Treaties and Agreements

With the government shut down, the White House announced yesterday that the President’s upcoming trip to Asia, scheduled to begin October 6, will be cut short. Plans to visit Malaysia and the Philippines have been shelved for now, though Obama will still attend the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting of leaders in Bali, Indonesia. Republicans will undoubtedly accuse Obama of hitting the beach rather than resolving the budget crisis, but the President’s decision to keep his commitment to APEC makes sense. Southeast Asia is increasingly critical to U.S. interests, and Obama has made the region the heart of his government’s “pivot” of forces and diplomatic personnel to Asia. To make good on that goal, Obama should push forward several critical ideas that would help the region become a better market and trading partner, and that would enhance stability in Southeast Asia. For the whole article, and the recommendations, read here.  

Later this week, President Obama will embark on a six-day trip to Southeast Asia, visiting Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei, to attend the East Asia Summit, the annual ASEAN leaders summit, and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, along with a global entrepreneurs’ meeting in Malaysia. It might seem surprising that the president would leave the United States at such a critical time in federal budget negotiations, but these are the biggest leaders’ meetings in Asia, and since 2009, the White House has committed to increasing the presence of the president and other top Cabinet officials in Asia. Certainly, face time is critical in Southeast Asia, and the president’s presence at these summits is a sign of the continued U.S. commitment to the region, a sign further burnished by the launch earlier this year of the comprehensive partnership with Vietnam. But what about the substance of these meetings? The White House has pledged to finalize the Trans Pacific Partnership(TPP) by the end of this year, and this will be the top subject at nearly all the summits Obama attends. But the TPP negotiations held in Washington two weeks ago did not make substantial progress on many sectors, and most major U.S. business trade groups are pressing Obama not to make the kinds of compromises on intellectual property during his trip to Asia that most of the other TPP countries demand for talks to be finalized. And even if they did actually finalize TPP, the White House has almost no chance of getting fast trade track authority from Congress again, despite pledges by the Office of the United States Trade Representative to work for it. Without fast track, and with so many concerns in Congress over the vast scope of the TPP, it would likely be dead on arrival on the Hill. Later in the week, I’ll take a look at how Obama should, during his trip, address concerns over the state of political freedom in Southeast Asia, particularly in Malaysia, Myanmar, and Cambodia.  

In his revealing press conference closing out the G20 summit, President Obama provided the clearest summary yet of his thinking on Syria. Perhaps the most significant points were the following: *The purpose of any strike must be to defend the chemical weapons taboo: Obama made a clear distinction between Assad’s use of chemical weapons and the ongoing civil war in Syria. The rationale for striking Syria is punishment and deterrence, not tilting the balance in Syria’s grinding conflict. “Syria’s escalating use of chemical weapons threatens its neighbors,” the President said. “But more broadly, it threatens to unravel the international norm against chemical weapons embraced by 189 nations.” Even though Syria is not a member of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), Obama implied, the prohibition against the use of such weapons is now established as customary international law. Failing to respond to Syria’s violations would send a terrible “signal to rogue nations, authoritarian regimes, and terrorist organizations.” They would conclude that there is no consequence for using weapons of mass destruction. Among those “rogue nations” taking note of any international response—or lack thereof—is of course Iran. *This is not about choosing sides in Syria’s civil war. The President once again insisted that any strikes by the United States and other partners would be aimed at holding Assad accountable and deterring further chemical weapons use, not determining the outcome of the ongoing military struggle between Damascus and the rebels. As in previous statements, he insisted that “the