UN ambassadors on regional organizations in global governance
In an international political climate that, at the moment, seems particularly prone to nationalism, populism, and even separatism, the Macmillan Center hosted a roundtable on the topic of the role of regional organizations in global governance. The roundtable held on November 15 (view video) featured Ambassador Juan Carlos Mendoza-Garcia, Permanent Representative of Costa Rica to the United Nations (for the Group of Latin American and Caribbean States) and Ambassador Joanne Adamson, Deputy Head of European Union Delegation to the United Nations. It was moderated by Ambassador Yuriy Sergeyev, former Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations and current Senior Fellow in the Program in European Union Studies.
Ambassador Segeyev introduced the topic with a discussion of the correlation between regionalism and globalism. He presented two versions of regionalism. The first conceives of regionalism as a direct response to globalism. The second, he said, theorizes that “regionalism emerges from the internal dynamics of a region and the motivations and strategies of regional actors.” In his personal opinion, he said, “regional organizations are building blocks of a multilateral order that are players in the global order.”
Ambassador Mendoza-Garcia offered an overview of the historical reasons and trends of the formation of regional organizations, and discussed their role in multilateralism, trade, and global decision-making.
“Regional multilateralism has created greater influence in global multilateralism,” he said, and added that the plethora of regional organizations in Latin America has “helped small countries” like his own, Costa Rica. But, he said, the differing economic and political situations faced by the countries that compose regional organizations in Latin America mean that organizations are often fragmented and can face compatibility problems.
He continued his remarks with an overview of the regional organisms of which Costa Rica is a part.
The Organization of American States (OAS) is the world’s oldest regional organization, dating back to 1889, he explained. Thirty-five member states, including the United States and Canada, have ratified its charter. Despite its longevity, he said, it struggles to be effective as a cohesive body. OAS needs to “overcome division and conflict within its organization that has impeded all possibility of joint action,” Ambassador Mendoza-Garcia said, adding that it has “lost credibility after a weak response to recent conflicts.”
The Central American Integration System (SICA), he said, has established a strong regional economic bloc that has allowed its eight member states greater leverage in negotiating trade with larger powers.
“It makes more sense for the United States to establish free trade with several small countries at once” rather than just one, he said. But SICA is not without its own challenges.
“It is a very bureaucratic organization that makes it a rigid system,” he explained. “As a result, SICA has become politicized. Costa Rica has reticence towards two specific bodies [within SICA] … We have been making these criticisms inside the system for several years.”
The final regional organism that Ambassador Mendoza-Garcia discussed was the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which was declared in 2011. CELAC differs from OAS because it includes Cuba and has no formal structure.
“CELAC was mainly created as a political organizational mechanism seeking to promote the voice of Latin America and the Caribbean in important global issues,” he said. The organization does not have a negotiation mandate, and its annual change in leadership presents challenges in terms of continuity, he said. Regional organisms in Latin America and the Caribbean are continually facing the challenges of member states with vastly different political and economic motivations, and their potential for global influence is constantly at risk of being lessened because of inner disunity.
In her remarks, Ambassador Adamson provided some personal thoughts on regional organisms in Europe, and focused her remarks particularly on the European Union (EU), beginning with its history.
“Everyone knows that while it may have been pitched as an economic grouping, politics and conflict lay behind it,” she said. “After World War I, there was a post-war settlement…but really the EU, in the wake of World War II, was a different approach [to regional cooperation] that was very much about integration.” After a brief explanation of the EU’s history, she turned to its current operations.
“I would like to start by taking us back to a moment in June,” she said, “but not the one you’re all thinking of.” Instead of discussing Brexit, which has dominated media conversation regarding the EU, she pointed to a document that surfaced three days after Brexit, but was barely discussed in the public sphere.
“Three days after Brexit,” she said, “a very interesting document slipped quietly into the hands of the European heads of government in Brussels. That document was the Global Strategy [for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy.”
“This groundbreaking document,” she explained, “enjoyed a rather smooth sort of adoption by the member states.” The document contains a comprehensive plan for peace and security, the first of its kind in recent memory. It includes an ambitious set of goals for the European Union moving forward, she noted, including a commitment to “global order based on international law,” and a prescription of “global norms and the means to enforce them.” The document signals that the EU is “striving for a strong United Nations as a bedrock of a globally enforced order,” she concluded.
Moving forward, Ambassador Adamson added, the international political community has some clear opportunities and clear challenges. She identified the Paris climate talks and the agreement on sustainable development goals as highlights of 2015, but added that both will face challenges of implementation because of the complicated and interwoven political and economic dynamics at play in the global scene.
“The construct set up after World War II in Europe, going from economic unity with political cooperation layered on, has coincided with the building of the UN architecture,” she concluded. “What you have is a lot of different stuff going on in the international system and sometimes it’s hard to keep up.”
Written by Olivia Paschal, Yale College Class of 2018.