IDEALISM OR DIVERSION?

September has been a good month for Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman. On September 9, diplomacy obtained a victory at the UN General Assembly with regard to the “vulture” funds.

The UN General Assembly voted in favour of drafting an international legal framework for the restructuring of the sovereign debts of countries in financial difficulties. The initiative — which thanks to the efforts of the diplomats led by Timerman had the support of the non-aligned G77 + China group — is aimed squarely at the holdout/vulture funds.

The measure would essentially force them to submit to the decisions of the majority of creditors in sovereign debt restructurings, thus ending their power to blackmail an indebted country.

And last Friday, the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) voted along similar lines in Geneva. Thus, the Foreign Ministry was able to report that “the HRC passed the Resolution that condemns the vulture funds and requests they be investigated.”

On September 26 — and under the headline “Human Rights and Unilateral Coercive Measures” — the Council condemned “the continued unilateral implementation and enforcement by certain powers of such measures as tools of political or economic pressure against any country.”

The measure moved to “appoint, for a period of three years, a Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures” with the instruction “to submit each year to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly a report on the activities relating to his or her mandate.”

It was another victory for the minister, who can proudly claim that his efforts put the presidential words against the “vulture funds” at the General Assembly into action.

Timerman said he “has no doubts that this is a big success for Argentina’s foreign policy” because “we have managed to include the issue of vulture funds in the agendas of the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council, two highly significant instances in the United Nations.” He added that “this the first time in its history that it will focus and try to sort out matters regarding the international financial structure.”

Pessimists will be quick to remark that — even if the convention suggested by the General Assembly is ever approved — the process will take several years. And that, in any case, it is doubtful that the countries where the big financial centres are based would adhere to the measure.

As for the resolution voted by the HRC, pessimists will also point out to a similar one, voted by the Council 10 years ago, on 16 April 2004, which had an almost identical text. It condemned “the continued unilateral implementation and enforcement by certain powers of such measures as tools of political or economic pressure against any country.” The headline was identical: “Human rights and unilateral coercive measures.”

True, the old resolution specified “developing countries” and warned against “preventing these countries from exercising their right to decide of their own free will their own political, economic and social systems.” Instead of appointing a special rapporteur, it called on the existing ones to keep an eye and report on the use of unilateral coercive measures. But pessimists will argue that the old text encompasses the new one, so to call the recent vote a victory is a wild exaggeration. At least in terms of Argentina’s present — and pressing — national interests. And herein might be one of the reasons for the very frequent controversies about President Cristina Fernández Kirchner’s foreign policies.

As reported by this newspaper last Saturday, the government is more or less open about the fact that any progress on the vulture funds issue will benefit other countries from facing in the future the problems that Argentina is facing now. But that progress will not come in time to help Argentina. So what Timerman defines as a victory for Argentine foreign policy is a victory of principles and ethics that transcends the sphere of the country’s immediate national interests.

Students of International Relations will immediately define this kind of policies as “idealist” or “Wilsonian,” in honour of Woodrow Wilson the US president who, after World War I, strove to create the League of Nations in order to prevent the horror of wars. Predictably these values sound very positive. But they are likely to be challenged.

Some critics will immediately retort that “charity begins at home.” And that the idealism of the League of Nations failed miserably, giving way to the realpolitik of World War II. Moreover, they will quote theorists like Hans Morgenthau and practitioners like Henry Kissinger pointing out that a State’s survival depends on the defence of national interest, which should be the major — if not the only — concern.

According to this view, the government’s handling of the holdouts issue or of its relations with the United States is far from being in Argentina’s national interest. And that the efforts at the UN are — at best — a waste of political capital and resources. Or, at worst, an attempt to divert public attention from the real problems of recession, inflation and a couple of nasty etceteras.

@andresfederman

CREDITS: BUENOS AIRES HERALD