underlying conflict can only be resolved through a political transition,” rather than militarily. Despite its differences with Moscow, the United States still hopes to move forward with the Geneva peace process. In clinging to this two-track approach, the President risks running afoul of Republican hawks in Congress, including Senator John McCain, who clearly envision crippling strikes on Assad’s military as a way to tilt the playing field toward the rebels. Beyond the need to keep GOP interventionists on board, Obama faces a more practical military quandary:  Can he actually bring off the “Goldilocks” scenario he seeks? That is, can he calibrate any military strikes so that they are sufficiently punishing to persuade Assad to stick to conventional weapons without being so devastating that they ensure his swift collapse and/or the battlefield triumph of rebels (many of whom the White House distrusts for their jihadist, anti-Western orientation). *Paralysis in the United Nations cannot be an excuse for inaction. One of the supreme ironies of the Syrian situation is the spectacle of a Democratic president elected on a platform of multilateral cooperation now espousing some of the “unilateralist” arguments used by his predecessor, George W. Bush.  “There are a number of countries,” Obama observed in St. Petersburg, “that just as a matter of principle believe that if military action is to be taken, it needs to go through the U.N. Security Council.” Obama begged to differ. Although declaring himself “a strong supporter of the United Nations,” he insisted that in certain grave situations it is legitimate to act without the authorization of the Security Council, when the latter is hamstrung by internal divisions. “I would greatly prefer working through multilateral channels and through the United Nations to get this done,” he said, but given that impossibility, the United States had to look to other approaches to “enforcing international norms and international law.” Of course, Bill Clinton also made similar arguments to justify  the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo. *Presidents should take note of public opinion but must not be ruled by it. As the President reminded the press corps, he was elected by the American people to end wars (in Iraq and Afghanistan), not to begin them. He is fully aware that U.S. citizens are exhausted by more than a decade of war and wondering why their country must once again take risks by intervening in another nation’s conflict. The President replied with a couple of apposite historical analogies. In 1940, he recalled, there was little U.S. public enthusiasm for aiding the United Kingdom during the Battle of Britain. But the United States did the right thing in aiding Winston Churchill and his countrymen in surviving the assault from Nazi Germany. Warming to the theme, Obama noted that if a replay of the Rwandan genocide were to occur right now, and the American people were asked whether the United States should intervene, “I think it’s fair to say that it probably wouldn’t poll real well.” But failing to act on this moral imperative would once again consign hundreds of thousands of innocents to slaughter. *The United States retains special responsibilities as the ultimate custodian of world order. A recurrent refrain of U.S. legislators and citizens, the President acknowledged, is, in effect, why us? Why should our country always have to take the bloody field, while others watch from the sidelines? Obama’s answer was that the world continues to depend on the United States, as the most powerful country in the world, to preserve international law, peace and security. “There are going to be times…where, as is true here, the international community is stuck for a whole variety of political reasons. And if that’s the case, people are going to look to the United States and say, ‘what are you going to do about it?’ and that’s not a responsibility we always enjoy.”  Indeed the “leader of a smaller country” had recently told him, “I don’t envy you because…nobody expects me to do anything about chemical weapons around the world,” whereas “people do look to the United States.” Obama concluded: “And the question for the American people is, is that [a] responsibility that we’re willing to bear”?  The President has already provided his own answer: There is no substitute to American leadership. In the coming days he will be seeking to shore up support from an inward-looking Congress and a war-weary public that the United States—today’s “weary titan”—should continue to shoulder the responsibilities of power.

