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| U.N. Ambassador Anne Anderson, center, was recently appointed as Irish Ambassador to the United States. Anderson is currently teaching a GSAS seminar. She is pictured above with her students. Photo by Chris Taggart |
In an unusually personal address about the diplomatic corps, Ambassador Anne Anderson, Ireland’s representative to the United Nations and the United States, pulled back the curtain on the inner workings of U.N. elections.
Anderson, a visiting member of Fordham’s faculty, presented the observations on April 18 at the Graduate School of Arts and Science’s (GSAS) Gannon Lecture, titled “United Nations Elections: Power, Influence, Reputation.”
“For us diplomats, even more so than in most other walks of life, the personal and the professional are intertwined,” said Anderson.
She called her fellow diplomats “itinerants” whose common bond is often the transient nature of their profession. One way to gage the strength of such friendships, she said, was in the manner in which colleagues vote during U.N. elections.
“Despite undoubted blemishes, the United Nations will always continue to speak to what is best in all of us,” she said.
Anderson first focused on the U.N. “non-elections”—the unelected permanent members of the Security Council, known as the P5: the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France. She said their position on the 15-member council, which provides them with higher status and veto power, was an anachronism spawned in long-gone war and is in “urgent need of reform” to balance out power.
Ireland, she said, was elected to a two-year term on the Security Council in 2000 and elected to the Human Rights Council (HRC) in 2012. The HRC is experiencing a growing clout, she said, as a result of a stagnant Security Council held back, in part, by a fractured relationship between two permanent members: the United States and Russia.
Nevertheless, the 10 rotating seats on the council remain a plum prize, with U.N.-member nations spending an increasing amount on campaigns for those seats. In 2000, Ireland spent nearly $1.2 million, while Australia spent upwards of $25 million. It’s a trend that concerns the ambassador.
“If extravagant spending becomes the norm, it follows that those with deep pockets will be advantaged and those with limited resources will be edged out,” she said.
Over recent years, she said, there has been developing “an increasingly pronounced sense of entitlement on the part of large states.”
While smaller states such as Ireland have a level of voting solidarity through the Forum of Small States, their sway often comes through personal contacts and influence, she said. Through a process called “reciprocals,” an agreement is made between two diplomats where one diplomat will vote for the other’s cause in exchange for support later.
“Power speaks with a loud voice, influence adopts a softer tone,” she said.
She noted that influence often gave the smaller states an edge.
“Attraction can have quite a complex chemistry, but it is essentially built on liking and respect,” she said. “Neither of these sentiments can be switched on in the course of a campaign, both are normally built up over time.”
Anderson referred to a nation’s reputation, especially in building such personal relationships, as “a brand of currency.” She added that a certain empathy for Ireland’s story of emergence from colonialism “chimes with that of so many others.”
She also mentioned another Irish factor that resonates to this day, “especially in this Fordham setting.”
“Irish diplomats are the legatees and beneficiaries of the work done by Irish missionaries,” she said.
The Gannon Lecture is delivered in the fall and spring of each year and is named for Robert I. Gannon, S.J., president of Fordham from 1936 to 1949.
