can watch the Facebook Live video below.    

This post originally appeared on the Council on Foreign Relations The Internationalist Blog and is written by Kate Almquist Knopf, director of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, and Payton Knopf, former coordinator of the UN Panel of Experts on South Sudan. On Tuesday, the UN Security Council will convene to discuss the ongoing civil war in South Sudan. The meeting, chaired by Nikki Haley, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, in her capacity as president of the council in April, comes at an inflection point for the world’s newest nation and for the global institutions, the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) in particular, that are mandated to manage international crises of this magnitude and preserve the state system. Absent a fundamental change in the current humanitarian and security trends in the next eight months, nearly half of South Sudan’s population will have died of starvation or fled the country by the war’s fourth anniversary in December. Such a rapid depopulation of a sovereign state is nearly unprecedented; Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and Rwanda in the throes of genocide are the closest analogues for such a tragic record. Debates aside as to whether a full-scale genocide has yet begun in South Sudan, the level of trauma and psychological distress endured by South Sudanese citizens is on par with these cases. In a study conducted by the South Sudan Law Society using the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, 41 percent of South Sudanese exhibited symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder, rates comparable to those of post–genocide Rwanda and post–genocide Cambodia. That was two years ago. The magnitude of the war’s human cost has since continued to escalate and now dwarfs that of nearly every other global conflict, with the exception of Syria. In just three years, South Sudan has become the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world; the largest refugee crisis in Africa, and the third largest globally, after Afghanistan and Syria; and the largest cross-border exodus in Africa since the Rwandan genocide. Over 1.7 million South Sudanese have fled the country since 2013, and nearly 1.9 million are displaced internally. Of those that remain, at least one hundred thousand people are dying in a man-made famine, and a further one million people are on the precipice. Fortunately, the United Nations and the African Union have the necessary legal authorities to salvage the sovereignty of one their own member states by establishing an international administration, with an executive mandate, in South Sudan to run the country for a finite period of time, as described in a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Council Special Report, Ending South Sudan’s Civil War, published by the Center for Preventive Action. Given the extreme degree of South Sudan’s state failure, such an administration is the only remaining path to protect the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, restore its legitimacy, and empower its citizens. Though seemingly radical, international administrations have been previously employed to guide Cambodia, Kosovo, East Timor, and other countries out of conflict, without a greater financial investment from the United States and others than is currently being spent on the humanitarian operation and UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. Although each of these cases differ from one another and from South Sudan, the challenges to establishing a transitional administration can be managed through a combination of politics and force. Article 4(h) of the AU Consultative Act permits “the right of the Union to intervene in a Member State pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity,” a clause capturing the AU principle of “non-indifference” arising from the failure to prevent the Rwandan genocide. The AU Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan, led by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, in fact concluded in 2014 that the killings in Juba in December 2013, which sparked the civil war, and subsequent acts, constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity. Numerous other independent, international investigations have since presented similar findings, most notably the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, which reported in March that “the targeting of civilians on the basis of their ethnic identity is unacceptable and amounts to ethnic cleansing.” Although, as Paul Williams has noted, invocation of Article 4(h) might appear to be a direct challenge to the authority granted to the UN Security Council by the UN Charter, Article 4(h) has never been invoked, and it is likely that the African Union would not proceed with any such intervention without prior (or at least concurrent) authorization by the Security Council. Action by the Security Council and by the African Union to legally mandate the administrative and peacekeeping components of an international transitional administration in South Sudan could, however, be complementary rather than conflicting. The Security Council has long-since determined that the war in South Sudan constitutes a threat to international peace and security and has exercised Chapter VII of the UN Charter on multiple occasions in the last three years to authorize and sustain a sanctions regime as well as a peacekeeping mission. Equally noteworthy is that the application of Article 4(h) in concert with a Security Council resolution would not require anything akin to the NATO operation for Libya authorized in 2011. Instead, the Security Council and the African Union—with leadership from key member states, including the United States—could orchestrate the establishment of a transitional administration through diplomacy, following the request of a configuration of South Sudanese religious, civil society, traditional, and political leaders, who retain more legitimacy across the population than the regime in the capital. The state’s sovereignty need no longer be held hostage—and squandered—by a morally bankrupt elite that continues to commit widespread atrocities against its own people and bears primary responsibility for the humanitarian and security crisis while exercising none of the responsibilities of a sovereign government, including preservation of the country’s territorial integrity. When, as political scientists David Lake and Christopher Fariss have shown, the state exercises only “limited or abused sovereignty,” international trusteeship—used sparingly—can break a vicious circle in which narrow, extractive coalitions and competition for state control have led to a “vortex that pulls states down.” Lake and Fariss also conclude that in these instances, the objective is not capacity-building but limiting violence and shepherding a transition to a new, more legitimate governing order by leveling the playing field among belligerents. The effectiveness of trusteeship is, however, contingent on two factors. First, the trustee must have few, if any, interests beyond stability in the failed state. Second, the interests of the trustee and the average citizen must overlap. It is hard to find a more clear-cut case of a predatory elite abusing a state’s sovereignty than that of South Sudan. However, formal UN trusteeship is neither applicable to UN member states, according to the UN Charter, nor necessary in this case. The Security Council and African Union have the legal authorities to authorize the components of a transitional administration, with an executive mandate, in South Sudan, and the conditions outlined by Lake and Fariss are present for such an administration with such a mandate to succeed. The Security Council meeting on Tuesday presents an opportunity for Haley, who has already stressed the link between human rights abuses and insecurity in the council, to demonstrate U.S. resolve in confronting the crisis in South Sudan. The success of the proposal in the CFR Council Special Report will depend on getting the politics right both at the United Nations and the African Union of course. But both institutions must act quickly to end the war and salvage South Sudan’s sovereignty before there is nothing and no one left in the country to save.