Amidst the din of Syrian intervention talk and Fed picks, the Obama administration is pushing forward quietly, but determinedly, to flesh out the pivot to Asia. While most of the critical attention on the pivot or rebalance is paid to what is transpiring on the security front, there is real, albeit slow, progress on the trade front and the potential for significant advances in other areas such as environmental protection. Washington is pushing hardest to advance the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which if successful could be one of the signal achievements of the Obama administration’s second term. The high-end trade agreement involves negotiations among twelve countries over twenty-one widely disparate areas, such as government procurement and fishing subsidies. A meeting of the chief trade negotiators in Washington is scheduled for mid-September, and there is a continuous stream of thorny issues such as intellectual property on medicine and tariffs that must be waded through before a final agreement can be achieved. Washington is putting significant energy behind its efforts to get an agreement by the end of the year, but by most accounts this is overly ambitious. The administration’s efforts to promote regional security are also moving forward. Secretary of Defense Hagel recently traveled to Brunei for a meeting of the ASEAN defense ministers and along the way visited the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In the Philippines, there were further discussions of a framework agreement that would promote closer cooperation between the Philippine and U.S. armed forces and allow for a rotational presence of U.S. troops, much in the same way as there is in Singapore and Australia. Finally, Congress held hearings over the summer to explore ways in which the United States could enhance the rebalance through stronger U.S. action in areas such as environmental protection. The United States is already engaged in a number of cooperative efforts with the Lower Mekong Delta region and a particular area of new focus in this environmental partnership could well be Burma/Myanmar, where biodiversity and timber resources are under severe threat and could benefit significantly from U.S. assistance. Critics of the U.S. rebalance nonetheless continue to abound. The TPP comes under fire for the opaque nature of the negotiations as well as its exclusion—not deliberate or permanent—of China. Washington’s efforts on the security front—which are often mistaken as the sole element of the rebalance—have been blamed for sparking “an Asian arms race” and accelerating the “militarization of states.” Some also criticize the unstated focus on China as misplaced. Amitai Etzioni argues, for example, that the Obama administration’s decision to plan for Air-Sea Battle is an over-reaction to China’s development of its anti-access/area denial capabilities; moreover, in Etzioni’s view, China has used legitimate channels to resolve more recent trade and territorial disputes, so why is the United States creating a problem where none exists? It remains far from clear that Vietnam, the Philippines, India, and Japan would agree with such an assessment. Whether or not the rebalance is in fact part of a U.S. “imperial pivot,” as some suggest, these critics miss the most salient point. There is no rebalance without the rest of Asia. If Australia, Singapore, Vietnam and others don’t buy into the brand of partnership or leadership that the United States is selling, the rebalance will die a very quick death. To assume otherwise ignores the vigorous debates ongoing in many of these countries, and ultimately demeans these countries’ ability to recognize and pursue their own political, security, and trade interests.

Below is a guest post by Mark P. Lagon, adjunct senior fellow for human rights at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Solutions to global problems of pluralism and peace as in Syria and Egypt need not only international institutions, but also political imagination. Two institutional innovations, one American, the other international, show just what sort of impact creative thinking can have. One U.S. innovation with enduring value is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). It was crafted thirty years ago on the premise that U.S. Cold War interests were bound up in more nations becoming functioning democracies. Beyond holding elections, these countries needed capable parties, civil society actors, and leaders prepared to govern once elected. Rather than using covert CIA channels, the Endowment would embrace transparency, independently directing funds appropriated by Congress through non-governmental organizations to assist local democratization efforts. Critical to the NED’s success was its broad domestic base of support. Leaders of the Republican and Democratic Parties, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and (under the visionary leadership of Lane Kirkland) the AFL-CIO came together to form a partnership. Four implementing organs, one with each of those institutions, were created to carry out the Endowment’s mandate. This partnership proved all the more valuable after the Soviet Bloc crumbled. Today the NED provides critical lines of communication between the United States and civil societies in other countries, providing an invaluable complement in turbulent transitions to blunter policy instruments like aid to foreign governments or the use of military force. Subsequent U.S. public-private partnerships—from the Clinton-Gore “Reinventing Government” initiative to the George W. Bush sponsored Millennium Challenge Corporation—follow the creative trail blazed during