Dept of Foreign Affairs

Ireland will again exercise its place on the Security Council to promote consensus rather than vision and values. By John-Vivian Cooke Ireland took a seat on the UN Security Council for the term 2021/22 on 1 January. This is the fulfilment of a key strategic goal of Irish foreign policy. However, having secured that seat on the Security Council, what will we do with it? If the record of our last term on the Security Council in 2001/2 is anything to go by, the answer will be disappointingly little.  Our feeble performance then was despite a highly professional and effective team representing us in New York but largely due to a  deliberate choice to set modest ambitions: a tactic that shows every sign of being repeated again in January. The tragedy is that Ireland is capable of so much more. There are two reasons to be pessimistic that we will deliver this time around. The first is the excessive strain likely to be placed on the organisational capacity of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFA). The Department`s budget could well face deep cuts as a consequence of the current Covid-19 recession, a recession which could be made worse by a hard Brexit in the new year. Any cuts to the DFA`s budget will occur precisely at a time when it is trying to meet the additional demands for resources for our Security Council term. Moreover, Ireland’s Security Council  agenda will have to compete for funding with other budgetary priorities such as meeting our international development aid commitments and the planned expansion of the number of missions around the world. The plan to open 26 new diplomatic missions has only reached the half way mark and the if the department is to meet its targets under the Global Ireland strategic plan, funding will need to be found for the remaining 12 missions. Even if the department finds a way to balance its budget, there will be other pressures on its institutional resources.  There are absolute limits to the time that any minister, in general, can dedicate to any specific policy issue and Brexit will be the topic that will preoccupy the Minister for Foreign Affairs. This preoccupation is set to be replicated throughout our diplomatic structures with the consequence that expertise and experience that, in normal circumstances, would be available to support the UN team, will be diverted to manage Brexit. No matter the quality of our diplomatic representation at the UN, the ability to set policy priorities and give direction on diplomatic strategy can only come from the legitimate and formal authority of the elected minister. Second, even in ideal domestic circumstances, the structure of international relations imposes intrinsic limitations on Ireland`s ability to determine outcomes at the UN. The distinction between the elected members of the Security Council and the five permanent members (P5) institutionalises the privileged position that the P5 members are granted under the UN charter in their role as Great Powers. Notwithstanding the notional sovereign equality of states in the charter, and under international law generally, the blunt truth of international relations is that the P5 do act differently and they are treated differently from other, lesser, states. Great Powers are qualitatively different from all other states by virtue of the resources they possess: elements of power that simply are not available to even medium-size states. The quintessential qualification for Great Power status is the ability to project military power, both conventional and nuclear. The measure of a state`s power is proportionate to the magnitude of its forces; the distance they can be projected; and the duration for which they can be deployed. This power, in turn, rests on the fiscal and economic resources of the state.   But to acknowledge the difference among states is not to condone or excuse it. The fact that the US ¨doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus and we petty men walk under his huge legs¨ does not mean that we must ¨peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves”. But, if we are to accomplish honourable ends, we must set ourselves far more ambitious goals while still retaining an unsentimental understanding of how world politics operates. There can be no mistaking that the distribution of power creates a difference of kind rather than a difference in degree between the permanent and elected members of the Security Council. Some analysts describe the P5 as having a systemic role in constituting international norms and institutions while small states such as Ireland are ¨System Ineffectual¨. Yet the temptation is for elected members to see themselves as merely mini versions of the Great Powers and to develop strategies that compensate for their lack of power. The Norwegian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ine Marie Eriksen Soreide, succumbed to exactly that temptation in her comment that: ¨(N)o-one can take care of Norwegian interests like Norway can. To uphold and strengthen the multilateral system and rules-based order, that`s a core foreign policy interest for Norway”. Instead we should adopt a new sui generis understanding of how small states such as Ireland operate in international politics. The established perspective on international relations treats all states as unitary actors that exercise various forms of power in pursuit of their national interests. This puts small states in the same category as Great Powers and predicts that the foreign policy of small states will be oriented to increasing their autonomy. In practice, the opposite occurs: small states seek to limit the autonomy of the Great Powers by enmeshing them in the constraints of international norms and regimes. Simon Coveney acknowledged as much when he said ¨(T)he basis for our campaign to be on the Security Council was to be vocal on these key issues around adherence to international law standards that apply through international structures and systems that protect small and weaker states as well keep dominant and powerful states in check”. Indeed, the current ‘Global Island Ireland’ strategy paper makes the point that ¨the European Union and United Nations in amplifying Ireland’s voice and extending