International Organizations

At the end of the recent 28th African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa on January 31, a recommendation emerged that collectively member states should withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC). The AU is not a party to the Treaty of Rome, which established the ICC, and its recommendation cannot compel individual states to withdraw. According to the media, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania opposed the AU recommendation and other states declined to commit themselves. In the aftermath of the recommendation, on February 1, Nigeria publicly reiterated its intention to remain within the ICC. The most vocal advocates for withdrawal have been Kenya, Burundi, and South Africa. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Vice President William Ruto were both indicted by the ICC for crimes connected to their 2007 elections. Both cases collapsed, with the Kenyan government declining to cooperate with the ICC and, possibly, tampering with witnesses. South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma has been widely censured for his failure to hand over Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir when he visited South Africa in 2015 for an AU heads of state summit. Al-Bashir has been indicted by the ICC. As a signatory of the Treaty of Rome, South Africa was obligated to hand him over for trial. Zuma failed to do so and even helped facilitate al-Bashir’s travel back to Sudan. This is apparently a violation of both the Treaty of Rome and South African law. As such, there is currently a case against him still making its way through the South African courts. The Burundian government took steps to withdraw from the ICC following a credible UN investigation of systematic human rights abuses, including the discovery of mass graves. However, in Kenya legislation to bring about withdrawal from the ICC has lapsed. Similar legislation has not been introduced in South Africa. Further, according to Deutsche Welle, both the Kenyatta and Zuma governments appear to be exploring possible amendments to the Treaty of Rome – which implies their continued membership. Nevertheless, sentiment in sub-Saharan Africa is widespread that the ICC “unfairly” has focused on the continent, and ignored abuses elsewhere. Some African intellectuals complain that the ICC has ignored the human rights abuses committed by western nations, including those alleged against the George W. Bush administration with respect to Iraq. African nations often cite the United States as an example of why they should not be beholden to the ICC: the U.S. position is that it supports the ICC while declining to sign the Treaty of Rome. On the other hand, African elites also recognize that there is at present no alternative to the ICC for holding the chiefs of signatory states accountable. Most of the ICC cases brought against Africans have been at the request of African governments at the time, including those involving Kenyatta and Ruto.

Kate Almquist Knopf, director of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, is the author of a recent Center for Preventive Action report on Ending South Sudan’s Civil War. We discussed the crisis in South Sudan and her outside-the-box proposal to address it, which involves establishing an international transitional administration for the country. She also offered some near-term recommendations for the Trump administration. Knopf shares her advice for young professionals, and offers a fresh take on how the relationship between state and society could shift political institutions within Africa. Listen to my conversation with one of the world’s leading experts on South Sudan, and follow her on Twitter @almquistkate.

It is too soon to say what the lasting consequences will be of President Trump’s “travel ban” of the citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries and his 120-day suspension of all refugee admissions to the United States. But, it could have serious effects on U.S.-African relations. In 2010 the Pew Research Center found that of Sub-Saharan Africa’s population of 823 million, 234 million were Muslims. The Islamic population is heavily concentrated in West Africa where U.S. strategic and economic interests on the continent are the greatest, especially Nigeria, where at least 50 percent of the country’s population of two-hundred million is Muslim. However, there are Muslim minorities in nearly all African countries. In general, African Muslim opinion about the United States appears to be largely favorable or indifferent. However, in parts of the Sahel, northern Nigeria, and in the Horn of Africa, radical jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and al-Shabaab are anti-American, though attacks on U.S facilities and American citizens have been rarer in West Africa than in East Africa. If African elites perceive President Trump’s immigration and refugee policies as in fact a “Muslim Ban” and part of a larger “war on Islam,” then a general hostility to the United States is likely to grow. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the outgoing chairman of the African Union Commission, is quoted in the media as saying, “We are living in turbulent times. The very country to which many of our people were taken as slaves during the transatlantic slave trade has now decided to ban refugees from some of our countries. What do we do about this? Indeed, this is one of the greatest challenges to our unity and solidarity.” Among at least some African intellectuals, President Trump’s ban and suspension is likely to become part of a general narrative of grievance against the west. (Dlamini-Zuma is a UK-trained medical doctor, the ex-wife of South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma, ex-minister of health, and ex-foreign minister in successive, post-apartheid South African governments. She has never been particularly friendly toward the United States.) Dlamini-Zuma’s successor as the chair of the Commission of the African Union is Chad’s foreign minister, Moussa Faki Mahamat. He is a Muslim, and a former prime minister of Chad, where roughly 60 percent of the population is Muslim. He has been a leader in the regional fight against Islamist militants in northern Nigeria, Mali, Cameroon, and the Sahel. Were he and others of his ilk to come to see the United States as involved in a “war on Islam,” there would be new, detrimental consequences for U.S. interests.

