EU & US Ambassadors: the UN's future

Addresses by:

Ambassador Jean De Ruyt, European Union Presidency, Permanent Representative of Belgium to the United Nations in New York

Ambassador James B. Cunningham, U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York

Ambassador John B. Richardson, Head of the Delegation of the European Commission to the United Nations in New York


Address by Ambassador Jean De Ruyt, European Union Presidency,
Permanent Representative of Belgium to the United Nations in New York Top

I am very pleased to have this opportunity to come to Columbia University and address this very interesting topic. The talk was decided before September 11th and we were prepared to discuss unilateralism and the way Europe and the United States would address some important issues. Since then, the situation has changed. But it is still very important to see where we are, how the EU feels about the UN and I hope, with my colleague Jim coming after me, you will be able to compare the perception of the United Nations from a European and an American point of view. For rather different reasons, which I will not address here, but for reasons which are evident, the perceptions of our public opinions are different, in general, not just those of diplomats and the politicians.

So, what can I say about the European perception of the UN? It is very simple, we like the UN. We like the UN in Europe. Even if it was an American creation, we liked it from the beginning. My country, Belgium, was very enthusiastic about it and our foreign minister Paul-Henri Spaak was the 1st President of the UN General Assembly. Moreover, when the European Union was created, even if the EU is a new institutional construction in which the sovereignty of national members is challenged by the presence of the European Commission, the European Union very quickly from the 60's played an important role in the UN because the European public opinion and all EU members did and still do consider that the UN is an organization that has to be respected and used as much as possible. So, we like the UN.

What does that mean? It means four different things. First, we like the UN playing a central role in world affairs. Second, and as a result, we, as European Union, speak with one voice in all UN bodies, except in the Security Council. In all the debates in the General Assembly and in other UN bodies, the EU speaks with one voice. The Presidency speaks on behalf of all the Members States. Third, the EU supports the UN in its development assistance programs, but also in other fields as election monitoring or maybe soon also in peace keeping operations. Fourth, we want very much to help the UN improve its functioning. These are the four objectives we try to pursue.

With regard to the role of the UN in the world, we want the UN to play a central role. This was very clear when we had to react to the events of September 11. As you know, there was immediate and very spontaneous and unambiguous solidarity with the United States as well as a commitment to fight terrorism together with the United States. But, at the same time, the European Union and the European governments very quickly declared that action against terrorism and about the fate of Afghanistan, to be taken under the aegis of the UN. So, clearly we want the UN to play a central role in these new events. We tried and, in fact, we succeeded to have the UN play a central role in the fight against terrorism because the UN Security Council and the General Assembly reacted very quickly. To fight against terrorism in the future, we will be very much in the hands of the body created by Security Council Resolution 1373. We are trying also to give vigor to the UN conventions on terrorism, which were signed, and we will try the UN to agree on the Comprehensive Convention on terrorism. For what concerns Afghanistan, as you know, there is a for the moment, in Bonn a conference presided by Mr. Brahimi who is the special representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations. So, there also the UN plays a central role.

But this has not always been the case: there was a time when the UN lost a lot of the credibility, which it had regained after the end of the Cold War. Not so long ago at the time of the Kosovo crisis, the decision to bomb Kosovo and Serbia was a decision made without the backing of a resolution of the UN Security Council. That was not so long ago. After that the European Union devoted a lot of energy in trying to bring back the UN in the Yugoslav crisis which and it was, as you know, very successful. After that indeed the UN regained credibility and managed to play a very important role in the future management of Kosovo.

But it is also very important for the EU to have the UN play a central role in the international legal order through the drafting of universal Treaties. I spoke already about the treaties on terrorism but obviously the first domain in which UN universal treaties are very important for us is disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation. We have all these basic UN instruments like conventions against the proliferation of biological weapons or chemical weapons. We consider that these have to be universal treaties. When we signed in Ottawa a Treaty banning landmines, we tried as much as possible to make this a universal UN treaty. We made this effort until the end. And even now that it is a non-UN treaty, we consider more effective to have the implementation of the treaty as much as possible organized in the UN context.