The following is a guest post by Kate Almquist Knopf, director of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, and Payton Knopf, former coordinator of the UN Panel of Experts on South Sudan. On Tuesday, the UN Security Council will convene to discuss the ongoing civil war in South Sudan. The meeting, chaired by Nikki Haley, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, in her capacity as president of the council in April, comes at an inflection point for the world’s newest nation and for the global institutions, the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) in particular, that are mandated to manage international crises of this magnitude and preserve the state system. Absent a fundamental change in the current humanitarian and security trends in the next eight months, nearly half of South Sudan’s population will have died of starvation or fled the country by the war’s fourth anniversary in December. Such a rapid depopulation of a sovereign state is nearly unprecedented; Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and Rwanda in the throes of genocide are the closest analogues for such a tragic record. Debates aside as to whether a full-scale genocide has yet begun in South Sudan, the level of trauma and psychological distress endured by South Sudanese citizens is on par with these cases. In a study conducted by the South Sudan Law Society using the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, 41 percent of South Sudanese exhibited symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder, rates comparable to those of post–genocide Rwanda and post–genocide Cambodia. That was two years ago. The magnitude of the war’s human cost has since continued to escalate and now dwarfs that of nearly every other global conflict, with the exception of Syria. In just three years, South Sudan has become the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world; the largest refugee crisis in Africa, and the third largest globally, after Afghanistan and Syria; and the largest cross-border exodus in Africa since the Rwandan genocide. Over 1.7 million South Sudanese have fled the country since 2013, and nearly 1.9 million are displaced internally. Of those that remain, at least one hundred thousand people are dying in a man-made famine, and a further one million people are on the precipice. Fortunately, the United Nations and the African Union have the necessary legal authorities to salvage the sovereignty of one their own member states by establishing an international administration, with an executive mandate, in South Sudan to run the country for a finite period of time, as described in a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Council Special Report, Ending South Sudan’s Civil War, published by the Center for Preventive Action. Given the extreme degree of South Sudan’s state failure, such an administration is the only remaining path to protect the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, restore its legitimacy, and empower its citizens. Though seemingly radical, international administrations have been previously employed to guide Cambodia, Kosovo, East Timor, and other countries out of conflict, without a greater financial investment from the United States and others than is currently being spent on the humanitarian operation and UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. Although each of these cases differ from one another and from South Sudan, the challenges to establishing a transitional administration can be managed through a combination of politics and force. Article 4(h) of the AU Consultative Act permits “the right of the Union to intervene in a Member State pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity,” a clause capturing the AU principle of “non-indifference” arising from the failure to prevent the Rwandan genocide. The AU Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan, led by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, in fact concluded in 2014 that the killings in Juba in December 2013, which sparked the civil war, and subsequent acts, constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity. Numerous other independent, international investigations have since presented similar findings, most notably the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, which reported in March that “the targeting of civilians on the basis of their ethnic identity is unacceptable and amounts to ethnic cleansing.” Although, as Paul Williams has noted, invocation of Article 4(h) might appear to be a direct challenge to the authority granted to the UN Security Council by the UN Charter, Article 4(h) has never been invoked, and it is likely that the African Union would not proceed with any such intervention without prior (or at least concurrent) authorization by the Security Council. Action by the Security Council and by the African Union to legally mandate the administrative and peacekeeping components of an international transitional administration in South Sudan could, however, be complementary rather than conflicting. The Security Council has long-since determined that the war in South Sudan constitutes a threat to international peace and security and has exercised Chapter VII of the UN Charter on multiple occasions in the last three years to authorize and sustain a sanctions regime as well as a peacekeeping mission. Equally noteworthy is that the application of Article 4(h) in concert with a Security Council resolution would not require anything akin to the NATO operation for Libya authorized in 2011. Instead, the Security Council and the African Union—with leadership from key member states, including the United States—could orchestrate the establishment of a transitional administration through diplomacy, following the request of a configuration of South Sudanese religious, civil society, traditional, and political leaders, who retain more legitimacy across the population than the regime in the capital. The state’s sovereignty need no longer be held hostage—and squandered—by a morally bankrupt elite that continues to commit widespread atrocities against its own people and bears primary responsibility for the humanitarian and security crisis while exercising none of the responsibilities of a sovereign government, including preservation of the country’s territorial integrity. When, as political scientists David Lake and Christopher Fariss have shown, the state exercises only “limited or abused sovereignty,” international trusteeship—used sparingly—can break a vicious circle in which narrow, extractive coalitions and competition for state control have led to a “vortex that pulls states down.” Lake and Fariss also conclude that in these instances, the objective is not capacity-building but limiting violence and shepherding a transition to a new, more legitimate governing order by leveling the playing field among belligerents. The effectiveness of trusteeship