The ‘Nakedness’ of U.N. Diplomacy
Longtime U.S. diplomat Jeffrey Feltman spoke today at the Brookings Institution, and he reflected on his transition to United Nations diplomacy. Feltman became the U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs a year ago, and he recalled the shock of suddenly negotiating without the weight of the U.S. government behind him: Until you leave the U.S. government ...
Longtime U.S. diplomat Jeffrey Feltman spoke today at the Brookings Institution, and he reflected on his transition to United Nations diplomacy. Feltman became the U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs a year ago, and he recalled the shock of suddenly negotiating without the weight of the U.S. government behind him:
Longtime U.S. diplomat Jeffrey Feltman spoke today at the Brookings Institution, and he reflected on his transition to United Nations diplomacy. Feltman became the U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs a year ago, and he recalled the shock of suddenly negotiating without the weight of the U.S. government behind him:
Until you leave the U.S. government you cannot fully grasp what it means to walk into a room backed at all times by the tangible power of the presidency, the Pentagon, and the dollar, the voting weight at the IMF and World Bank, and a permanent seat in the Security Council. They were assets that — almost without noticing — I carried with me as U.S. ambassador to Lebanon and U.S. assistant secretary of state.… If one has spent an entire diplomatic career with those assets, as I did, it is something of a shock suddenly to be without them. Initially I felt a sense of almost diplomatic nakedness: you mean I now have to rely only on my own powers of persuasiveness?
Feltman contends that he has since discovered other, more subtle levers of influence, including the organization’s ability to confer legitimacy and its reputation for impartiality. "This U.N. leverage, you might think, is less than what the U.S. has. But the legitimacy that the U.N. can convey to decisions on peace and security cannot be replicated by any one nation, no matter how powerful."
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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