Europa > La Unión europea en el mundo > European Union @ United Nations > Speech by Amb. John B. Richardson (2001-05) on 'Why the US and Europe need an effective United Nations'

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Speech by Amb. John B. Richardson (2001-05) on 'Why the US and Europe need an effective United Nations'

For anyone involved in the United Nations it has been difficult over the last year not to view everything through the prism of Iraq and how the 15 members of the Security Council have dealt with the varying stages of its ongoing crisis. This is a hugely important subject for the US, the EU and the whole world community. How it is handled is also a crucial test for the UN. But at such moments it can be good to step back from the subject on which attention is so closely focused and remember the broader context within which we operate.

Before the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq was a country governed by a despotic regime, with a history of human rights abuses. It had resorted to the use of weapons banned by the consensus of the world community, and had tried to engage in territorial conquest by invading its neighbor. It is situated in a region, which itself is largely undemocratic and in which the rule of law and human rights are concepts with limited relevance to the lives of most people and which has largely failed to participate in the tremendous growth of GDP per head, which the world has experienced over the last half century.

Let us stop for a moment and realize that this description of a country and a region out of step with the times is only true because we have come to see the rule of law, democracy and human rights, prosperity brought about by a market economy, the inviolability of frontiers as normal. But what a remarkable transformation that is of the world, which emerged from the debris of the Second World War. At that time it seemed normal for neighbors to go to war with each other. Democracy was largely restricted to Europe and to North America. There were few international norms of behavior. And an ideological struggle was emerging between the values embraced by the Atlantic community and the autocratic regimes and planned economies of Communism, with its declared aim of world dominion.

There followed four decades of the struggle we call the Cold War, a power struggle but also a struggle for the minds and hearts of men and women. This period can be interpreted as the unfolding of four interrelated stories.

First, the military strength of the Soviet Union was contained by the Atlantic Alliance, the illusions of communism were shown to be inferior to the operation of open societies with market economies. The weaker model eventually collapsed under the strain, the Wall fell, the Soviet Union imploded. The values of the West had triumphed.

The second great story of those fifty years is the transformation of Europe from the cockpit and the source of wars engulfing the world to a Continent of peace and prosperity under the banner of what has become the European Union. For anyone who has read the great literature of the First World War and its poets, who has struggled to understand the evil of Nazi Germany, who has listened to the stories of family members marked for life by the horrors and the grief of the Second World War, this must seem like a wondrous change. To create a system of governance that could make war between European nations unthinkable is surely one of the greatest achievements of the human spirit since the American constitution. And as you are aware, we are now about to extend that system to another 10 countries of Europe. They will join on May 1. The dream of a Europe "whole and free", peaceful and prosperous, is within our grasp at last.

The third great story of the last part of the twentieth Century is how those values of democracy, rule of law and the market economy have swept around the world. They have helped to transform the countries of the Pacific Rim and allow an economic miracle to take place. They have brought down one dictatorship after another in Latin America and replaced them with democratic governments. And even in Africa, the world's most troubled continent, those values, given the label of "good governance" are now largely accepted as the only solid basis for development.

The fourth story is how the world has given itself the capacity to develop and to promulgate rules of behavior for individuals, for companies, for governments. The dense network of rules and norms emanating from the multilateral system, based on the UN but also including organizations as diverse as the WTO, the International Maritime Organisation, or the International Atomic Energy Agency, represents the creation of a world order undreamt of a century ago. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the many conventions to which it has given birth are a part of this same system. All this gives international expression to the concept of the rule of law.

How has this come about? It is, of course, the product of the vision of many great individuals: Franklin D Roosevelt, Dag Hammarskjold, Winston Churchill, George Marshall, Jean Monnet, and many others. But it is also the product of a common vision and a common project, which united the two sides of the Atlantic throughout this period. The transatlantic partnership, in many areas under American leadership, was the driving force. I participated in the drafting of the Transatlantic Declaration of 1991, which defined the challenges facing the EU and the US and explicitly recognized that they could be dealt with together because of a common will and because of the shared values of the two sides.

Under this benign interpretation of the events of the second half of the last century, we could well argue, as Francis Fukuyama did, that history had come to an end, in the sense that a particular model of how individual societies - and indeed the world itself - should be ordered had prevailed. To the extent that this was true, I would suggest that the success of transatlantic policies was based on three elements: the containment of expansionist Communist power by the steadfast maintenance of a credible and powerful deterrent; the projection of a set of values which many around the world were prepared to accept as their own; and the provision of a framework, within which all nations could participate in a meaningful fashion in the development of international consensus.