The following is a guest post by Miles Kahler, senior fellow for global governance at the Council on Foreign Relations. Recent comments by then President-Elect Donald J. Trump—applauding the breakup of the European Union and declaring the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) “obsolete”—appear to confirm his deep skepticism or hostility toward major multilateral organizations. In the Trump worldview, bilateral deal-making among great powers is preferred; regional and multilateral organizations that might constrain the United States are suspect. Criticism of global institutions is not a novelty in American politics on either the left or the right. The breadth of criticism voiced by Trump and his entourage is new, however, and not only because it originates from a president. A central paradox of Trump’s rhetoric is its combination of claims that the United States has declined from past greatness and an assertion that the United States has unexploited bargaining power left on the table by his predecessors.  Global institutions are not viewed as instruments of American power (as they are in much of the rest of the world), but as restraints on the untrammeled exercise of that power. “Globalism” and its institutional supports, which have promoted a more open world economy, are tilted against the United States—even though the United States designed and promoted those institutions. Will this vision of American power, which appears set to marginalize or disrupt existing global institutions, be implemented by the new administration? Those who argue for continuity rather than rupture rely on the constraints of the global economy and the relative fragility of Trump’s political coalition. Whatever the bias of the Trump administration, the world economy continues to present problems that will demand solutions, and those solutions will often require multilateral negotiations and forums. Cross-border data flows, for example, have burgeoned in recent years, even as the growth of world trade has slowed. Regulation of those flows and coordination of national data policies remain a large gap in world trade architecture. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) innovated by incorporating rules governing those flows. Although Trump has withdrawn from the TPP, the demand for such rules will persist. The international economy could also move the Trump administration toward a more favorable stance in another way: crisis. As Edward Truman has suggested, crisis focuses minds on solutions that will likely involve the major multilaterals. The support for Trump’s views on global institutions is also politically fragile, despite the power of the presidency. Divergent views have been expressed by his own cabinet nominees, and congressional Republicans have long tilted toward support for liberalizing trade agreements. Despite political polarization, which has awarded more support for Trump’s views within the Republican electorate, public support overall for the United Nations and other international organizations and agreements—NATO, the Paris climate change agreement, and even the International Criminal Court, which the United States has not joined—remains strong. Rather than waiting complacently for these constraints to bind the Trump administration, however, internationalists should act on several fronts. Although the initial coalition behind Trump’s policies toward global governance is narrow, internationalists can work to broaden and deepen their own base of support. Arguments in favor of global governance are unlikely to shake the new president’s longstanding beliefs, but some could resonate: for example, most effective institutions have, at their core, a forum for great power bargaining, whether it is the UN Security Council or the Executive Boards of the Bretton Woods institutions. Internationalists should also turn to their own fractured coalition. Apart from national governments, the global agenda has been set in recent years by internationally active corporations on the one hand and international nongovernmental organizations on the other. These two sets of actors have often combatted one another, but on issues such as climate change and human rights, their cooperation has increased over the past decade. Now, in the face of nationalist and insular political forces, they may find even more common ground to act creatively in defense of economic openness, inclusive growth, and international collaboration. The greatest failing of internationalists, left and right, however, has been their predominant outward orientation. They have taken for granted the broad foundation of domestic support that remains among the public at large. Two cracks in that foundation require immediate attention. The chain of delegation to global institutions is long and mysterious—and therefore prone to conspiracy theories and populist attack. The processes of global negotiation and governance, already more transparent than they were a few decades ago, must be opened to greater legislative and public scrutiny. Benefits—both material and moral—of the global architecture must be promoted actively since the presidential bully pulpit may be directed at undermining these institutions. The second fault line is lack of attention to the domestic political and economic costs imposed by the existing international order. Proponents of globalization have too often assumed that those who have paid the costs of the liberal international order would somehow be compensated. Programs of compensation, however, were labeled domestic; for the internationally oriented, “not their department.” Without domestic initiatives that turn to the difficult issue of economic and social adjustment, whether caused by trade, migration, financial flows, or technological change, global governance—identified with globalization—will share the blame. Although national and domestic policies must play the largest role, global and regional institutions can contribute substantially in preventing and cushioning externally generated shocks. Successive shocks—China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, the global financial crisis, the eurozone crisis, and the surge of refugees to Europe in 2015—have set the stage for the political backlash that now besets global governance. National governments must compensate and assist those dislocated, but effective global governance can lower the probability and cost of those shocks. The Trump administration calls into question U.S. support for the pillars of global governance. The immediate and unfamiliar task of the internationalists who uphold this endangered architecture is ensuring that its processes are transparent, its benefits are widely distributed, and its contributions to everyday well-being are documented and appreciated.