is, however, contingent on two factors. First, the trustee must have few, if any, interests beyond stability in the failed state. Second, the interests of the trustee and the average citizen must overlap. It is hard to find a more clear-cut case of a predatory elite abusing a state’s sovereignty than that of South Sudan. However, formal UN trusteeship is neither applicable to UN member states, according to the UN Charter, nor necessary in this case. The Security Council and African Union have the legal authorities to authorize the components of a transitional administration, with an executive mandate, in South Sudan, and the conditions outlined by Lake and Fariss are present for such an administration with such a mandate to succeed. The Security Council meeting on Tuesday presents an opportunity for Haley, who has already stressed the link between human rights abuses and insecurity in the council, to demonstrate U.S. resolve in confronting the crisis in South Sudan. The success of the proposal in the CFR Council Special Report will depend on getting the politics right both at the United Nations and the African Union of course. But both institutions must act quickly to end the war and salvage South Sudan’s sovereignty before there is nothing and no one left in the country to save.

The Venezuelan constitutional chamber’s decision last week to dissolve the National Assembly has made it abundantly clear that Maduro’s Venezuela is an authoritarian regime. The judiciary is at the beck and call of chavista forces, the military is corrupt and co-opted, and despite a last-minute reversal of the court’s decision, the continued dilution of the Assembly’s powers means that there are effectively no independent institutions left with the power to check the regime. Venezuela, meanwhile, is confronting a humanitarian catastrophe. The regime has run up against the limits of its economic policy: foreign currency is too scarce to cover both debt obligations and desperately needed imports. Three quarters of Venezuelans have lost weight under the “Maduro diet”; more than two-thirds of basic goods are scarce. The regime seems willing to play out the clock, at grotesque human cost, guided by one core strategy: waiting for global oil prices to recover. But the hole is now so deep that a modest increase in oil prices— of the sort predicted for 2017— may be insufficient: debt payments due in 2017 outstrip foreign currency reserves. Dictatorships sometimes crumble under the weight of their own contradictions, and this could yet be the case for Chavismo, given the depth of the crisis. Indeed, the uncertainty generated by the court’s action last week may be a sign of fissures within the regime. But as John Polga-Hecimovich and I noted last year, the Maduro regime has a clear strategy for repressing domestic opposition. Leaders who have mobilized against the regime are in jail. The military is fully in control of food supply and appears united against any regime change that might expose leading officers to prosecution for corruption or human rights abuses. The opposition has been fractured by the regime’s delay tactics, including the simulacrum of negotiations over the past year. Venezuelans are exhausted by the daily search for sustenance which, alongside regime repression, saps their ability to protest. Although Maduro walked back last week’s court decision, he retained the power to negotiate oil deals without congressional approval, a tool which may prove very important. China or Russia could yet help Venezuela out of its hole. But China does not seem eager to play a geopolitical role and it has little to gain from saving a crisis-ridden regime in the Western Hemisphere from seemingly inevitable collapse. Russia, on the other hand, seems to be doing what it can to help Maduro through his hard spell: it is reported to be negotiating loans and further investments by Rosneft that might help the regime through a heavy bout of April debt payments. The region has been slow to respond, but is at last finding its voice. Several countries withdrew their ambassadors over the weekend. Mercosur has been proactive: it suspended Venezuela from the trading bloc last year, and invoked its democratic clause over the weekend, which could culminate in Venezuela’s expulsion. The Organization of American States (OAS) has been proceeding more slowly, despite Secretary General Luis Almagro’s hectoring. Almagro’s hopes that Venezuela might be suspended under the Inter-American Democratic Charter continue to run up against simple math; although a few countries seemed to shift their stance last week, many Caribbean nations remain beholden to Maduro, meaning that Almagro may still be short of the votes he needs, even if a special session of the body meets today as originally planned (early reports suggests that the new Bolivian chair of the Permanent Council may suspend the session). The Trump administration so far appears to be following the policies adopted by its predecessor. The United States has imposed targeted sanctions against individual Venezuelans, including Vice President El-Aissami, but has wisely avoided the temptation to more directly and unilaterally confront the regime, allowing Latin America to lead. But patience is wearing thin in Washington. A flurry of congressional declarations last week could presage more muscular legislative action in the months ahead; Senator Marco Rubio suggested that he would lean on recalcitrant OAS members, including by withholding assistance to countries that failed to support OAS action. Policymakers hoping to encourage a peaceful resolution of the crisis must pinch their noses and maintain a channel for dialogue with the regime while giving regime hardliners guarantees of non-reprisal if— but only if— they facilitate a rapid transition. Dialogue has been unproductive in the past, but keeping talks open at least offers the possibility of a strategic exit for regime members. UNASUR has been playing a key role in encouraging dialogue; it may yet be an effective good cop to the OAS’s bad cop, provided it does not allow itself to be used as a convenient pretext for the Maduro regime to string out talks endlessly. Guarantees for regime members who cooperate in finding a way out of the crisis are needed to ensure that negotiations are not seen as a zero-sum game. But the regime has played games for far too long to be trusted to negotiate in good faith. Simultaneously, therefore, regional governments must tighten pressure on the regime. The symbolic weight of an OAS suspension would be great— as Almagro said, “peer condemnation is the strongest tool we have.” But in addition to declaring the Venezuelan regime a pariah, regional and global allies could also help to keep hardliners over a barrel. Prosecutions, asset seizures, visa restrictions, and other sanctions would be most effective if they were employed not only by the United States, but also by Latin American and European allies.