the Reagan era NED. Kofi Annan was an innovator against atrocities. As head of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, he had witnessed firsthand the inability and unwillingness of the UN Secretariat and its political master, the UN Security Council, to stem atrocities in Bosnia and Rwanda while UN peacekeepers were in situ. After ascending to UN Secretary-General, he became determined this experience should never be repeated. But it was not just moral commitment which guided his response—it was creativity. He nudged the Canadian government to convene the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, shepherded by two former foreign ministers, Australian Gareth Evans and Algerian Mohammed Sahnoun. That Commission’s report uncorked the concept of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P). Annan created another commission in 2004, the High Level Panel related to UN reform, paving a path to a 2005 UN World Summit at the 60th UN General Assembly, which endorsed R2P. That same year, a U.S. commission on the future of the United Nations, co-chaired by former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Democratic Senate Leader George Mitchell, embraced the R2P norm. In subsequent years, the UN Security Council itself invoked the principle, first generally and then in the specific cases of Libya and Cote d’Ivoire. To be sure, the world should be chagrined at the failure to apply R2P to other atrocity situations. But it is amazing how quickly R2P has become embedded as a global norm—due, in no small measure, to Annan’s entrepreneurship. Consider how different the result can be when a leader fails to show creativity. This is, alas, a common, non-partisan failing. George W. Bush found himself in a policy cul-de-sac in the face of persistent atrocities in Darfur, despite the president’s sincere, “not on my watch” concern. His administration pushed for generous funding of humanitarian operations, dispatched tough-minded special envoys like Richard S. Williamson, and cajoled the African Union into significant deployment of peacekeepers in Darfur. Still, it was beyond the imagination of the President and his military chiefs how to marshal military assets to address a problem that an official U.S. legal finding called genocide, given the vast footprint of Bush’s own military deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lack of imagination has afflicted President Obama’s policy toward Syria. As Middle East specialist Michael Rubin observed on ABC’s This Week on July 7, 2013, the President resembles a dealer in blackjack: he waits to see all the other players’ hands before showing his own. In Syria, if Washington had not waited so long to assist the armed opposition to Assad’s butchery, the United States and partners might have strengthened the rebels’ more liberal elements, who will be critical to the nation’s future just governance. President Obama’s wait-and-see approach is evident in Egypt. During the week of August 19, 2013, it remained ambiguous whether or not the United States had cut off military aid to Egypt following what cannot be called anything else than a “coup” and a brutal crackdown. The indecisiveness and lack of creativity of the administration’s current policy is consistent with its irresolution in previous phases of the Egyptian crisis, including following President Morsi’s suspension of judicial review; or earlier when thousands first took to the streets in Cairo in January 2011 insisting on Mubarak’s ouster; or earlier still when the Obama administration (like multiple predecessors) bankrolled Mubarak when he offered the false dichotomy of “back me or get the Muslim Brotherhood.” A longstanding, static U.S. policy squandered opportunities to support the very moderate political forces whose capacity to compete and govern is so needed today (exactly what NED was created to nurture). NED and R2P show the creativity of leaders like Reagan and Annan—backed by plenty of help from others, like Lane Kirkland to Reagan, as well as Gareth Evans and Newt Gingrich, no less, to Annan. The lesson is an important one: Global governance requires creating institutions, partnerships and solutions…creatively.

Last week the UN’s latest “High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons” released a long-awaited report on global development. The resulting document—A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development—is not only a good read, it’s also a compelling blueprint for extending prosperity to the world’s poor. Formed in July 2012, the panel of twenty-seven luminaries had a clear mandate: to craft a “single, universal… agenda” to guide development cooperation once the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) expire in 2015. The panel—cochaired by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and British Prime Minister David Cameron—succeeded admirably. While building on the MDGs, the report widens the aperture of global development to consider new horizons and avenues to reach them. The MDGs, as the report notes, have mobilized unprecedented global support for development cooperation, particularly when it comes to foreign assistance. While the MDGs’ precise impact is hard to gauge, the years since 2000 have witnessed “the fastest reduction of poverty in human history.”  