As first reported in yesterday’s New York Times, President Donald J. Trump’s White House has prepared two executive orders that would slash U.S. funding for the United Nations and place a moratorium on any new multilateral treaties. Both of these draft documents (which this author has seen) are consistent with Trump’s hyper-nationalist, “America First” agenda. As such, they will play well with his populist base. But they reflect a short-sighted conception of U.S. national interests and signal a reckless abdication of U.S. global leadership. The most problematic of these orders is titled “Auditing and Reducing U.S. Funding of International Organizations.” It calls for the establishment of an International Funding Advisory Committee, including the secretaries of state and defense, attorney general, Office of Management and Budget director, director of national intelligence, and national security advisor (but interestingly, not new UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who testified at her confirmation hearing: “I do not think we need to pull money for the UN.”). The committee’s mandate would be to determine which UN agencies and other international bodies merit continued funding and which should be cut. Most startlingly, the directive instructs the committee to slash voluntary contributions to UN agencies by 40 percent. It also envisions placing numerous conditions on continued U.S. support for the United Nations’ regular and peacekeeping budget—legally binding obligations that are assessed annually—potentially placing the United States in violation of its treaty obligations under the UN Charter. The document is couched in the language of fiscal stewardship and patriotic nationalism, promising to “help identify wasteful and counterproductive giving” and avoid supporting a “United Nations [that] often pursues an agenda contrary to American interests.” But the executive order is at once blunt, narrow-minded, and myopic. It grossly exaggerates the financial burden that UN bodies impose upon U.S. taxpayers. It ignores the multiple practical benefits the United States obtains from its support for multilateral bodies. And it is based on false premises about the purpose of international organizations and the nature of multilateral diplomacy. If implemented, the executive order would undermine multilateral mechanisms upon which U.S. citizens depend every day to advance their security, prosperity, well-being, and values. Here is the reality: U.S. support for international organizations is modest. The United States is indeed the UN’s largest financial contributor, supporting approximately 25 percent of its expenditures (amounting to approximately 8 billion dollars in recent years). This percentage is only slightly higher than the U.S. share of the global economy. The draft order describes this financial commitment as “particularly burdensome given the current [U.S.] fiscal crisis and ballooning budget deficits and national debt.” Here, a little perspective is in order. Federal expenditures in 2016 amounted to 3.54 trillion dollars (out of a 15.6 trillion dollar economy), meaning that U.S. support for the United Nations accounts for less than one four-hundredth of the federal budget. By comparison, Congress in 2015 provided the Pentagon with a budget of $598 billion—nearly 75 times what it allocated to the United Nations agencies and activities. It is also money well spent. What does the United States get for this modest outlay? Quite a lot. U.S. funding supports dozens of agencies, programs, and initiatives doing invaluable, often unsung work. Consider the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which has helped reduce global child mortality rates steeply. Or the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and World Food Program (WFP), which help protect and feed the more than 65 million people currently displaced by conflict or natural disaster. Or the World Health Organization (WHO), which tracks and combats new and emerging infectious diseases—like Zika—before they can become global pandemics. The list goes on and on. Equally important, the United States leverages its UN contributions four-fold, since for every quarter it allocates to the United Nations, it effectively gets a dollar’s worth of effort, thanks to others’ payments. Thanks to the UN, the United States can share global burdens to advance foreign policy goals that it would otherwise need to pursue on its own—or not at all. Consider peacekeeping. Globally, more than one hundred thousand UN “blue helmets,” in sixteen missions, are helping to reduce human slaughter, despite often being outgunned by combatants. Peacekeeping is hardly perfect—and it needs both reform and resources. But it also permits the United States to help bring stability in places where atrocities would otherwise be rampant, without putting its own soldiers on the line. And as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the United States must authorize every single operation. The administration’s proposed slashing is arbitrary and counterproductive. Without any apparent rationale, the president’s draft order directs his administration to seek “at least a forty percent overall decrease” in annual voluntary funding for the United Nations, “whether by reduction or outright termination of current funding.” This ill-considered directive will require draconian cuts to critical agencies like WHO, WFP, and UNHCR. Why establish such an arbitrary target before the administration actually conducts its review of UN programs—which is slated to be completed by January 1, 2018? There are two immediate problems with this edict. First, the United States will be forced to choose between imperatives—either feeding refugees or responding quickly to disease outbreaks, for instance. Second, other UN members will surely follow the U.S. lead, cherry-picking their own priorities and giving short shrift to UN missions the United States favors. Renouncing assessed contributions is unwise—and potentially illegal. The directive’s most reckless guidance is that the new interagency committee recommend strategies to shift any U.S. funding for the UN that is currently assessed on an annual basis to a purely “voluntary” basis. This radical step has long been the dream of UN skeptics like Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and