The environment and climate change are also fields in which we consider that most international commitments should be made in the UN framework. In this field, as you know, we have some disagreements with the US since a couple of years. As European Union, it is very important to have these issues accepted as legal commitments - treaties that are signed, which Parliaments ratify, which you are committed to implement and to respect. For us, it is the only way to make the world sufficiently secure, not through agreements, which are based only on agreements between leaders of the time, who only speak for themselves.

For us it is also very important that the UN play a central role in economic globalization. We try in New York very hard to get the dialectic of the debate on development more up to date because sometimes in NY you have the feeling that people are still nostalgic for the 1970s. We, as the EU, believe that economic development, the fight against poverty, the fight against underdevelopment, has to be dealt with by the UN, because its is the only place where all countries of the world feel comfortable and where they can express themselves on the basis of equality. The key to have a better and more efficient way to dealing with development issues is to develop the coordination and cooperation between organizations like the UN, the World Bank, the IMF and the OECD at all levels. The cooperation with the private sector is also very important and the UN tries now more and more to develop links with the private sector. But even if other actors are involved and even if coordination and cohesion are very important, the UN should be at the center of the debate. For us, the next important conference in the UN context is the conference on Financing for Development in March 2002. The objective is to set the pace for the future of development.

We believe that the UN as an institution, even with all its weaknesses, has a central role to play in facing all the challenges of globalization. Because of that, and this is my second point, we try to be as efficient as possible at the UN and that's why, as I said before, we speak as one voice everywhere, except in the Security Council, which was created when the EU did not exist, and which works with different dynamics. But even there the EU has three member states present and we have a system for coordination and preparation of the positions. In all other UN bodies we speak with one voice. I was pleasantly surprised arriving here in NY this year by the level of respect for the Presidency of the EU by my EU colleagues. Speaking on their behalf and coordinating their views means a lot of work for the Presidency, but the result is that we manage to present common views. Often other countries, associated countries from Central and Eastern Europe align themselves with our declaration, which means that when we speak, our voice, we can really be heard loudly.

Third, as the EU, we help very substantially all UN agencies dealing with development aid. Together, the EU and its member states are in first position as donors to UN agencies. For instance when we speak of aid to Afghanistan, and appear to be as one of the major actors, we do that in the best possible coordination with the UN agencies. We try also to coordinate our approach with the UN on election monitoring. As I said, the EU is in the process of creating a common rapid reaction force. We start to look at ways to help the UN in peacekeeping activities.

Because we like the UN, and this is my fourth point, we want it to work better and we want to help improve the efficiency of the organization by imposing budget discipline, and fighting unnecessary waste of energy and money. We want to reform the UN budget.

This is how we see the UN and our role in it. If I had said that a few years ago, people would have been more skeptical. But in the present times, the UN gained a lot of credibility in the world and is able now to address crisis of the magnitude of the one of Afghanistan. The UN is able to attract to its conferences the attention of the world. The UN deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, which was offered to it recently. Because we have the right people at the head of the UN, we have the opportunity to use it as much as possible to face the challenges of our time. We want to encourage that process and we hope obviously that the US will help, not necessary look at it in the same way, but in a way that contributes to the same objectives. Thank you.



Address by Ambassador James B. Cunningham,
U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York Top

Let me say a brief word about the United States approach to the United Nations in general and then build on some of the points that Jean made on what some of the differences are in the approach and the view of the United States on the United Nations and the European Union.

First, I want to note that the phrase Professor Berghahn used about history accelerating is, I think, quite apt. I think it defines a period of transition both in world affairs now and how the United States is and will look at the UN in the future. A couple of months ago, if we were having this discussion, we would have been talking about the Millennium Summit Agenda for the UN which was agreed a little more than a year ago at the summit meeting here. It set out the UN membership's view of what the future of the world ought to look like and the future role of the UN in helping them build that world. Well, all that still exists of course, but we now look at that in a very different context after September 11. Because what happened September 11, I think, in effect telescopes a discussion or phenomenon that has been playing out over years and should crystallize views of what the nature of the future should be.