The following is a guest post by Megan Roberts, associate director of the International Institutions and Global Governance program at the Council on Foreign Relations. On Monday, French diplomat Jean-Pierre Lacroix takes charge of the UN’s department of peacekeeping operations (DPKO), the UN’s most daunting assignment. Lacroix will manage more than ninety thousand “blue helmets” deployed across sixteen missions around the world. And he will do so at a difficult time, as a new secretary-general in New York is considering major peacekeeping reforms and a new president in Washington pushes for big cuts to the UN’s flagship enterprise. Although peacekeeping is not mentioned in the UN Charter, it has become the UN’s most visible and arduous assignment. Over the past fifteen years, the number of deployed UN peacekeepers has grown nearly fivefold. Besides ending violence, peace operations reduce the risk that countries will relapse into conflict—and at modest cost. But peacekeepers are increasingly asked to do more, particularly in situations active warfare. Today, more than 97 percent of UN troops are deployed with the mandate to protect civilians, including in environments where there is no peace to keep. Lacroix will take over from Hervé Ladsous, who has led the department since 2011, and will be the fifth consecutive Frenchman to hold the post. China had been rumored to be interested in the position, in part based on its increased peacekeeping investment. Beijing currently has nearly 2,600 hundred uniformed personnel deployed to peacekeeping operations, while France has just under 1,000 (making them by far the largest contributors among the Security Council’s permanent members). Lacroix’s appointment means France gets at least one more year in the position it has held since 1996, when Kofi Annan reportedly offered the post in exchange for French support for his secretary-general candidacy. Lacroix assumes the role at an inflection point for the organization. Just three weeks after António Guterres took office as the UN’s ninth secretary-general, Donald J. Trump moved into the White House, ushering in what could potentially become the most contentious era yet in the turbulent U.S.-UN relationship. The Trump administration has already proposed deep cuts to U.S. international funding, including reducing the annual U.S. assessment to the UN’s 8 billion per year peacekeeping budget from more than 28 percent to 25 percent. Its full budget proposal, expected in mid-May, could slash funds even further. Some experts anticipate that cuts to UN peacekeeping could reach one billion dollars–or half of what the United States currently contributes. (Any such proposal would likely face congressional resistance). Trump’s UN envoy Nikki Haley recommended against such drastic slash-and-burn cuts in her confirmation hearing, and she confirmed at a March 29 event at the Council on Foreign Relations that her recently launched mission-by-mission review was aimed to achieve not just cheaper but also more effective peace operations. She plans to use the month-long U.S. presidency of the Security Council, which begins April 1, to consider whether ongoing peacekeeping missions reflect political realities in the countries in which they are deployed, whether they can achieve their mandates, and, if not, what changes should be made. In his own first three months in office, Gutteres has sought to demonstrate his reformist credentials, launching initiatives to strengthen the organization and cut costs. He has announced structural changes to how the UN addresses peace and security challenges and launched an internal review to assess proposals for further changes designed to reorient the organization towards preventing, rather than reacting to, crises. Heading the UN’s peacekeeping department is a difficult task at the best of times. Lacroix faces a much tougher context, given the combination of a skeptical and penny-pinching U.S. administration and several precarious missions (not least in South Sudan). Though the UN has begun to draw down several of its operations, including longstanding missions in Haiti, Ivory Coast, and Liberia, the United States—by far the largest funder—is pressing for more ambitious cutbacks. Over the past several weeks, Haley pushed for significant reductions to the UN’s mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN’s largest and most expensive mission, but ultimately agreed to smaller reductions in the force levels. The timing is hardly auspicious. In the run-up to elections planned for later this year, the UN mission warns of a “rapidly deteriorating security situation across the country, which is exacerbated by the prevailing political uncertainty.” Recently, the conference of Catholic bishops withdrew from its important mediation role in DRC, citing a “lack of sincere political will” between the government and opposition to implement the elections as agreed. More troubling news this week showed how combustible the country remained: After going missing two weeks ago, two UN experts investigating a recent uprising in central DRC were found dead. It’s not yet clear whether the United States will also push for reductions to the peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, the UN’s second most expensive operation. Haley recently argued that the time had come to rethink the mission’s mandate and identify a political path forward, in the face of a moribund peace agreement. From its hopeful birth in 2011, the nation has descended into despair. A famine already affects one hundred thousand people and threatens the lives of one million more. Still, more people are dying in these areas from conflict-related violence than hunger. Meanwhile, government and rebel forces regularly obstruct the UN mission, as it struggles to protect hundreds of thousands of civilians. A regional protection force approved in August 2016 is set to begin deploying shortly, after months of government delays, but the government of South Sudan still rejects part of the force’s mandate, setting the stage for more confrontation between peacekeepers and government forces. In the end, Security Council members will decide how to adjust the structure and composition of these and other missions. Given the growth and cost of these far-flung operations, the time is indeed ripe to review UN peacekeeping with fresh eyes. But the exercise must be guided by an honest effort to bring into alignment aspirations and resources. Too often, member states have asked UN peacekeepers to fulfill ambitious mandates, without providing the political backing, resources, logistics, and rules of engagement that might permit them to succeed. The United States and other Security Council members would also do well to remember the central finding of a 2015 review of peacekeeping—namely, that all peace operations must be accompanied by a dogged political strategy. Too often, as Richard Gowan points out, Security Council discussions of peacekeeping degenerate into “diplomatic pit-fighting.” For his part, Lacroix will need to remain attuned both to diplomatic landmines in New York and Washington and to simmering security risks in the field. Otherwise, a rapidly unfolding crisis in a mission already in U.S. crosshairs could make dramatic drawdown of UN peacekeeping inevitable.