former U.S. envoy to the United Nations John Bolton, who proposed just such a move following Trump’s election. While international legal opinion is divided, many lawyers regard such a unilateral step as a violation of solemn U.S. legal obligations under the UN Charter and other, agency-relevant international agreements. Beyond wreaking havoc on the UN budget, this rash move would undermine U.S. diplomatic influence at the United Nations, including Washington’s ability to shape the UN agenda. It would also set a terrible precedent, eliciting copycat behavior. Were the U.S. to declare peacekeeping support to be purely voluntary, others would do likewise, inevitably resulting in dwindling financial or (in the case of large troop contributing countries like India) military contributions to UN operations. Alternatively, UN members could renounce their assessments for the International Atomic Energy Agency, weakening its capacity to monitor and inspect states suspected of violating their commitments to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Or they might reduce their contributions to the International Civil Aviation Organization, endangering the safety of airline passengers—including in the United States. The UN is flawed and frustrating—but also indispensable to the United States. Pervading this hastily drafted document is a troubling, black-and-white vision of the United Nations. The Trump White House appears to believe that UN agencies must either do U.S. bidding or be cut off. This is, frankly, a juvenile attitude unbecoming of the world’s only superpower. By all measures, the United States is the most influential player in the United Nations. But that does not mean that it always gets its way in complex negotiations over contentious topics. The 193-member UN General Assembly, where the United States sometimes finds itself on the losing end of symbolic but typically meaningless resolutions, can be particularly infuriating. But there is little evidence that “the United Nations often pursues an agenda contrary to American interests,” as the draft executive order claims. Quite the reverse. The United Nations seldom pursues an agenda contrary to American interests. That could change, however, if the Trump administration begins to withdraw U.S. financial and diplomatic support from the world body—or to treat it as no more than an instrument of narrow U.S. nationalism. By abdicating leadership at the United Nations, the United States will simply pave the way for other powers—not least China and Russia—to set the agenda, to the detriment of U.S. interests. The hard reality is that multilateral diplomacy is frustrating. It requires expending a lot of shoe leather, not simply in New York but in member state capitals. That is especially true when it comes to the perennial challenge of UN management reform. President Trump’s draft executive order sets a year-long deadline for reporting back on specific UN cuts. Let’s hope he uses that time, working with Congress, to adopt more mature approach to the United Nations.

This blog post is part of a series entitled Global Agenda, in which experts will identify major global challenges facing President-Elect Trump, the options available to him, and what is at stake for the United States and its partners. This following post is authored by Edward Alden, Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. For more than three decades, Donald Trump has made it clear that, if ever elected president, he would turn U.S. trade policy in a radically different direction. And he himself would be at the helm. “What I would do if elected president would be to appoint myself U.S. Trade Representative,” he wrote in his 2000 book The America We Deserve, when he was considering a run for president on the Reform Party ticket. “My lawyers have checked, and the president has this authority. I would take personal charge of negotiations…. Our trading partners would have to sit across the table from Donald Trump and I guarantee you the rip-off of the United States would end.” Now, against all odds, Trump is about to become the president of the United States, and he has the extraordinary opportunity to upend an elite consensus that has shaped America’s global strategy since the second World War. In an article just published in Politico Magazine, I argue that Trump’s election indeed promises a new way forward that will be the most nationalist—and likely protectionist—that the United States has seen in nearly a century. The American political system—let alone the transnational elites now gathering in Davos, Switzerland—has not yet come to terms with just how massive the changes are likely to be. Read "The Roots of Trump’s Trade Rage" by Edward Alden in Politico Magazine.

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. This month David Shearer of New Zealand will take the helm of South Sudan’s beleaguered peacekeeping operation (the UN Mission in South Sudan, or UNMISS). Outgoing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon tapped Shearer, a former New Zealand MP, as his special representative to oversee one of the United Nations’ most expensive missions, composed of nearly fourteen thousand uniformed personnel and two thousand civilians. Shearer assumes leadership at a dangerous time for the world’s youngest country. Ushered into independence on a wave of optimism five years ago, South Sudan quickly descended into violent conflict, first against Sudan and then later into a civil war that began in 2013. Under significant international pressure, President Salva Kiir and his main rival, Riek Machar, agreed in August 2015 to a regionally-brokered peace agreement, which introduced a tenuous power-sharing arrangement. In a sign of just how fragile the truce was, Machar was not sworn in as vice-president until he returned to South Sudan eight months later. Today, South Sudan faces intertwined security, political, economic, and humanitarian crises. In July 2016, the capital of Juba erupted into violence, dealing what may be a fatal blow to the peace process. Machar again fled the country and shortly after, Taban Deng Gai, formerly the opposition’s chief negotiator, was sworn in as the new vice-president. The move, which international actors accepted for pragmatic reasons, has sidelined