Is losing UNSC seat indeed a happiness vote? By Dasho Sonam Kinga

Status Update

By Sonam Kinga

Is losing UNSC seat indeed a happiness vote?

The United Nations has been the theatre for playing out the highlights of our government’s foreign policy in the last 15 months. Two events in the UN are noteworthy. 

One, a UN General Assembly resolution sponsored by Bhutan was passed on 19 July 2011. The non-binding resolution was adopted by consensus of the 193 member states. Two, Bhutan won only 20 votes in the UN General Assembly (short of 108 votes) on 19 October this year in its bid to win a two-year non-permanent member seat in the Security Council representing the Asia-Pacific region. Since these two events flow from the same government’s foreign policy initiative, I do not think we can look at them in isolation. Seeing the connection perhaps, it is reported that some called this the happiness vote.

Going by numbers, we may say that one was a success and the other a failure. I must clarify that numbers in the first instance was not of voting but of consensus. On both initiatives, our Prime Minister was at the forefront of global campaign in seminars, conferences and summits. Some in Bhutan were overwhelmed with this success that suggestions were made to designate our Prime Minister as Bhutan’s life-long happiness ambassador. After all, the UN has declared March 20 as an International Happiness Day! 

In my view, Gross National Happiness is more of a domestic policy, a vision of social change, and less of a foreign policy to change the world. It is an interesting development that a vision for domestic policy has become a foreign policy tool in the last few years. Certainly no world leaders would speak against happiness. Whether it is in Thimphu, New York or Rio de Janeiro, they will associate with the idea of happiness. What we need to reflect on is whether happiness is really a force on the scene of international politics. Does happiness really matter in the power game of international politics? As the vote for UNSC membership shows, perhaps it is not!

Still we think of UN resolution on happiness as a foreign policy success. The question is how this success translates to our country’s benefit besides saying that the profile of the country has been raised in the eyes of international community. Even with the failure to win UNSC seat, we still say with optimism that the campaign has ‘enhanced the respect and goodwill of the international community for Bhutan and its people.’ It appears that irrespective of our successes or failures in the theatre of UN, we celebrate or console ourselves with this optimism. Are we being honest with ourselves? 

I think we should be equally overwhelmed by our failure and seriously reflect on the whole episode. It is not just the government or parliament but our national society that needs to ponder on this issue. I recall the Prime Minister’s genuine concern of embarrassment and humiliation if we do not make it through in the first round of voting. Sadly, we could not make it to the second round.

I am sure that the aspiration of a small nation like ours to contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security by being a member of UNSC may have earned the respect and goodwill of some countries. On the other hand, I am also concerned that we may have earned reputations otherwise. For once, let us question how Cambodia and South Korea would have campaigned against us among UN member states. I have expressed this concern before. 

Amongst others, it is possible that they could have expressed lack of confidence in our ability to serve as UNSC member. Instead of them, we need to question ourselves if indeed we have such a capability. Do we have trained diplomats for such a purpose? More than the capability, which I fathom the Royal Government has assessed for itself, I used to be anxious about the prospect of voting as UNSC member in an imaginary but not impossible scenario where China and India are involved on different sides. 

How would that affect our relationships with our two immediate neighbours? Or for that matter, how would our relationship with Japan, a major donor, be affected if we had to take sides in a situation involving these three countries. If I share the government’s optimism in this failure, could it turn out to be a blessing in disguise? Could these 20 votes indeed turn out to be happiness votes?

We won only 20 votes although we had diplomatic relationships with 21 countries at the beginning of this campaign. The Prime Minister has cited our limited diplomatic relationship with other countries as the main hindrance against garnering enough support. Understanding this hindrance, we went on a roller-coaster journey of establishing diplomatic relationships with 24 more countries.

Establishing diplomatic relationships with other countries is good. However, both the timing and extent of relationships must reflect our country’s immediate and long-term interests. I wonder whether a marathon race of signing bilateral relationship agreement with 24 countries was solely dictated by circumstantial compulsion of winning support for our UNSC bid this year or whether there were other reasons. We really need to understand both the immediate and long-term rationale of establishing diplomatic relationships with many countries in a record period of time. 

For example, If (and that is a big if) our Prime Minister had agreed with Premier Wen Jiabao to establish diplomatic relationship with China for the sake of winning China’s vote in UNSC bid, we really need to re-evaluate the very basis of our foreign policy. What is of our foreign policy? What is our China policy? Of course, we have been told that establishing diplomatic relationship with China was not agreed upon. Is our policy then one of resolving Sino-Bhutan boundary issue before talking of establishing diplomatic relations or trade relation for that matter? Does this really constitute a China policy? Even without official trade relationship, we still import Chinese goods as indicated recently by import of Chinese buses where rupee is not involved. 

Many people say that the fact South Korea would win the UNSC seat was a foregone conclusion. I think even our government realized that when references were made to the extent of South Korea’s diplomatic relationship with almost every UN member-country and to the extent of their foreign aid exceeding our GDP. Could withdrawing from this race and supporting South Korea instead have won for us more good-will? Or would this have constituted an unpatriotic suggestion?

The aggressive conduct of our foreign policy in the last four years hinged on promoting Gross National Happiness through conferences and seminars and campaigning for UNSC seat deploying significant time and resources. Both converged at the theatre of UN General Assembly hall. We caught the attention of the UN’s 193 members by sponsoring a resolution for the first time. We also caught their attention by lobbying for the first time for a UNSC seat for Asia-Pacific region. 

Our government would have seen a connection between the two issues. But the world body perhaps did not see such a connection. This is clear from the difference in broad consensus on happiness resolution and dismal support for UNSC seat. Happiness is certainly not a force in international politics. It is better we redeem GNH as a domestic policy of social change and progress and take serious stock of an instructive lesson from the UN this time.

I retrieved from  https://www.facebook.com/sonam.kinga.31?ref=ts&fref=ts on 19^th December 2012