The following is a guest post by Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. The following information is compiled by Laurie and her research associate Gabriella Meltzer. On March 16, 2017, President Donald J. Trump released his budget proposal, which overall enormously increases spending for the Departments of Defense (+$54 billion or +9 percent), Homeland Security (+7 percent) and Veterans’ Affairs (+6 percent), slashing nearly every other non-entitlement program in the federal government. Though the White House refers to its 2018 budget plan as a “blueprint,” rather than a formal budget request to Congress, Trump’s proposal has caused considerable consternation in the foreign assistance, development, global health and scientific research communities, all of which would experience severe funding reductions. Scientific research, humanitarian assistance, famine relief, programs to address maternal and child survival—such broad efforts are typically funded through more than one agency in the United States government, which may disperse monies bilaterally to needy governments, through United Nations agencies, or to large multinational groups, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, or the World Bank. We have attempted to sort out the likely impact of the Trump administration proposal, although it was not delivered in formal budget format. Several crucial foreign assistance programs were not mentioned, and others’ cuts were only vaguely described. For example, the Trump blueprint indicates that the White House favors large reductions in United States support for the United Nations, but does not stipulate specifically how much would be cut, or which agencies might experience significant reductions, save noting declining support for peacekeeping operations. Meanwhile, the Republican leadership in Congress has incorporated a $1 billion cut in prevention services at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in its proposed American Health Care Act. The services affected would include immunization programs and global health security efforts aimed at staving off outbreaks in foreign countries. The White House plan would, in contrast, add $500 million to the CDC, to be distributed to the fifty states, for disease preparedness and emergency response. It is not clear how these seemingly opposite drives might sort out. Though many global health, development, and humanitarian organizations around the world have panicked in reaction to the White House budget scheme, it would be wise to view the plan as a starting point for Washington debate. The White House has staked its position, which boils down to severe reductions, in some cases out-right eliminations, of a long list of scientific, soft power, and humanitarian programs. Crucially, the cuts do not include overseas programs that specifically target child vaccination, HIV, TB or malaria. Members of Congress are now responding to the Trump Administration scheme, in some cases questioning the entire approach to soft power and diplomatic elimination. It is reasonable to presume a vigorous debate will unfold this spring. The lobbying on behalf of efforts targeted for reduction in the White House plan has already commenced. Budget relevance to diplomatic affairs, global health and development, science, biomedical research, public health responses to outbreaks, and overseas epidemics:

At present, there are sixteen UN peacekeeping missions around the world, nine of which are in Africa: Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Mali, Sudan, South Sudan, and the Western Sahara (Sudan has two, Darfur and Abyei). Like all UN peacekeeping missions, these were mandated by the UN Security Council (UNSC). UN peacekeeping operations funding is the responsibility of all member states. The UN uses a complex formula to assess member state contributions that, among other things, takes into account relative wealth. Beyond that formula, the permanent five members on the UNSC (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) pay a supplement because of their special responsibilities and privileges. The budget for UN peacekeeping in the 2016-2017 fiscal year was $7.87 billion, which the UN estimates is one-half of one percent of world military expenditures. The assessed percentage of UN peacekeeping costs is the following for the highest ten states. Based on the assessed percentage, the projected cost to the United States is $2.25 billion. However, many UN member states, including the United States, are chronically in arrears. Further, it is conventional wisdom that UN peace keeping missions are usually under-funded given the tasks mandated to them by the UNSC. In the United States, the administration rolled out President Trump’s “skinny budget” on March 16. This foreshadows the much more detailed budget that will be presented to Congress in May. It is essentially a “political” document in that it reflects the administration’s “wish list.” The actual budget will be subject to intensive Congressional scrutiny. At the end of the day, it is Congress that controls the purse strings. President Trump’s “skinny budget” calls for a cut in the budget of the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development of nearly 30 percent. It also anticipates massive cuts in U.S. payments and contributions to the UN system. Such a budget cut would also eliminate most U.S. foreign assistance, with the exception of certain health programs, notably involving HIV/AIDS. Even if Congress rolls backs some of these budget cuts, it must be anticipated that U.S. funding of UN peace keeping will be significantly reduced. How will the resulting short-fall be made up? Some peacekeeping missions might be eliminated, though experience shows this is difficult to do without an increase in bloodshed. Alternatively, other countries might increase their contributions – and thereby their influence within specific peacekeeping missions and the UN as a whole. China, increasingly involved in peacekeeping missions, might see an opportunity.  