much of the opposition. Denied a means to engage politically, those still loyal to Machar are now likely to advance their objectives through violence. As the dry season begins, ominous warning signs point to renewed clashes, including in areas previously unaffected by conflict. Government and opposition groups are recruiting fighters and stocking up on arms in what combatants increasingly see as an existential conflict. Intertribal incitement has escalated. The United Nations has warned of the potential for genocide. President Kiir has proposed a national dialogue. In other circumstances, this could help deescalate the conflict. But the UN has warned that the deteriorating security environment will not allow for an inclusive process. As with previous rounds of fighting, civilians will again be in the crosshairs of attacks by both government and opposition. Aware of the danger, more than one million South Sudanese have fled to neighboring countries. Those who stay face record levels of food insecurity. The risk of famine looms. UN peacekeepers have struggled to maintain order in the face of repeated cycles of violence in South Sudan. UNMISS was initially authorized in 2011, with a mandate to help build the capacity of the new government and protect civilians. As civil war consumed the country in 2013, civilians sought protection from the warring parties on UN bases. The Security Council responded by restructuring the peacekeeping mission to place priority on the protection of civilians. The mission has struggled with the enormity of the task, however, and its troops have repeatedly failed to implement their mandate. According to one inquiry into clashes at a protection site in Malakal in early 2016, UN troops abandoned their posts or refused to engage combatants in a number of instances, endangering civilians. A second investigation into violence that erupted in July 2016 detailed a “chaotic and ineffective response,” including abandonment of posts and instances of failure to protect civilians. In response, Ban Ki-moon took the unusual step of firing the mission’s Kenyan force commander, drawing the ire of the Kenyan government, which announced its intent to withdraw all of its more than one thousand peacekeepers from UNMISS. Peacekeepers should not be given a pass for failing to implement their mandate, particularly when they abandon posts, putting civilians at risk and undermining the credibility of their mission. But some perspective is in order: With the August 2015 agreement in tatters, UN peacekeepers in South Sudan are being asked to keep peace where there is none to keep. Nor is there any consensus among regional and international partners on where to go from here. Despite dire warnings from Ban Ki-moon and the head of UN humanitarian affairs, the Security Council recently failed to agree on implementing a long overdue arms embargo, unable to garner the nine needed votes (China and Russia were among those who abstained). Though a belated step, such an embargo could have stemmed the violence while symbolizing the council’s unified effort to bring peace to South Sudan. Regional powers, with competing interests in South Sudan, are also divided on how to proceed. In practical terms, UNMISS is nowhere near large enough to fulfill its mandate. Three years after civil war erupted, peacekeepers are still sheltering more than two hundred thousand civilians in porous protection camps.  In the wake of the violence of summer 2016, the Security Council authorized the deployment of a 4,000-strong protection force, to be drawn from countries in the region, with a mandate to facilitate free movement in Juba, protect the Juba airport, and protect civilians, UN staff, and humanitarian workers. The national government consented to the force under regional and international pressure, but it has since obstructed efforts to deploy it. As signs point to potential genocide, the United Nations has warned that its peacekeeping mission lacks “the appropriate reach, manpower or capabilities to stop mass atrocities.” The government of South Sudan has also placed restrictions on the ability of previously deployed UNMISS forces to move freely about the country, hindering the mission’s ability to implement its mandate—and violating the status of forces agreement signed by the government and United Nations. In his last report on UNMISS to the Security Council, Ban Ki-moon warned that this “barrage” of restrictions was paralyzing the mission. Government forces regularly harass UNMISS staff and the mission itself came under fire during the July 2016 violence. Attacks on UN personnel by government troops increased in the months after. All of this comes as the United Nations, United States, and African Union Commission are undergoing leadership transitions. Meanwhile, UNMISS itself has been without a leader and force commander since November. This leadership vacuum, which coincides with the onset of the dry season, is likely to tempt combatants to try to reshape realities on the ground and strengthen their bargaining hand. All this presents quite a challenge to the new UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, who took office on January 1, and David Shearer, his man in Juba. Having already served the United Nations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon, Shearer faces what may be his toughest post yet. As head of UMISS, he will need to assess how he can support resuscitating a moribund political process in South Sudan, as well as assisting an inclusive national dialogue if one is forthcoming. He will also need to rapidly assess the capacity of the mission to carry out its mandate, as well as accelerate implementation of the recommendations stemming from the two 2016 inquiries on mission performance. His priorities must include ensuring that all personnel understand the UNMISS mandate and conducting regular scenario-based exercises, so that staff are equipped to protect civilians and know how to respond when the mission comes under attack. For Guterres, who has made conflict prevention a core theme of his tenure, the task may be even harder: persuading an often fractious Security Council—including an incoming, nationally focused U.S. administration—that it must ramp up the United Nations’ presence in South Sudan or risk massive loss of life.