The number of people living in absolute poverty has declined by 500 million, and the incidence of infant mortality has declined by thirty percent. These are monumental achievements. At the same time, the MDGs were heavily focused on meeting basic human needs. As such, they overlooked other preconditions for sustainable development, among these security from violence, the provision of good governance and the rule of law, protection of human rights, reliable infrastructure, access to energy, and responsible environmental stewardship. The MDGs also framed development cooperation, narrowly, as essentially an aid-driven relationship, in which wealthy donors provided charity to the tin cups of demanding recipients. This ignored the many other policy instruments both sides could deploy, from trade to investment to technology transfer. The new report corrects these gaps by proposing an innovative post-2015 agenda organized around five broad themes, accompanied by twelve “illustrative” goals. The five themes are: “Leave no one behind”: The report embraces the goal of “ending” (not just reducing) poverty and hunger. Beyond these baseline objectives, the panel recognizes the imperative of improving equitable access to education and health care, as well as to the infrastructure of electricity,  transportation, and communications. Sustained progress on these fronts requires, as a matter of justice, reaching out to formerly excluded and marginalized communities. “Put sustainable development at the core”: In a long-overdue shift, the panel insists that the environmental aspects of sustainable development must be given equal weight with economic and social dimensions. In the past, the philosophy was “grow now, clean later.” But that “business as usual” path will only further degrade the ecosystem services—including fisheries, aquifiers, coral reefs, arable land, and forests—upon which humanity depends. “Transform economies for jobs and inclusive growth”: Ensuring decent employment and secure livelihoods for a swelling global population will require unprecedented investments in human capital and productivity. The report is bullish on the potential of technological innovation and private sector initiative to “unleash” entrepreneurial dynamism, diversify developing country economies, and turn the world’s swelling cities into engines of growth. “Build peace and effective, open and accountable institutions for all”:  For too long, as Thomas Carothers and Diane de Gramont point out in their new book, well-meaning donor nations have ignored  the fundamentally political nature of development, even as a growing percentage of the world’s poor is concentrated in fragile states plagued by arbitrary rule, corrupt elites, and endemic violence. The panel acknowledges the centrality of good governance,  civil liberties,  stable property rights, and peace as preconditions for human development. “Forge a new global partnership”: For all their value, the MDGs framed the development cooperation as principally an aid relationship between wealthy donors and poor recipients. The panel offers a more encompassing vision, celebrating the range of partnership possibilities between private and public sector actors, including international instituions, governments, local authorities, corporations, and civil society. The panel exhorts donors “to go beyond the aid agenda” by expanding trade and investment links, as well as transferring technology, to poor nations. Finally, the report calls on donors to get their “own house in order” by eliminating practices that cripple development, like tolerating corrupt business practices, providing havens for tax evasion and money-laundering, and exacerbating greenhouse gas emissions. So far so good. But how to realize these broad shifts? Here, the report pulls its punches a bit, offering only an “illustrative” (rather than “prescriptive”) list of twelve new goals to replace the MDGs. This decision may disappoint some readers. But it’s strategically wise. The ultimate goals will be hammered out within the UN General Assembly (UNGA),  which guards its few prerogatives jealously. In such a context, the panel’s subtle, indirect approach may pay greater dividends. The report’s twelve proposed post-2015 development goals are: 1.  End Poverty 2.  Empower Girls and Women and Achieve Gender Equality 3.  Provide Quality Education and Lifelong Learning 4.  Ensure Healthy Lives 5.  Ensure Food Security and Good Nutrition 6.  Achieve Universal Access to Water and Sanitation 7.  Secure Sustainable Energy 8.  Create Jobs, Sustainable Livelihoods, and Equitable Growth 9.  Manage Natural Resource Assets Sustainably 10.  Ensure Good Governance and Effective Institutions 11.  Ensure Stable and Peaceful Societies 12.  Create a Global Enabling Environment and Catalyse Long-Term Finance Each of these goals is accompanied by 4-6 “measurable targets,” ideally allowing one to gauge progress. (For example, a target for “securing sustainable energy” includes “doubling the share of renewable energy.”) As the report concedes, refining these targets, as well as developing accurate indicators with sufficient global coverage, will require a lot more technical work. One of the report’s most promising recommendations is its call for a “data revolution for sustainable development.” It has become a cliché, of course, that we live in an era of “big data.” What is less well known is the degree to which digital connectivity, including mobile telephony and social media, has begun to change the development landscape, empowering individuals and enabling communities to make large improvements in the quality of their lives and livelihoods. The same technologies can be usefully marshaled to gather timely data on local conditions and needs, domestic and international responses, and development outcomes. Recalling how far the world has come since 2000, the authors are “convinced that the next 15 years can be some of the most transformative in human history.” Their report offers a useful roadmap for that journey.