President Trump’s unapologetic “hard power” budget reveals an alarming ignorance about the threats to U.S. national security and the instruments needed to advance U.S. global interests. The document would slash already-modest outlays for U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance, while increasing the current gargantuan Pentagon budget by ten percent. The result is a fundamentally unbalanced national security budget that guts the State Department and USAID on the erroneous assumption that the U.S. military alone can somehow meet America’s foreign policy needs. If approved as drafted, Trump’s budget would signal the definitive surrender of any pretense to U.S. global leadership. Fortunately, this is not likely to happen. Trump’s budget is but the opening salvo in a budget battle that will last until the new fiscal year begins in October. And because Congress controls the purse strings, this struggle will largely unfold not in the White House but at the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Already, several Republicans have expressed alarm at Trump’s draconian cuts to non-military components of U.S. power and influence. One is Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC), who sits on the budget, appropriations, and defense committees. Two weeks ago, anticipating Trump’s plan to chop State Department funding, he responded: “It’s not going to happen. It would be a disaster. If you take soft power off the table then you’re never going to win the war.” Although Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has gamely defended a 29 percent reduction in his budget, seasoned State Department officials are alarmed by the implications. The same is likely to be true of Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who (despite his “mad dog” moniker) has said that if State Department funding gets cut, “Then I need to buy more ammunition.” While the Pentagon’s service chiefs will surely welcome more hardware, Iraq and Afghanistan have also taught them the dangers of underfunding U.S. civilian capabilities—in war zones and beyond. Beyond the top-line figure of a 29 percent cut in international affairs spending, Trump’s budget is vague on many details. But the numbers it does provide are worrisome. The document would eliminate all U.S. funding for UN climate change efforts, with devastating consequences for the planet and for the international reputation and diplomatic influence of the United States. It would also zero out the State Department’s Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance account, a flexible fund that has never been more urgent as the world faces the largest humanitarian crisis since 1945. Trump’s budget would also slash the Treasury Department’s own international programs by thirty-five percent by eliminating the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (which assists U.S. companies investing in foreign markets) and slashing U.S. support for multilateral development banks, including the World Bank, by $650 million over three years. The latter would undermine traditional U.S. leadership within the World Bank at the precise time that China is flexing its muscles in parallel institutions, such as the Asia Infrastructure and Investment Bank. Finally, Trump’s budget proposes a major decreases in U.S. contributions to the United Nations, including an eleven percent reduction in support for peacekeeping operations, as well as major—if so far unspecified—cuts for UN agencies that “do not substantially advance U.S. foreign policy interests, are duplicative, or are not well-managed.” Despite assurances by Nikki Haley, Trump’s UN envoy, that the administration would not pursue a "slash and burn approach," Colum Lynch of Foreign Policy reports that State Department staffers have been "instructed to seek cuts in excess of 50 percent in U.S. funding for UN programs." Using U.S. taxpayer dollars wisely is essential. But Trump’s proposed budget flies in the face of a broad consensus among national security professionals that the United States must invest in the so-called “soft power” components of its international influence. The United States has plenty of hard-edged power, accounting for roughly 37 percent of all global defense spending in 2015, more than the next nine nations combined. Where it has too often failed to invest is in diplomatic capabilities that ensure that the United States has the best information about political developments in nations around the world—and trained diplomats who know which levers to push in advancing U.S. interests and equities with foreign governments. The United States also needs foreign aid tools to bolster relationships with strategic partners, fight poverty, combat disease, and save lives, including in insecure areas where U.S. enemies might otherwise take root. And it has a fundamental interest in doing its share to bolster international agencies—from the UN High Commission for Refugees to the International Atomic Energy Agency—that help advance peace, justice, and prosperity around the world. As a founding member of and major donor to these organizations, the United States steers their work, while leveraging the financial contributions of others. This isn’t charity. It’s simply common sense. The director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, boasts that this is an “America First” budget. That is true only if one accepts the false premise that the United States can somehow wall itself off from the world. It assumes the nation will pay no price for hollowing out its diplomacy, slashing foreign aid, and