Vital Interests: You have spent your career studying and working on international cooperation issues. Here we are at the end of April 2020 confronted with a major global pandemic crisis. Your current focus is on the operation of the United Nations. The UN came into being in a crisis due to the Second World War to initiate new ideas and create a forum where nations could cooperate to strive for international peace and security. Do you think this current crisis will come to re-define the UN? 

Richard Gowan:  The COVID crisis is revealing some deep-seated political tensions and flaws in the UN that those of us who have been watching the organization for a while were already aware of. Fundamentally, they are rooted in the new multipolarity that is emerging globally and the fact that the U.S. is no longer necessarily the natural multilateral leader at the UN. Over the past three years, the Trump administration has stepped back from the UN on many critical issues, like climate change. In the meantime, China has stepped up. China has been presuming to play a greater leadership role in New York. That's been causing a lot of friction between the U.S. and the Chinese, and all that friction has now come spilling out in the debate over how the UN and UN agencies should respond to the COVID 19 pandemic.

The U.S. has been accusing Beijing of not being frank enough about the origins of the novel coronavirus. In the Security Council, we see very, very difficult diplomacy between the Chinese and American diplomats over whether Beijing should acknowledge its role in the origins of the pandemic, and whether to praise the WHO’s response to the crisis.

The big power tensions that we have seen evolving were becoming more acute this year, but the disease has really shown us how serious they are. It is hurting the multilateral response to the pandemic.

Vital Interests: Let's focus on the  concept of multilateralism. In this second decade of the 21st century, you’d think that global society had evolved to a point where there is direct coordination on all kinds of levels. Now, we're seeing that that is kind of a facade, that behind the ideas and institutions of cooperation and interconnectivity there are, in fact, lots of divisions, fractions, and rivalries. Where is the common ground upon which true multilateralism is built?

Richard Gowan: I think we should accentuate a few positive points as well as the negative ones. I think it is worth saying that the WHO, despite some real questions about how it's responded to this crisis, has actually dealt with it pretty well on a technical level for most of this year. The WHO seems to be performing considerably better than it did during the last big pandemic threat, which was the Ebola crisis back in 2014. WHO really mishandled Ebola. It learned some hard lessons. By comparison with 2014, its performance is improved. I think it's also worth saying that the majority of countries, despite initially responding to COVID in a pretty nationalist fashion, have started to come back towards the realization that you do need a multilateral response.

The UN General Assembly has called for cooperation to confront the impact of the pandemic. It has also called for international cooperation on sharing vaccines and other medical necessities during the crisis. The multinational system is not entirely missing in action. In places like Africa I think the WHO is responding as well as it could. At the core of the failures we now see in multilateral cooperation is the United States. It's just not as committed to the UN system as it was even five or six years ago and big power tensions make it much harder to get a really compelling multilateral response to this crisis.

Vital Interests: This suggests that the world needs leadership, that it doesn't self-organize. Absent the kind of strong leadership the United States has played in the past there is uncertainty about who will fill the void.  Where is global leadership now going to come from?

Richard Gowan: I think that's absolutely right. I think the absence of U.S. leadership is something which a lot of UN diplomats are talking about at the moment, although again, they have seen this tendency very clearly over issues like climate change or human rights in recent years. What's interesting is that, although China has been presenting itself as a multilateral leader, Beijing hasn't really seized this moment, at least in the UN system, in the way that perhaps the Chinese government might have hoped. China hasn't been able to offer a strategic direction to the UN in the absence of U.S. leadership. It's ultimately a bit of an embarrassment for both big powers.

There are those who have stepped up to demonstrate some leadership. France has so often aimed to punch above its weight. French President Macron deserves quite a lot of credit for pushing a series of initiatives at the UN, for example, in trying to get a Security Council resolution addressing the threat of COVID. It is a positive sign that European powers can still play in this space. I think the UK has also been quite supportive of the UN at a technical level with money for WHO.

The other player who deserves credit is UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who has performed outstandingly well making a series of really farsighted and statesmen like interventions about the threat of the pandemic to the economy, the impact of the disease on global conflict, and the disproportionate suffering inflicted on women and children. Guterres has been one of the very few people on the international stage who from a relatively early point has been talking seriously and strategically about how to respond to the COVID pandemic.

Regrettably he may not be getting the audience he deserves in all quarters. I think that most people around the world are still looking to their national leaders for guidance and are getting very mixed guidance indeed. Guterres has been criticized in the past for being a little too careful about making big statements or challenging the main powers. This time, he's stepped up, and I think that he's done well.