Coauthored with Andrew Reddie, research associate in the International Institutions and Global Governance program. The Final Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) convened by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) is being presented as a last-ditch attempt to negotiate standards for the international trade in conventional arms. After a twelve-year process involving panels of experts, regional dialogues, and a lengthy planning program, it is showtime for the international community.  Given the well-documented hurdles to achieving consensus among 193 UN member states on international issues, however, the treaty is unlikely to be the “final”  word on the issue. The previous round of negotiations on the ATT concluded in failure just eight months ago, in July 2012, in part because the Obama administration did not want to hand Republicans a red meat issue in the run-up to the November elections. This time around the White House seems to be on board, buoying prospects for the treaty’s signature. For the first time, the world is on the verge of new rules to govern trafficking in conventional weaponry, including small arms and light weapons. On the surface, governments  have accepted the compelling humanitarian need to curb the trade in instruments of violence too often exploited by war criminals, despots, and human rights abusers All is not rosy, however. As often occurs in complex multilateral negotiations, the language in the draft ATT has been diluted to reflect the discrete interests of major players. The United States, for example, has previously rejected proposals to regulate the trade in ammunition—of which the United States has half of the $4.3 billion annual trade. China, too, has added reservations to allow the “gifting” of weapons to favored strategic partners, including in sub-Saharan Africa. Russia, similarly, has requested an addendum to allow it to loan weapons to its own allies.  Clearly, these initiatives violate the spirit of the proposed agreement. There remains broad disagreement, moreover, concerning the scope of any treaty—and considerable hypocrisy among the great powers. For instance, while the Permanent Five members (P5) of the UN Security Council (China, Russia, United States, Great Britain, and France) signed a statement supporting “the highest common standards” for regulating the international trade in conventional weapons, all except Great Britain reject a joint statement of 120 countries (drafted by Mexico and backed by Germany) calling for a “strong” treaty. Given the reluctance of the P5 (excepting perhaps the UK) to create binding and international mechanisms of enforcement, the impact of the ATT will depend on the vigor of its implementation by domestic  authorities. The draft treaty [PDF]  proposes that each state party rely on its own national control system, with limited oversight from a modest international secretariat. In conjunction with Conference President Peter Woolcott’s decision to strike language broadening the treaty’s application to weapons not explicitly specified in the convention, states will enjoy broad license to define their own efforts to regulate the arms trade. In the absence of a more powerful secretariat empowered to define concepts like “war criminals,” “terrorists,” “illicit markets,” and the like, the long-anticipated ATT may make little difference in the real world. Beyond a weak secretariat, the effective implementation of the ATT will face three additional obstacles. The first relates to capacity. Poor states like Mali have already made clear that though they are likely to ratify the treaty, they will require financial and technical assistance to implement its complex provisions.  It remains unclear that the international donor community will offer such aid, particularly in an era of fiscal austerity. The second obstacle is less about capacity than about will—specifically, the lack of commitment among some “outlier” states to conform to the treaty, regardless of whether they ratify it. The draft ATT is different from other arms control treaties, such as those concerning the use of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons (as well as initiatives to ban landmines and cluster bombs), in that it would regulate a market in legitimate arms, rather than a prohibition against those broadly considered normatively out of bounds. For the ATT to be effective, states must be willing to distinguish between licit and illicit forms of trade in the same class of weapons. Unfortunately, outlier states like Iran, North Korea, and others have proven all to willing to disguise the final destination and purposes of trafficked weapons, including by using shell companies and false end-user certificates. Even if the ATT goes into force, non-ratifying (and even some ratifying) states may occupy a position similar to that of tax havens, continuing to facilitate the illicit and increasingly opaque transfer of weapons. Some fear that an imperfect treaty might actually exacerbate the illicit trade in weapons—and that no treaty might be better a fatally flawed ATT. The third challenge is legislative. Signing a treaty is one thing, ratifying it quite another. This is most obvious, and problematic, in the case of the United States, which has signed numerous multilateral treaties, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), only to see them languish in the Senate. Prospects for ratification of the ATT have been complicated by conservative resistance, backed by the influential lobbying activities of the National Rifle Association (NRA). Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) has introduced an amendment to a U.S. budget bill that would prevent the United States from becoming party to the ATT, on the grounds that the treaty would impinge upon citizens’ Second Amendment rights. This claim is entirely without merit, since the ATT regulates international trade in weapons, does not interfere with domestic commerce, and places implementation entirely in the hands of the state, rather than any international body. As Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) pointed out in his own amendment, the United States cannot be party to treaties that violate the U.S. Constitution in any case (making Senator Inhofe’s amendment moot). Nevertheless, it is quite possible, even likely, that opponents will be able to generate opposition from more than one-third of the Senate to block ratification. As of today, a final draft treaty has been produced and released by Conference President Peter Woolcott with no further scope for amendment. It remains unclear whether states will, in fact, sign onto the treaty . The ATT negotiations reflect the obstacles to achieving grand bargains in the twenty-first century, particularly ones requiring difficult negotiations at both the multilateral and domestic levels. If nothing else, we can  be confident that this “final”  treaty will not be the last word.