Terrorism within the global reach attacks the roots of the promises and the premises that are set out in the UN Charter and that are replicated in the Millennium Agenda and puts them into rather sharp focus. One of the speakers referred to the New World Order that we talked about in the early nineties and the first Bush Administration. You may remember, after the collapse of the Warsaw pact, someone asked the first President Bush what the future enemy would be and he said something to the effect that the future enemy we need to deal with is chaos. That wasn't widely appreciated at the time, but I think if you go down to the World Trade Center -- what is left and not left of it -- you will see that vision of a future and will see what chaos means in a very real sense: that is the antithesis of the vision that we set out for ourselves as an international community in the Millennium Agenda. That is the upcoming struggle that we will be dealing with - all of us - and that is where I think the future of the United Nations plays out.

If the UN was an instrument that didn't exist, we would be talking about how to create it, to deal with the whole range of issues that confront civilizations that are very aptly set out in the UN Charter and the Millennium Agenda. The UN encompasses the whole spread of challenges that we need to deal with as a country, from security, stability throughout the world, promotion of democracy, human rights, development in all of its senses. We need an instrument like this that can help us deal with those kinds of challenges in the future and I think that that fact is understood in this Administration and in the United States. It certainly forms the backbone of what, notwithstanding our differences, is indeed a very wide body of shared goals and values between the United States and the European Union in dealing with those issues and in dealing with the United Nations.

Now that said, what are some of the differences between us? I think Jean referred to a few. I'd like to try to pull out some others in a way that may be a little more emphatic than they deserve, but to stimulate questions later in discussion.

First, I think, is that the United States has a rather unique concept of its role in the world because it has unique capabilities. Translating those capabilities into action of responsibility is not always welcome in this country and it's not always welcome by the international community. It also makes the United States in many respects a unique target whether for rhetoric or for terrorism.

Second is the role of the Security Council. The role of the Security Council is central to the approach of the United States to the United Nations, and indeed is central to what we regard as the primary role of the United Nations, which is to assist in the preservation of peace and security, and too, as the Charter says, to preserve future generations from the scourge of war. It is imperfect, as is the UN itself, but it is very much at the core of our effort in the United Nations and is not -- for the reasons that Jean described -- is not at the core of the European Union's approach tot the United Nations. Indeed, it is a source of some tension among the countries of the European Union, between those who are on the Council and some of those who are not, at least as primary members.

Third, there is -- I don't know how one can put one's finger on this, but I term it the process question. Because of historical reasons, I think, Americans are more prone to look at things in terms of right or wrong answers, or yes or no, black and white with maybe some shade of gray. I think for our European colleagues, there is often times a greater willingness to span that gray area and to look for solutions in that gray area, a greater willingness than sometimes we Americans are prone to welcome. But this actually produces, I think a useful symbiotic relationship between us when we are dealing with issues. Sometimes an American approach will become more prominent; sometimes the European approach, and they balance each other out.

Fourth is the issue of sovereignty. Because of our history and our political and legal structure, and public opinion, Americans, in general, and the American Congress, in particular, are particularly sensitive about sovereignty issues and, indeed, are eager to preserve sovereignty and to reject approaches that are perceived -- whether in reality or not -- that are perceived as injecting either international authority or the UN itself or legal restraints into our legal system or into our political and social structure. That issue is a source of considerable friction between us and the United Nations on a number of issues.

Last, the question of the centrality of the United Nations. Jean said that for the European Union, the United Nations is central. I can't say that it is central for the United States. It could be central; it is central on some issues; it may be more central in the future. I think the verdict is out on that, but it is certainly for us a very important instrument and one that we have spent a lot of time in the last couple of years trying to improve and we'll continue to do so. It is a central element for us in a number of very difficult areas, not the least of which is Afghanistan, where we and the European Union, indeed, I think most of the UN membership, are relying quite heavily on the United Nations getting this right with our help. The success of the United Nations in helping to deal with the aftermath of the conflict in Afghanistan will be an important indicator, I think, of its future role.

Coming back to the question of dealing with chaos. Jean summed up how we share many of the same goals and objectives and I think that is quite true. We have differences in tactics -- often in approach because of some things that I just mentioned -- but our fundamental agenda looking at the international scene is the same, based on the same values, based on a very similar vision of how the world should evolve and how the United Nations should help us in that.