Vital Interests: Isn’t Guterres showing himself to be the epitome of a skilled diplomat? He is trying to maneuver the United Nations through all kinds of power conflicts not only with China but with Russia and other powers that have conflicting interests with the UN and with other UN members. 

Richard Gowan: For much of his term, Guterres has been attempting to limit the Trump administration's attacks on the UN. Guterres has developed a reputation for being, as I say, quite cautious for tending to duck and weave and not raise difficult human rights issues with big powers and so forth. In fairness, even before he was Secretary-General, Guterres had been talking about big global threats requiring global responses, amongst which he very much included pandemics in addition to climate change and inequality. Every leader is really defined by a crisis, and this seems to be the crisis defining Guterres. His past thinking on megatrends and mega threats turns out to be sadly validated by events.

Vital Interests: One of the often cited criticisms of the UN is that it's a bloated bureaucracy bogged down in internal squabbles resulting in inefficiencies and incompetence. And of course adequate funding has always been a problem. From its founding, the Security Council veto has prevented assertive action in a number crisis with the United States, Russia, and now China using the veto to further their own agendas over collective security. The pandemic is only the recent example.

Twenty-twenty is the 75th anniversary of the UN and was intended as a time for celebrating the work of the United Nations as well as setting a reformist agenda for the future. What are the prospects for using this moment as a time for real reform in the management and operations of the UN?

Richard Gowan: Firstly, let's address this point that the UN is a huge bureaucracy. You hear that from U.S. officials such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Of course, if you spend any time around the UN, as I have for 15 years, you meet your fair share of bureaucrats, and that's undeniable. On top of that, the UN has struggled a lot, as every organization has, with the need for working remotely and other operational challenges in response to COVID. That's unavoidable.

Nonetheless, I get a sense that this sudden eruption of a global crisis has really pushed a lot of UN officials to work very hard and to do some pretty creative thinking about how the organization should respond. Actually, the use of technology and so forth may make it easier to sideline the deadwood, sideline the bureaucrats, and allow the talented staff, of whom there are many, to focus on and expedite policies and programs to meet challenges.

Out in the field, UN development officials, UN humanitarian officials, are working themselves to the bone to help vulnerable communities in these crises. We're seeing some results. I saw a statistic from the UN that around 90% of all the UN's development teams worldwide have been providing public health support to governments, so that's good.

Now, the 75th anniversary, it was always going to be a headache. A lot of NGOs have been saying that the 75th anniversary should be a big moment for renewing the UN, and it should be a moment for big institutional reforms. That has never seemed likely from a political point of view because, to get big reform through the UN, you need U.S. support. Trump, in an election year, was never going to countenance Security Council reform.

I think the 75th anniversary was always oversold. Diplomats are quietly saying that, COVID gives them a bit of an out now in a way since they would have underperformed anyway. 

Yet to look for a positive amidst the gloom, I do think that those people who are arguing for a stronger UN suddenly have an amazingly strong argument thanks to COVID. The UN sustainable development goals are good and worthy. The provisions of the Paris Climate Change Accord are urgently important. But what we've seen over the last few years is that the UN has really struggled to use those agreements to motivate governments to accept any big reforms. I think it's possible that, when governments look back on COVID, they will see a pretty inescapable case for strengthening international cooperation.

Vital Interests: The argument can be made that, if the UN did not exist, there would be no structure to address major crises and global challenges.? A new one would have to be created to develop, implement, and monitor programs of aid and development assistance in Africa, in Asia, in the Middle East, in Latin America. The UN started out with a limited agenda, to work toward global peace and security, but doesn't it, and its agencies, now impact  the lives of billions of people for the better?

Richard Gowan: Yes. It's funny, there is evidence going back to the creation of the organization of a vision for a wider agenda. A UN official recently posted an interesting picture on Twitter of some of FDR's original sketches for the organization, pencil sketches. It was fascinating to see that in one of his earliest sketches FDR had written health as being a priority for future cooperation alongside the International Labor Organization and what would become the Security Council.

It is worth saying that we live in a period where the crisis of multilateralism is something that has been talked about a lot, in think tanks and in the media. I think the crisis of multilateralism is real, and it does stem from the big power politics we were talking about before. We are still served, more or less, by an unprecedentedly thick network of international institutions that do share information on things like disease in a way that would have been inconceivable a hundred years ago. It's rather like running water or the motor car. We take it all for granted - the fact is that multilateralism is still quite useful, essential many would argue.