Not long ago, concerns about environmental degradation were marginal in U.S. national security deliberations. What a difference climate change has made. Foreign policy officials and experts are starting to recognize profound linkages between planetary health, economic prosperity, and international security. These connections were on full view Wednesday, when the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) teamed up with Conservation International (CI) to convene a symposim,“Global Resources, the U.S. Economy, and National Security.” The livestreamed event (available here) assembled intelligence officials, development economists, defense experts, conservation biologists, and corporate executives to discuss the rapid degradation of the earth’s natural endowments and its dire implications for long term prosperity and stability. The provocative conversation ranged far beyond global warming to assess the implications of deforestation and desertification, collapsing fisheries, habitat destruction, and water scarcity.  That these topics were broached at CFR—an august institution traditionally concerned with issues like Middle East peace, nuclear proliferation, or China’s rise—shows how central the subject of sustainability has become for foreign policy professionals. The reasons are clear. For the first time in Earth’s 4.5 billion year history, the most powerful force shaping the planet is human activity. Some geologists have coined a new label for this era: The “Anthropocene.”  This epoch may turn out to be short-lived, however, given the disastrous pace at which our species is degrading the earth’s natural capital endowments—from rainforests to oceans to aquifers. Globally, governments have failed to account for—and private markets to put a price on—the many  “ecosystem services” that nature provides, ranging from arable land to clean air to fresh drinking water.  Unless humanity reverses course, warns the Stockholm Resilience Center, the world could be in for “irreversible and abrupt environmental change.” Powerful demographic and economic forces are driving these trends.  The world will need to make room for two billion more people in coming decades, before the global population stabilizes at nine billion. Consumer demand will accelerate even faster, as humanity becomes richer. Between now and 2030, the global middle class is slated to double­­.  These newly affluent populations will place extraordinary strain on the earth’s limited supplies of arable land, fresh water, fisheries, and forests, with knock-on consequences for political instability and international security. Fresh Water. According to the National Intelligence Council’s (NIC) Global Water Security [PDF] report, the world’s annual water requirements will exceed current supplies by forty percent in 2030, thanks to demographic pressures, agricultural demands, and watershed degradation. Nations  will need to negotiate new arrangements to manage the world’s 263 shared water basins (among these the Mekong, Nile, and Tigris-Euphrates) negotiate equitable access to stressed aquifiers The alternative, the NIC warns, could be growing instability and conflict, particularly in contexts of “poverty, social tensions, and weak political institutions.” Arable land. Meanwhile, the global demand for food will surge [PDF] more than thirty-five percent by 2030, as populations swell and dietary preferences (particularly for meat) evolve. Already, food consumption has outpaced production in seven of the last eight years—and current global food reserves amount to only two months of world production. Such scarcity virtually ensures a future of price volatility and disastrous shortages, of the sort that led to food riots in dozens of countries—and the toppling of the Haitian government—in 2008. Historically, degradation and scarcity of arable land has fuel violence, whether in Central America in the 1970s or Darfur in this century. Fisheries. The degradation and emptying of the world’s oceans were among the most alarming trends discussed at the conference. As Kerri-Ann Jones, Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans, Environment and Science, told the gathering that the vast majority of the world’s commercial fish species are over-exploited [PDF], fished to capacity, or barely recovering, thanks in large part to rampant illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.  Simultaneously, growing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are acidifying the oceans, portending “an unprecedented loss of species,” including the disappearance of biodiverse-rich coral reefs by the end of the century. Such an environmental catastrophe would have devastating implications for global food security, given that one-fifth of humanity depends on fish for their primary protein source. Deforestation. Finally, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization reports that global deforestation and forest degradation continue, albeit at a slower pace. Already, twenty-seven percent of the world’s tropical forests are cleared, and each year, the world loses additional forest cover twice the size of New Jersey. Rampant logging—much of it