After a tumultuous 2016, the world holds its breath for what the coming year may bring. Angry populism is on the march. Great power relations are tense. The Middle East has imploded. Meanwhile, President-Elect Donald J. Trump proposes to upend U.S. foreign policy in areas from trade to climate, alliances to nonproliferation, terrorism to human rights. In a world in disarray, can multilateralism deliver? Ten major summits during 2017 will help provide an answer. Here’s what to look for at each. European Union Summit (March 25, 2017, Rome). Last June, British voters caused a geopolitical earthquake by voting to leave the European Union (EU). UK Prime Minister Theresa May promises to invoke Article 50 by the end of March, starting the clock on the arduous, two-year negotiations over “Brexit.” That same month, leaders of the remaining twenty-seven EU member states gather in the Eternal City to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome (1957), which established the European Economic Community among the original six (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany). They are billing the somber summit as the culmination of a six-month “political reflection on the future of the European Union,” intended to convince EU citizens that the bloc remains capable of controlling migration, providing security, and delivering economic growth. They have their work cut for them, given rising nativism, growing terrorist fears, high unemployment, and looming elections in several EU states, notably France and Germany. Host Italy, meanwhile, faces an uncertain future following the resignation of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi after a failed referendum. G7 Summit (May 26–27, Toarmina, Italy). Italy plays host again in late May, when leaders of the seven most important advanced market democracies (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) plus the EU gather in this historic city on Sicily’s stunning Ionian coast. Appropriately—given the setting at the crossroads of the Mediterranean—the agenda will focus on the global migration crisis, which has hit Italy hard, as well as efforts to stabilize North Africa and the Middle East, from which many migrants and refugees have fled. But the real drama at Donald Trump’s first G7 summit will be whether Western powers remain united toward Russia, which they suspended from the G8 in 2014, after its annexation of Crimea. The EU has already extended sanctions on Russia for another six months. But Trump has vowed to reset ties with Moscow and may go against his own party’s push for renewed sanctions. NATO Leaders Summit (Date TBD, Brussels). U.S.-European differences could also be on display when Trump and the leaders of the other NATO members gather at the alliance’s gleaming new headquarters in Brussels. The alliance, unlike the building, is in need of repair. Baltic and East European states have been unnerved by Trump’s depiction of NATO as “obsolete” and his suggestion that U.S. defense guarantees be contingent on greater burden-sharing. The alliance may also be divided over how to confront and deter Russia, particularly if Trump continues to insist (with a certainty that has “horrified” close U.S. allies who know better) that Moscow did not hack the 2016 U.S. election. Conference on the Ocean (June 5–9, New York). Thanks to the personal interest of Secretary of State John Kerry, the world has devoted unprecedented attention over the past four years to protecting marine environments from pollution, overfishing, and acidification. The critical question now is whether this momentum will continue. In early June the United Nations will host “Our Oceans, Our Future.” This high-level meeting will support implementation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14, designed to encourage conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas, and marine resources therein. The world will be looking to the Trump administration for signals about where it stands when it comes to protecting a vast ecosystem critical to supporting life on Earth. G20 Summit (July 7–8, Hamburg, Germany). The new geopolitics and geoeconomics of the Trump era will come into sharper focus in July, when the biggest developed and developing countries meet in Hamburg. Chancellor Angela Merkel, this year’s host, has emerged as the world’s most important defender of globalization. She has chosen “shaping an interconnected world” as the theme of this year’s summit. Her priorities include fostering economic resilience, advancing sustainable development, empowering women, implementing the Paris climate agreement, and advancing peace and development in Africa. Beyond the final communiqué of commitments, observers will be focusing on interactions between President Trump and his major non-Western counterparts, particularly Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China, and Narendra Modi of India. BRICS Summit (September, Xiamen, China). At the end of the summer, five of the world’s biggest emerging economies—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—will gather in China for the ninth BRICS summit. The choice of location is noteworthy. The coastal city of Xiamen was one of the nation’s first special economic zones, serving as a window to the global economy and a destination for foreign investment. Xiamen also sits right across the Taiwan Strait from Taiwan itself, which thanks to President-Elect Trump has reemerged as a flashpoint in Sino-American relations. Look to President Xi to use the summit to advance solidarity within the heterogeneous BRICS bloc, as well as elevate its diplomatic profile as a potential geopolitical and economic counterweight to the West. Opening of UN General Assembly (September 12–25, New York). In September, President Trump will deliver his maiden speech to the United Nations. Back in 2012, he complained about the “cheap 12 inch sq. marble tiles behind the speaker at UN,” tweeting that he would be happy to replace them with “beautiful marble slabs” if asked. More recently the president-elect has suggested he has more thorough UN remodeling in mind. “The United Nations has such great potential,” he tweeted after the Security Council’s December 23 vote against Israel’s settlement policy. “But right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. Sad!” World leaders will be paying close attention to both the tone and substance of his remarks. These may include a declaration that henceforth U.S. contributions to the UN’s regular and peacekeeping budgets (currently assessed annually) will be treated as purely “voluntary.” For incoming Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, keeping U.S.-UN relations on an even keel will be a constant test. ASEAN and East Asia Summits (April and November, Philippines). The coming year will be a big one for President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, which holds the rotating chair of the ten-nation Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). The Filipino strongman will host two ASEAN summits, in April (in Manila) and November (at Clark Air Base in Luzon). The latter event will coincide with the East Asia Summit, where President Xi will surely tout his newly cozy relationship with Duterte. Less certain is whether President Trump will bother to show up and (if he does) what message he will send Duterte, Xi, and other attendees about maritime disputes in the South China Sea, as well as U.S. staying power in the region. The new Chinese-Filipino partnership suggests that rather than hedging against China’s rise, neighbors may be drawn into its orbit. This trend could accelerate if Trump offers no alternative to the Trans-Pacific Partnership that he has scorned, leaving the Chinese-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership as the only viable alternative. UNFCCC COP 23 (November 6–17, Bonn). The sleepy former capital of West Germany will host 2017’s last major multilateral summit, the annual conference of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Despite the location, the conference will in fact be organized by Fiji—marking the first time that a small island state has been given the honor. The conference should provide a bellwether for gauging the U.S. commitment to the global climate change agenda, including whether the new president follows through on his pledge to cancel the Paris Accord. Fiji’s prime minister has already invited the president-elect to visit his nation to see the effects of climate change. Abdicating leadership in climate negotiations would be costly for the United States, as China—which has already donated $224k to support Fiji’s presidency—is poised to fill the void. There will be no shortage of international events to watch closely in 2017 as the world seeks clues for how the incoming Trump administration will navigate often thorny diplomatic questions and handle surprises that could upend the goals of a number of these meetings. Officials are advised to ring in the New Year in style before the hard work begins.