And finally, let me say that it should be without question on both sides of the Atlantic that we are much stronger and we are much more successful when we agree and cooperate on what we are trying to do than when we don't. Thank you.



Address by Ambassador John B. Richardson, Head of the Delegation of
the European Commission to the United Nations in New York Top

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It is clear that we have a new priority in the UN agenda at the moment, which is: dealing with terrorism. Otherwise, I actually think that the world agenda is not so very different from that which it was on September 10, and it is about the rest of the agenda that I want to say a few words.

Many of you New Yorkers will know the Storm King Art Center out in the country north of here, with the massive sculptures of Alexander Calder. Imagine if you will, sitting on the grass looking at one of these sculptures: you can do that, you can have a picnic, you can spend half an hour doing it and you have a particular view of the sculpture. If you then get up, walk around it 90 degrees and sit down again, you'll have a completely different view.

It seems to me what we're seeing now in world affairs is something like that. It's not that the world has changed; it's simply that our view of it has changed completely, and it looks very, very different.

It is the same world, with the same structures, with the same system in place. Maybe we now see the role of the EU and the US in the world and our relationship with each other in a new light. I think it's the same structure as before, but everything has a new significance.

The European Union and the United States are still the two largest economies in the world. We count together for about half of the entire world economy. We also have by far the biggest bilateral trading and investment relationship in the world. We are in many ways the two biggest actors, at least in the economic sphere around the world.

So as the two biggest actors, what exactly is the role that we should be playing in the world? What exactly is the role that we are playing? What challenges are we facing? I think the first challenge comes from something which business people know all about, which is the interdependence of the world economy. In every decade since the Second World War, our economies had a larger and larger proportion devoted to international trade. Trade has been the great promoter of economic growth in those five decades.

Let's look at investment - In the year 2000, total world Foreign Direct Investment had gone up to almost a trillion dollars, something like $800 billion. It was $50 billion dollars back in 1985. From 50 to over 800 billion is an enormous increase in the stakes we have in each other's economies around the world.

There are over 60,000 transnational corporations, with about 500,000 affiliates around the world, with sales amounting to something like I 1 trillion dollars. And to misquote a famous senator, "II trillion might not sound like very much, but a trillion here, and a trillion there soon adds up to something." And to deal with this interdependent world, it's quite clear that national independent policies are insufficient; that's why we've set up under US leadership and then increasingly under EU-US partnership, a whole system of multilateral rules to deal with this economic interdependency in which the in which the US and the EU are the biggest actors. The WTO is the most obvious example of that, but there are a lot 'of other multilateral organizations dealing with the complexity of this economic interdependency.

Thank God we have now been able to launch a new round of multilateral trade negotiations in Doha, devoted not only to further liberalization of market access, but also to maximizing the positive role which trade can play in the developing world and in which the ability of the U.S. and the EU to work together harmoniously was one of the key reasons why we were able to come to an agreement.

But it is not just in the realm of economics that the world needs to act together. There are the global challenges, which we are all faced with. You can find these listed in communiqués of the G8 for the last 10, even 20 years. Exactly 20 years ago in the G8 Summit in Ottawa, there's a marvelous text, which is all about the need to combat growing international terrorism. That's clearly one of the threats we're faced with. It's linked though, to the world network of drug trafficking, trafficking in people, trafficking in arms, international crime - they're all inter-linked. We're talking about the phenomenon of groups around the world, who work in the shadows, and who very seldom see the light, and that's very difficult to deal with, but that's clearly one of the global challenges which has been thrown into relief since September 11.

But so has the global challenge of eradicating poverty. There are a billion fellow citizens of this world who live below the poverty line. There is a clear, although complex relationship between extreme poverty and conflict and resentment. Hunger and ignorance breed violence. On the other hand development creates prosperity, prosperity creates markets, and markets bring new growth. It will be very important in today's context to ensure that when ministers get together in Monterrey in Mexico in March to talk about promoting finance for development, that the conference be a success-- perhaps every bit as important as what we're doing on the terrorism front.

And what are the criteria for that success? I think it will be if that conference can create a climate, in which developing countries will be able to better mobilize internally investment resources, which means creating the institutions for poor people to save. It will be a success if it can create a climate in which the developed countries can feel their way politically to increasing their flows of official development aid to the developing world. And it will be a success if it can create a climate in which investors see more market opportunities in developing countries.