Vital Interests: Doesn’t the UN system also develop needed international expertise? You have people within the UN system who then go on to work for other NGOs and the private sector with an understanding of how to address major global issues resulting from climate change, conflict or pandemics.

Richard Gowan: Yes. You mentioned expertise, and this is a crucial point. The problem is, in a case like Syria, the UN can have the best experts, but the political issues there go beyond the technical. Similarly, the strength of the WHO and many of the UN agencies is that they are centers for largely technical expertise, and most of their staff are working on diseases without having their efforts politicized. They're not used to coming under the political focus, which the WHO has suddenly come under.

This is a constant problem for an organization like the UN, which is at its best when it's most insulated from political crossfire. When something like public health becomes political, then a lot of that good, technical knowledge can start to crumble. I feel that is to some extent what we've seen in the persecution of the WHO by certain factions in the United States.

Vital Interests: The UN was started as a forum where the great powers could cooperate to prevent wars and conflicts. Today people argue that the UN exists for the protection and equitable development of smaller states. Are alleviating  hunger, protecting the welfare of women and children,  promoting social, political, and economic rights part of this essential UN role?

Richard Gowan: I think that often is true. Small powers and middle powers, such as many members of the EU, do have a more instinctive, vested interest in multilateralism than do superpowers like the United States. Although, you could turn that around and say that the U.S. actually gets a huge benefit out of having the UN out there dealing with global problems on its behalf. I think the real benefit of the UN to small states comes into focus during something like COVID-19 because, China or the UK or the U.S. are inherently going to manage their own domestic health response on a national basis.

By contrast if you look at the spread of COVID in Africa, the spread of COVID in the Middle East, you find countries which have few, if any, ventilators; very, very limited health systems; health systems that have been affected by war. That's where the WHO and that's where other UN humanitarian agencies are really stepping up their efforts. That shows why the UN is so important to smaller states that lack strong domestic capacities.

There's a widespread suspicion in New York, however, that down the road a lot of small developing countries are going to come to the UN and say, "COVID has wrecked us economically. COVID has put us in a position where we need a lot more international aid." You're going to be hearing a lot of that in the UN General Assembly and a lot of other UN forums. The problem is, the donors are unlikely to respond because it's going to be very difficult for the United States or other donors like Europe or Japan to find development assistance money in the next few years to meet the needs of other countries. I fear that down the road you're going to have some small countries coming to the UN for financial assistance and being told the coffers are empty.

Vital Interests: Certainly, the pandemic is going to set back decades of work in poverty reduction, in food security, in health, in other areas where developing countries have made progress. They have limited resources and still depend on the developed world and international institutions for assistance. If they're not going to get assistance from the UN, are we looking at a retrenchment of all the development progress that's been made in the last decades?

Richard Gowan: I think the concern that a lot of development experts, particularly, Western development experts, have is that if the UN and traditional donors can't step forward with support, someone else is going to come forward, and that someone else is going to be China. There's already evidence that China is looking for opportunities to offer aid to COVID affected states, but on a quid pro quo basis that will increase Chinese influence.

China, on the one hand, has been looking for a leadership role in the UN, but it often provides aid bilaterally or with a lot of strings and conditions that are designed to increase its influence. Beijing could emerge as a winner, in that sense, from the pandemic.

Vital Interests: China’s Belt and Road Initiative has been quite extensive around the world but it's also been very expensive. Are the Chinese coffers getting low on funds that can be dispersed around the world given they have their own internal economic problems?

Richard Gowan: That is another scenario that some analysts see, which is that China will have to retrench. Especially if the Chinese economy takes some time to recover. Its own demand for commodities and so forth may be reduced, and that may reduce its trading leverage over some countries. I think the reality is: no one comes out of this crisis a geopolitical winner.

If I were viewing this from Beijing, I would feel that five years from now, when Chinese influence would have been further established, this crisis would have really played into China's interests. It probably doesn't play into Beijing's interests in quite the same way at this point.

That said, I do think that in some poor states that have become very heavily dependent on economic relations with China, that dependency will now increase.

Vital Interests: The Chinese now head a number of major UN agencies and are in management positions throughout the UN system. Does this give China more influence in the UN?

Richard Gowan: You've got to keep in mind that 10 years ago, there were very few senior Chinese officials in the UN at all, which was absurd. Beijing has now been attempting to put its nationals in strategically useful posts, such as the head of the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), which it can leverage to advance its development agenda. I have mixed feelings about this. All countries try to secure specific posts in the UN system. France, for example, has ensured that French diplomats have been in charge of the peacekeeping department for over two decades now, to ensure that UN peacekeeping is helpful in former colonies like Mali or the Central African Republic.