Among the many foreign policy uncertainties created by Donald Trump’s election, there is one prediction we can take to the bank: The United Nations is going to get hammered. An unapologetic nationalist is bound for the White House, Republicans are in control of both houses of Congress—and the world body is in their crosshairs. Last week’s Security Council vote to condemn Israeli settlements in the West Bank—a resolution on which the Obama administration controversially abstained—has enraged GOP legislators. The President-elect has also lashed out, tweeting, "The United Nations has such great potential. But right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. Sad!" Secretary of State John Kerry’s tried today to defend US diplomacy at the UN, but Republicans on Capitol Hill are determined to pass legislation condemning the Council. Read the full op-ed here.

A survey by IRIN, an independent, non-profit news agency now separate from the UN, lists the top twenty recipients and donors of emergency aid. Citing the OECD, it reports that total emergency aid spending in 2016 was $22 billion, about 16 percent of the $131.6 billion in total international aid spending. Syria and Iraq top the list of twenty emergency aid recipients. The ten African states are: South Sudan (4), Ethiopia (6), Somalia (10), Sudan (11), Democratic Republic of the Congo (12), Nigeria (14), Chad (16), Central African Republic (18), Zimbabwe (19), and Uganda (20). The others are in the Middle East (Yemen, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, and Palestine) or south Asia (Afghanistan and Pakistan). For the first time, an EU-member state is on the list: Greece. IRIN ranks donor countries by the size of their contributions to emergency aid and also by percentage of their national income. The United States is by far the largest donor in absolute terms, about $6 billion. The European Union (EU) is number two. However, in addition to contributions through the EU, certain members made additional, substantial contributions directly from their own national budgets: Germany (3), the UK (4), Sweden (8), Netherlands (12), and Denmark (14). Adding the contributions of EU-member states to that of the EU collectively makes them the largest donor. Other major non-EU donors were Japan (5), Norway (6), the United Arab Emirates (7), Canada (9), Saudi Arabia (11), and Switzerland (13). If the criteria is percentage of donor national income devoted to emergency aid, the list looks different. Norway (1), Luxembourg (2), United Arab Emirates (3), Sweden (4), Denmark (5), Germany (6), Kuwait (7), UK (8), Ireland (9), and Saudi Arabia (10). The United States is only sixteen. It is no surprise that emergency assistance donations are mostly from the United States and the EU, plus Japan, Canada and the rich Gulf States. Emergency assistance recipients are found in war zones, essentially in the Middle East and Africa.

High profile visits to war or disaster zones have long been common and popular among senior U.S. officials, as has foreign travel in general. Hillary Clinton was proud that she had traveled to 112 countries as secretary of state. At the same time, security requirements have grown, seemingly exponentially, often causing indignation among local people because of the disruption in their daily lives. And sometimes tragedy happens, as in Cameroon, where U.S. ambassador to the UN Samantha Power’s speeding motorcade killed a child in April. But, U.S. officials welcome the U.S. media attention such visits provide, as do local elites and politicians who ae often disconnected from the people they ostensibly govern. Ambassador Power’s entourage included nine journalists, and a purpose of the visit was to call attention to refugees. But, Washington too often overlooks the downside among host populations, if not elites, to the security requirements of U.S. visitors. On December 16, The New York Times released a report documenting the April 18, 2016 accident when a vehicle in Ambassador Power’s motorcade struck and killed a six-year old child in a Cameroonian village. Power was on her way to a refugee camp that housed sixty thousand people forced from their homes by the radical Islamist movement Boko Haram. Her fourteen vehicle motorcade was traveling through the village at an estimated forty-five miles per hour. Following usual security procedures, the motorcade did not stop, though an ambulance, part of the motorcade, did. But the child was already dead. According to the New York Times, Ambassador Power was personally devastated when she heard the news. Against the advice of her security people, she returned to the village to offer condolences, where her reception was icy. The U.S. Department of State has paid compensation to the family of the child: $1,700 in cash, two cows, sacks of flour, rice, salt, sugar, onions, cartons of soap, and oil. The Times also reports that the U.S. government has built a well near the front of the family house. Ambassador Power has established an escrow account personally to pay the school fees of the victim’s siblings through high school. Ambassador Power’s security was tight: in addition to Cameroonian elite forces it included U.S. Navy SEALs. U.S security personnel dictated the size of the motorcade, its speed, and the fact that it did not stop. After all, Boko Haram had conducted recent operations only twenty miles away. With respect to the security of U.S. officials, as the Times observes, “Failure is unacceptable: Congressional panels spent two years and more than $7 million investigating why the State Department, the Pentagon, and the Central Intelligence Agency were not able to prevent the deaths of four Americans, including the ambassador to Libya, when the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi was stormed in 2012.”