turning its back on international institutions that it helped to create and that advance U.S. national interests every day—whether by keeping civil aviation safe, combating emerging pandemics, or mitigating the looming catastrophe that is climate change. In presenting this budget, Trump has revealed himself once more to be a cynic, as defined by Oscar Wilde: That is, he is a man who knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Foreign aid is a perfect example. According to the administration, these cuts are designed to “free[] up funding for critical priorities here at home and put America first.” The document continues, “It is time to prioritize the security and well-being of Americans, and to ask the rest of the world to step up and pay their fair share.” Let’s leave aside for the moment that U.S. expenditures for international affairs (including foreign aid) comprise just one percent of the federal budget. Let’s ignore for now that the United States spends fifteen times as much as this on the military, which consumes more than half of the U.S. discretionary budget. And let’s overlook that the United States ranks only 20th out of 28 wealthy democracies in the proportion of GDP it devotes to development assistance. The more fundamental problem is that Trump treats such international affairs outlays as if they were mere handouts, whereas in fact they are deeply in U.S. interests and consistent with (at least until recently) American values. Moreover, Trump could easily preserve them by holding military spending increases to inflation, rather than giving the defense industrial complex every single toy it desires. The bottom line is that it is impossible to make America First by treating the World Last, as a mere afterthought of no consequence to the nation’s ultimate fate. That was a mistake the United States made in the 1930s, and it paid a terrible place.

Nelson Mandela’s South Africa was one of the founders of the International Criminal Court (ICC). As an early signer of the Treaty of Rome the widespread view within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) was that the ICC was a means of holding accountable dictators and other heads of state for criminal behavior. The ANC government even incorporated the Treaty of Rome into South African law. Hence, violation of the Treaty of Rome is also a violation of South African law. Since its establishment, the ICC shoe has pinched the toes of a number of dubious heads of state, notably Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta. At the request of the then-Kenyan government, the ICC investigated crimes committed at the time of the 2007 Kenyan elections and subsequently indicted Uhuru Kenyatta, by then president of Kenya, and his vice president William Ruto. However, Kenyatta’s Kenyan government refused to cooperate with the ICC and prosecutors accused it of intimidating witnesses, who withdrew their testimony. The cases collapsed, and Kenyatta launched a campaign for African states to withdraw from the ICC. He and others accuse the ICC of bias against African states, and many claim that the ICC’s jurisdiction should not extend to heads of state or governments. There is also resentment that certain Western countries, notably the United States, support the ICC but have declined to sign the Treaty of Rome and therefore are not under its jurisdiction. There is anger in some quarters that the ICC could not indict members of the George W. Bush administration for perceived crimes during the war in Iraq. South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma, too, has fallen afoul of the ICC. Under the Treaty of Rome, if a person indicted by the ICC falls into the hands of a signatory state that state is obliged to hand him over to the court. Sudan’s chief of state Omar al-Bashir has been so indicted by the ICC for crimes committed in Darfur. Al-Bashir visited Pretoria in 2015 for an African Union heads of state summit. Zuma not only failed to detain Bashir, he facilitated the latter’s hasty departure from the country when South African courts were moving toward ordering Bashir’s arrest, following suits filed by South African civil organizations. Subsequently, the Zuma government has joined the quit ICC bandwagon by notifying the United Nations of South Africa’s intention to withdraw. At its January summit, the African Union heads of state voted in favor of a non-binding resolution calling for its members to withdraw from the ICC. However, on February 22, the South African High Court ruled in favor of the opposition Democratic Alliance suit that the government’s announced departure was “unconstitutional and invalid.” Because the Treaty of Rome is incorporated into South African law, only parliament could change it so that South Africa could leave ICC jurisdiction. In response to the ruling, the Zuma administration has reiterated its intention to leave the ICC and is considering its options. Zuma’s ANC has a majority of over sixty percent in parliament. The BBC concludes that at the end of the day, parliament is likely to approve withdrawal; but such a projection is premature-still. The ANC is badly fractured with pro and anti-Zuma factions. The party is scheduled to elect a new leader in December 2017. Many South Africans, including some in the ANC, see the ICC as part of the Mandela legacy of “non-racial” democracy and the rule of law. Shedding ICC jurisdiction, by contrast, is associated with Zuma, who is discredited among some for alleged corruption. Hence, it is by no means certain that parliament would do Zuma’s bidding on this issue anytime soon.