illegal—deprives the world of valuable biodiversity, degrades watersheds, destroys habitats, and leaves countries vulnerable to environmental disaster. Uncontrolled and illegal logging has been linked to repression and violence in many countries, from Cambodia to Haiti, Burma to Liberia. As the conference sessions made clear, recent multilateral efforts to advance conservation and environmental sustainability have been woefully inadequate. Several problems stand out. First, the world is clearly fatigued with large, UN-sponsored mega-conferences (like the UNFCCC Conferences of Parties or the Rio Plus 20 meeting), which promise comprehensive solutions but deliver little but rhetorical pablum. Second, the existing set of “regimes” governing the global environment is fragmented, with significant overlap and redundancy among competing, but underpowered and underrersourced institutions. In the absence of a single “World Environmental Organization,” one answer may be to ramp up the UN Environmental Program into a fully-fledged specialized agency, on a par with the UN Development Program (UNDP), to help provide coherence to UN efforts. Third, international negotiations on the environment suffer from a crippling bureaucratic weakness. They are typically conducted under the purview of the ministers of the environment—whose political clout pales in comparison to their foreign or finance ministry counterparts.  Finally, global environmental cooperation is hamstrung by a lack of global leadership—not least from the United States fails—which remains outside the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Given the perceived failures of top-down, intergovernmental efforts, what can be done? Conference participants offered several suggestions. One was to look more closely at narrower “minilateral” efforts. Rather than insisting on the presence of all countries, why not begin with coalitions of the willing, relevant, and capable? A second was to encourage parallel national processes when a formal treaty or agreement was impossible. In place of a binding agreement, ask countries to adopt a “pledge and review” approach in which countries promise to take certain actions—such as phasing out harmful subsidies, embracing “green procurement,” or increasing foreign aid for natural resource management—and set up a system to monitor commitments. Another was to expand the use of multi-stakeholder partnerships, including by enlisting the private sector in certification schemes to ensure that their complex global supply chains do not inadvertently contribute to illegal logging, overfishing, or trafficking in endangered species. Advances in information technology, including geospatial mapping and remote sensing, can play an important role in identifying problems (from deforestation to poaching to illegal fishing) and empowering governments and law enforcement. Participants also noted the potential of multi-level approaches that could enlist municipalities and local communities and even individuals as partners in the campaign for sustainability. Among the few major accomplishments at the 2012 Rio+20 conference was the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group—a coalition of fifty mega-cities whose mayors (including Michael Bloomberg of New York) agreed to collaborate on new approaches to urban waste management. These are all laudable initiatives, but we can’t afford to ignore the multilateral track entirely. Three priorities come to mind. The first is to ensure that the post-2015 successor framework for the Millennium Development Goals includes new sustainability priorities beyond the provision of “clean water and sanitation” and attempt to price the ecological costs of economic activity. In parallel with this effort, national governments should endorse the proposal by the UN Secretary-General’s Global Sustainability Panel to create a Global Sustainability Index [PDF], which would measure “development” beyond mere calculations of gross domestic product. Second, the international community must deepen its commitment to fight corruption and increase transparency among UN member states, recognizing that organized crime is frequently at the core of rapacious behavior toward the environment. A good place to start would be to develop an analog to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) or the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which could establish minimum environmental standards, identify non-complying or underperforming jurisdictions, and eventually permit the naming and shaming of countries, corporations, or organizations that embark on environmental crime. In closing the conference, CFR President Richard Haass joined with CI’s Chairman Peter Seligman and Vice Chair Harrison Ford in underscoring the “direct connection” between global resources, the U.S. economy, and U.S. national security. Ford’s message was a plainspoken reminder that “nature doesn’t need us. We need nature.” Richard Haass, for his part, explained that the world, unlike universities, isn’t divided into separate departments. In the twenty-first century, major security challenges will span borders, both geographic and disciplinary.