Samantha Dickinson is an internet governance consultant and writer. You can follow her on Twitter at @sgdickinson and via her blog, Lingua Synaptica. Last week, Mexico hosted the 11th Internet Governance Forum (IGF), an annual UN-convened conference where diplomats, tech experts, companies, academics and non-profit groups discuss anything and everything related to the internet. This was the first IGF since the UN General Assembly renewed its mandate last year that required the forum to improve, particularly in terms of attracting greater participation from stakeholders in developing countries. If the 3000 registered participants at last week’s IGF is anything to go by, the new and improved IGF is a success. New topics such as international trade agreements and the future of the digital economy reflected wider global angst about globalization and job loss. There was also increased visibility of gender issues in workshops, although panel composition in many non-gender based sessions still showed a significant bias towards men. Sustainable development figured prominently in the discussions as part of a global effort to use information and communications technologies (ICTs) to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Part of the success of IGF, however, is not its official program, but its side meetings. With such a wide range of issues under discussion, the IGF is perhaps the best opportunity participants have each year to meet others who normally attend separate meeting circuits. This use of IGF as a facilitator for connecting with others goes back to the original intent of the IGF as documented in the 2005 Tunis Agenda and probably should be marketed more to encourage greater participation from governments, many of whom are still suspicious about the usefulness of a forum that does not make decisions. Despite improvements, the IGF is still chronically underfunded and struggles to deliver on everything asked of it. Like many internet ventures, volunteerism and ad-hoc funding from supportive governments, nonprofits and tech companies keep it afloat. It is not clear, however, if this strategy will last until the end of the IGF’s second mandate in 2025 given the increasing number of events added to the annual internet governance calendar, each which increasingly demand a slice of stakeholders’ time and resources. In addition, the rise of nationalism in many countries could further erode governmental support for IGF, which is fundamentally an exercise in international cooperation. Another complication is the creation of the multistakeholder and unfortunately named Science and Technology and Innovation (STI) Forum under the auspices of the SDGs. Originally, the intention was for the STI Forum to steer clear of ICTs and concentrate on science, technologies other than ICTs and innovation. However, ICTs and the internet are so integral to science and innovation that overlap has become inevitable. With developing countries being highly committed to the SDGs, which are closely aligned with their needs, and less committed to the IGF, which is still viewed skeptically as supporting a U.S.-centric view of what the internet should be, there is a risk that the IGF could lose government and private sector interest. Throughout its life, the IGF’s biggest moral support has always come from civil society. Sadly, moral support does not pay the bills. If governments and the private sector refocus their scarce resources on the SDGs, then the IGF may find itself being absorbed somewhere else or abandoned altogether. Ultimately, the resource and overlap challenges facing the IGF are a symptom of the challenges associated with defining internet governance, which currently incorporates both governance of the Internet (how the protocols work, etc.) and governance on the Internet (how should content be regulated online, etc.). There are no “electricity governance” forums where participants discuss anything and everything that use electricity, or “road governance” forums where cyclist health issues are discussed because cyclists use roads. Instead, cyclist health is rightly considered part of health portfolio instead of the roads portfolio. But in internet governance, any issue that has an internet connection is currently subsumed into the increasingly distorted basket labeled “internet governance.” The larger the basket, the harder it is to manage. Supporters of the IGF need to be more discerning in their definitions of what is of relevance and what should be nudged back to the venues that have traditionally dealt with a particular topic. For example, issues of human rights and trade online are probably best dealt in venues that have explicit responsibilities in those areas, such as the UN Human Rights Council and the World Trade Organization. Part of the problem may be that those venues are not always as open and multistakeholder as the IGF, which has therefore attracted forum shoppers not able to influence the decision-making processes of traditional multilateral venues. The ultimate solution to saving the IGF may be to ensure that older international institutions take on some of the characteristics of the IGF, allowing stakeholders to gain confidence in them, and prevent the IGF being overburdened with issues that are best dealt with elsewhere.