This is a guest post by Allen Grane, research associate for the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Studies program. This article was originally published on SSA Frontiers.  On May 18, 2000, Congress signed the African Growth and Opportunity Act, commonly known as AGOA, into law. AGOA is a trade program meant to establish stronger commercial ties between the United States and sub-Saharan Africa. The act establishes a preferential trade agreement between the U.S. and selected countries in the sub-Saharan region. Initially approved for fifteen years, AGOA was reauthorized for ten years on June 25, 2015, by the Obama administration. In its current form AGOA will last until September 30, 2025. It is important to emphasize that AGOA is a preferential trade agreement and not a free trade agreement. A free trade agreement is a treaty between two or more countries to establish a free trade area where commerce in goods and services can be conducted across their common borders, without tariffs or hindrances. A preferential trade agreement is a trade pact between countries that reduces tariffs for certain products to the countries who sign the agreement. While the tariffs are not necessarily eliminated, they are lower than countries not party to the agreement. It is a form of economic integration. The U.S. Department of Commerce describes AGOA as the “most liberal access to the U.S. market available to any country or region with which the United States does not have a free trade agreement.” AGOA in part was meant to establish a route for the U.S. to develop free trade agreements with certain African markets; however, this has yet to happen. What is AGOA’s purpose? Within certain sectors, AGOA is often looked at as a form of aid to developing countries. The U.S. government’s website says that it is “helping millions of African families find opportunities to build prosperity.” However, this image of trade as a form of aid is not entirely accurate. When needed, AGOA has provided the U.S. with preferential access to valuable commodities such as oil. AGOA has also served as a bargaining chip for the United States. The trade relationship between the U.S. and sub-Saharan Africa has nearly always been skewed one way: the U.S. imports far more than it exports. AGOA didn’t change this. If anything, it increased the scale. U.S. exports to sub-Saharan Africa peaked in 2014 at $25.49 billion. The numbers for American imports are much higher, they peaked at $86 billion in 2008. (U.S.-Africa trade of products under AGOA reached its pinnacle in 2008 when it hit $66.3 billion.)     Those import numbers directly reflect American commodity needs. At the peak of American imports, between 2007 and 2008, the U.S. imported over one million barrels of oil a day from Nigeria alone. This is in direct contrast to the drastic drop in oil imports by 2015, when there were periods that the U.S. imported no oil from Nigeria. This trend affected other sub-Saharan oil producing countries as well. (The period between 2014-2015 represents the only time that the trade balance between the U.S. and sub-Saharan Africa was nearly even.) AGOA is also a very useful negotiating tool. The U.S. president has the ability to rescind access to AGOA to any country if he were to determine that it is not working toward certain goals. In essence, the U.S. president has the ability to cancel the AGOA relationship with any partner nation if he feels that it doesn’t benefit the United States. Most recently, AGOA was used as a negotiating tool just prior to its reauthorization in 2015. At the time, the South African government refused to let American chicken farmers export chicken products to South Africa. Accused of “dumping” low quality chicken products, the United States had not been allowed to export chicken to South Africa for over fifteen years. The South African argument was that American exports would destroy its local poultry industry by undercutting prices. On the American side, it was argued that this ban was a barrier to U.S. trade and investment. It was also argued that South Africa, with its advanced economy (though stalled), didn’t need a preferential trade deal (this goes back to the development side of AGOA). The renewal of AGOA, and South Africa’s inclusion in the renewed act, became questionable due to this one sticking point. In the end, the South African government conceded and allowed the U.S. to export 65,000 tons of chicken products to South Africa. Trade with the United States was too important for South Africa to risk losing over chickens, especially as the U.S. is South Africa’s largest export market. (South African exports to the U.S. in 2015 were valued at $9.1 billion. They consisted mostly of manufacturing materials, metals, and minerals.) AGOA under the Trump Administration? Based on the Trump administration’s largely anti-trade stance, there has been some worry that AGOA may possibly be on the chopping block. This, however, is highly unlikely. AGOA was passed originally by a Republican congress in 2000, and was just reauthorized in 2015. It still maintains broad support across party lines, and even if targeted by the Trump administration, it is unlikely that Congress would approve its repeal. AGOA is also not likely to be targeted for repeal because it is not a free trade agreement. While certain African goods are given preferential deals that reduce tariffs, sub-Saharan countries do not operate with blanket free trade and zero tariffs. In fact, the deal provides the U.S. with access to African goods and commodities that help drive the U.S. economy. Additionally, it would be foolish of the Trump administration to give up a tool that provides the U.S. with so much negotiating leverage. As evidenced by the South African chicken trading incident, the U.S. government is able to use access to American markets to dictate trade opportunities in Africa. Countries like Kenya have already expressed worries that trade access through AGOA could be restricted. Traditionally, sub-Saharan Africa as a whole has critical problems with intra-state trade that increases dependency on large foreign trade partners. This regional trade gap provides greater leverage for the United States when participating in trade negotiations. While it is doubtful that AGOA will be repealed, I would not be surprised if the new administration were to use the threat of removal from AGOA as a negotiating tool. Presidents have removed nations from the AGOA agreement before. The Trump administration doesn’t mean the end of AGOA, but it may mean that certain trade relationships are reevaluated.