So it will be very much a question of the climate. That is part of our agenda of global challenges that we must take even more seriously now.

Another global challenge to which we give lip service and sometimes do something about, are environmental threats, including global climate change. The destruction of natural and human resources, particularly natural resources have far reaching consequences for the future. It aggravates poverty, it forces mass migration, and it provokes conflict on its own. There is a connection there between environmental degradation and political insecurity. Just think of those island states of the Pacific, who are now asking larger countries around the area like New Zealand and Australia whether they'll be prepared to take their populations when their islands disappear under the rising waters of the Pacific. That is why the recent agreement in Marrakech on the implementation of the Kyoto protocol is so important.

As you know, the U.S. is not part of that agreement. But what was decided in Marrakesh contains elements of market mechanisms to deal with global climate change of the type, which the U.S. said previously were missing from the Kyoto protocol. I hope that what we have put together is something that the U.S. will be able to move towards as time goes by.

The last challenge I want to mention is that infectious diseases around the world: malaria, tuberculosis, and obviously HIV, AIDS. We're going to have to address the unaffordability of medicines for AIDS victims in Africa for instance, and that's being done, most recently by the important clarifications in Doha that the TRIPS agreement need not be a barrier. But, just reflect for a moment: We're talking about 9 countries in Africa which are facing a drop in life expectancy by the end of the decade, of 17 years on average. That is the magnitude of the challenge.

We had a special session of the General Assembly on AIDS in June; I wonder how many of you can remember what was decided. The results of UN conferences tend to evaporate and not be followed up. Maybe one of the things we should be saying after the events of September is that the attempt to deal with global challenges really does need to be followed up in serious fashion and not just receive lip service from us.

I would argue that foreign policy today is about aligning all our national aims so that they're directed at dealing with these global targets and that particularly applies to the EU and the US. Th good news is that these challenges face us in a world, which has been transformed over the last two decades, and it has been transformed in a very positive sense. The values that we have been propagating, we, the United States, Europe, and others, are the values of market economy, the rule of law, of democratic freedoms. Those values have swept across the former Soviet Empire since 1989. Those values have allowed the massive spread of prosperity in Asia, particularly in East and Southeast Asia. Those same values have brought down one after another, authoritarian regimes in Latin America. And those values have become part of the consensus on what developing countries must do, if they aspire to rise out of poverty and misery. And those are our values, and I think we can be proud of that.

Which brings me to the EU-US relationship. I'm going to quote Chris Patten again in a recent speech: "No one shares our vision, the European vision, our history and our values as much as the United States. With no one else do we have such a wide range of common interests, such a fine national network of cooperation on all levels, such a strong economic base to build on.)" That commonality of values and of interests is the foundation of the Trans-Atlantic relationship.

So we have common values, but I think it's also true, that in putting them in practice, the EU and the US have different strengths and weaknesses. When the EU and the US work together, we set the international agenda. If we're divided, the opportunity for international progress is lost. Now we have to be very careful to see what our strengths and weaknesses are, and ensure that they intermesh in a positive way. I don't want to oversimplify too terribly, but I want to say that the US strengths, it seems to me, are strengths of military power and of strong convictions. The EU strengths tend to be economic instruments of foreign policy, and our network of diplomatic relations.

So let me sum up by saying: The agenda is: deal with the common challenges, and do so by remembering our common values, by remembering what we are for is rule of law, democracy, a market economy, but also human rights around the world and the dignity of men and women. And that means moving beyond paying lip service to the UN agenda, so resoundingly agreed at the Millennium Summit. It means working just as hard to help 7.5 million Afghan refugees, as to track down and bring to justice Osama bin Laden. It means working just as hard to increase the flows of finance to developing countries, as to cutting them off from the world's terrorist networks.

My three daughters all learned to row at College. So I end on a rowing metaphor here at Columbia. I think what the last months have taught us is that were all in the same boat and we'd better pull together. I think that the role of the U.S. and the EU must be to be in the powerhouse of that boat, pulling together in harmony. Thank you.

| Top |

• Description of the European Commission Delegation in New York (1/4/2005)