The Obama team at the UN is weak

Earlier this summer, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on Israel’s raid of a ship headed to Gaza — and the United States was represented by the deputy at the US Mission.  Reporters, UN members and activists were mystified as to why Susan Rice was a no-show during the roughly 12-hour negotiations which left Israel fending off global criticism without the top American diplomat to help.  The UN Security Council ultimately issued a statement on the situation in the early morning hours of Tuesday, June 1, after starting deliberations on Monday, May 31 – the American Memorial Day holiday.  Rice never showed up for any of the meetings.  Coming on the heels of Rice’s silence and absence from the meeting where Iran was elected to the UN Women’s committee and Rice’s refusal to call out Libya after it was elected to the UN’s Human Rights Council, Rice’s performance is leaving Americans wondering if she really wants to be the American Ambassador to the UN.

More than 30 human rights organizations appealed to Rice before the crucial Human Rights Council membership vote in an effort to get her to find another country to run against Libya.  The activists pleaded, “This contravenes the 2006 promise that the reformed Council would bring competitive elections, and sets a poor example.”  The groups urged Rice to do something.  But Rice ignored the human rights leaders’ appeal and didn’t try to make a competitive race for Libya.  Rice didn’t speak up to highlight the problem, didn’t try to find another candidate and couldn’t utter Libya’s name to condemn Libya’s successful election after the vote.

Rice‘s avoidance of tough negotiations on matters important to America is unfortunate, but her lack of engagement on UN budget reform is shameful.  U.S. citizens pay 22% of the UN’s regular budget, 26% of the UN Peacekeeping Budget and give millions more in voluntary contributions to a plethora of other UN programs. They deserve an ambassador who doesn’t duck a messy public fight with other countries looking to spend American taxpayers’ dollars.

But perhaps the Rice’s most astonishing failure was that she only was able to get 12 of the 15 countries on the United Nations Security Council to vote for increased sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons.  On Fox News Sunday, Rice jumped to defend the Obama administration’s lackluster performance by claiming that Iran resolutions were not unanimous during the Bush administration and that there were “abstentions.”

Her strategy to minimize the Bush team’s performance in order to make her own poor performance look better isn’t factual.  The vote was the first Iran resolution for the Obama team but not the first time the Security Council pressured the government of Iran to suspend all nuclear enrichment-related and reprocessing activity.  President George W. Bush and his team wrote, negotiated and forced a vote of the 15 nations that sit on the Council a total of five times.  Three Iran resolutions under Bush passed unanimously.  Two other resolutions passed with only one country voting against sanctions and one country abstaining (singular abstention, not plural as Rice claimed).

After so much hype about President Barack Obama’s foreign policy engagement strategy, the UN resolution was remarkably weak, took too long to get and received less support than Bush’s team’s.  Bush lost two countries’ support in five Iran resolutions; Obama’s team led by Rice lost three countries’ support in one resolution.  It’s ironic that the Obama team labeled the Bush team devoid of friends around the world.  Obama’s foreign policy weakness and acquiescence has made him an international celebrity guest, but it isn’t producing the promised results on U.S. foreign policy priorities.  The Obama team’s poor performance calls into question its overly diplomatic strategy to lead the world through excessive talk.

Rice has gambled this past year that keeping America unengaged at the UN is the best way to keep the Obama administration, and herself, popular with other countries.  But while the newly released report suggests that the Security Council has been cordial and pleasant in 2009, the number of crisis situations, international conflicts and peacekeeping operations haven’t decreased.  No meaningful improvement has been seen to the international issues monitored by the Security Council; in fact, the study suggests that some situations have gotten worse.  Without American leadership at the UN, countries just continue to talk and socialize at the U.S. taxpayer’s expense.

The facts show that the Bush style that Obama routinely ridiculed and derided produced better results than his exaggerated diplomacy has achieved.  If you are comfortable living in a world where America has no more influence than China, then you may like Obama’s softer, quieter, weaker America.  Iran certainly loves the breathing room they got from Rice waiting 17 months before increasing the pressure on their illegal nuclear weapons program.  And allies like Turkey, Brazil and Lebanon now find it easy to ignore Obama.  It isn’t popular to say, but the world needs a strong America.  The world needs an America that leads our allies and isn’t troubled by certain charges of hubris from elites on the Upper East Side of New York City or in capitals around the world.  One thing is clear – Obama’s easy professorial attitude isn’t winning us votes.

This article originally appeared in the Harvard Republican Alumni Network Journal.

Richard Grenell served as the spokesman for 4 U.S. Ambassadors to the UN – John Negroponte, John Danforth, John Bolton and Zalmay Khalilzad.  And is the longest serving US spokesman at the UN (2001-2008).