The United States assumes that certain jobs, such as the head of UNICEF (the United Nations Children Fund) come to the U.S. by right. It's hypocritical to say that China shouldn't be allowed to take top jobs in the UN system. What I think is true is that Beijing has been a bit too greedy in angling for critical UN posts of late, and that this has backfired somewhat. Earlier this year, China attempted to get control of the International Property Organization probably with an intention of advancing Chinese economic interests. So not only the U.S. but also European countries, have become increasingly suspicious of Chinese behavior.

China also has been raising some pretty hard questions about whether the UN should continue to support human rights and so forth that many of us do find very worrying.

Vital Interests: Let’s return to the issue of funding and how the UN is going to get the support that it needs to function effectively, especially in this new reality of a pandemic.  Bill Gates has given the WHO quite a lot of money and Jeff Bezos is donating $15 billion for climate change mitigation. Could public-private partnerships, with foundations or the private sector, help to secure funds for designated UN programmes and causes?

Richard Gowan: Yes, that's something that indeed has been pioneered within the WHO, where the Gates Foundation and a lot of other foundations, have become absolutely essential donors. In  recent years, it's true to say that the Gates Foundation has been the second single biggest donor to the WHO after the United States, even ahead of countries like Germany and the UK.

Vital Interests: That's pretty astounding.

Richard Gowan: It is pretty astounding.  A whole range of foundations have come in. That's really been crucial to the good work the WHO has done in dealing with diseases that Gates prioritizes, like malaria. Gates now says that he wants to focus a lot of his efforts on COVID-19. This is generally to be seen as a positive. I think that successive UN Secretaries-General have really attempted to strengthen relations with the private sector. The one caveat though is that when philanthropists and foundations start becoming the central funders of the UN system, it offers a get-out clause for states that won't fill their responsibilities.

In the WHO, there's definitely been a tendency for governments to reduce their funding in response to philanthropists stepping up. This creates a number of problems, but one of the big problems is that poorer countries feel that they're being pushed aside by big Western individuals or big Western foundations and that, actually, the organization is going from being a state-driven organization to some sort of gigantic charity. 

Vital Interests: We're coming to the end of our time. Your take on the status of the UN is that it is functioning in a time of crisis, that it's weathered crises before, and it will play a critical role in the global response to the consequences of the COVID pandemic. Can we be confident in a positive future for the UN and, perhaps with some reforms, that it will continue to be an essential part of the global community?

Richard Gowan: I think so. I think there are two scenarios for the next phase of the crisis: one is a scenario in which a majority of countries grudgingly accept that they have to work through the UN and other institutions. There are important multilateral forums, like the G20, that are outside the UN system but do have a role to play in guiding the economic recovery. I think the G20 is much better placed to lead the global recovery than any single UN agency, for example. My hope is that, having attempted to respond to this crisis in a fragmented fashion and having seen that it doesn't really work, nations will pull together and that over time the UN and other multilaterals will end up being central to the international response to COVID and in some ways come out stronger.

There is a darker scenario in which, because of major power tensions, and because of the nationalism and populism circulating in a lot of countries that we know of, either the response will remain fragmented, and which will ultimately both allow the disease to do more damage than is necessary and demonstrate the failures of the UN. I remain tentatively hopeful that the better scenario will play out, but I think we've come scarily close to seeing a breakdown in multilateral cooperation or at least parts of multilateral cooperation. That should scare us that we came so close to it.

Vital Interests: Dag Hammarskjöld, one of the most renowned UN Secretary-Generals, stated,  "The UN was set up not to bring us to heaven but to save us from hell." Let's hope for positive ideas for the future and not a descent into chaos, conflict and scenarios that are truly frightening for the health and wellbeing of the planet.

Richard Gowan: I've always gone back to that Hammarskjöld quote. I think it remains the single best banner or bumper sticker for the UN, and you have to believe in its fundamental truth.

Richard Gowan oversees the International Crisis Group’s advocacy work at the United Nations, liaising with diplomats and UN officials in New York. Richard was previously a Consulting Analyst with ICG in 2016 and 2017. He has worked with the European Council on Foreign Relations, New York University Center on International Cooperation and the Foreign Policy Centre (London). He has taught at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and Stanford in New York. He has also worked as a consultant for organizations such as the UN Department of Political Affairs, the UN Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on International Migration, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Rasmussen Global, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Global Affairs Canada.