Today we face a different situation to that of the 1950s. We face a world, which seems full of new dangers. Since 9/11 we are all conscious of the vulnerability of the civilization we have built. It is vulnerable to terrorism, it is vulnerable to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, it is vulnerable to the destruction of the computer systems upon which it increasingly relies, it is vulnerable to the erosion of the liberties we value in the name of reducing these vulnerabilities.

Ethnic hatreds produce conflict all over Africa, within the Middle East, in many parts of Asia, in the Balkans, in Northern Ireland. This fractured world is in desperate need of governance. But what sort of governance?

Surely we know the answer. We need governance based on the values, which have served us so well for the last half century. Of course, we must insist that human behavior is governed by a set of rules worked out by the world community, that the rule of law prevails. Of course, we must continue to refine our economic governance to ensure that competition can provide the motor for increasing prosperity across the globe. Of course, we must insist that governments are subject to the will of their citizens, in what we call democracy. But in doing so let us not commit the error of thinking that we know all the answers. Just as the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, so we should practice a degree of humility in looking at our own societies and being ready to adapt the way we implement our values in practice. It is the continued vitality of our own systems, which will be our strongest argument for others to adopt them. We have much work to do within the transatlantic community in this task of renewal. And we will do it better if we ensure that the transatlantic dialogue continues to be as vibrant as it traditionally has been.

Of course, the mere propagation of our values is not enough. As we learned in dealing with the Soviet Union, the strength of ideas must be accompanied by a willingness to counter force with force, power with power.

And it is here that you will all have been reading about the differences of view between a Europe, which believes in the use of multilateral instruments, and a United States, which wants to act unilaterally. I believe this to be a caricature. The reality is more complex. I want to approach it by looking at some of the threats with which we are faced and suggesting how best they can be dealt with. But first let us look at what many Americans think. It has been well formulated by Robert Kagan as follows:

"Americans are "cowboys", Europeans love to say. And there is truth in this. The United States does act as an international sheriff, self-appointed perhaps but widely welcomed nevertheless, trying to enforce some peace and justice in what Americans see as a lawless world where outlaws need to be deterred or destroyed, and often through the muzzle of a gun. Europe, by this old West analogy, is more like a saloonkeeper. Outlaws shoot sheriffs, not saloonkeepers. In fact, from the saloonkeeper's point of view, the sheriff trying to impose order by force can sometimes be more threatening than the outlaws who, at least for the time being, may just want a drink."

Analogies are fun, but can be misleading. I would make one point only within the context of this metaphor. A sheriff is not a vigilante; his mandate is to uphold the law, not to put himself outside it. And in international relations the law is clear on some fundamental points.

Article 2 of the United Nations Charter obliges all members to:

• Settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
  
  
• Refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

This does not, of course, prevent the use of force in self-defense, but this is clearly defined, in Article 51 of the charter, as the case when "an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations".

In all other cases of threats to international peace Article 39 makes it clear that it is for the Security Council to determine this and to recommend or decide on the appropriate action.

And let us remember that this text was drafted, under US prompting, after two catastrophic world wars in which acts of aggression by single nations had engendered the most terrible chain reactions.

Let us be clear. If we want international legitimacy for the use of armed force in the world to combat threats to our security, approval by the UNSC is the best way to achieve this. Conversely, if debate in the Security Council shows that the use of force is opposed by many of its members, it should surprise no one if subsequent action is held to be illegitimate. It is a very good sign that the US has now made it clear that the next phase of dealing with Iraq should be legitimized by a central role for the UN, backed up by a clear mandate from the Security Council.

Having said this few Europeans would dispute that, when the chips are down and the world community has to deal, as a last resort, by force with a threat to international peace and security, we will need to be led by the United States. At the end of the day, if a posse is needed, there will be no doubt as to who the sheriff will be. And we will all be grateful that he is around.

Terrorism

What is the biggest threat facing our peace, our prosperity, and our freedoms today? No one who lives, as I do, in New York City can doubt that it is terrorism, which struck at the heart of Manhattan two years ago. Similarly in Europe, no other threat is seen as so serious. So how have we in Europe reacted to this threat?

First, by complete solidarity with the United States. The outpouring of expressions of sympathy in Europe two and a half years ago was genuine and deeply felt.

Second, by giving full support to US military action in Afghanistan against Al-Qaeda and to bring down the Taliban, who harbored them. As you know, several of our Member States were also militarily involved and NATO is now in charge of peacekeeping operations.

Third, by swift action to introduce new, effective, Europe-wide, anti-terrorism legislation. This was accomplished by Christmas 2001 and has been bearing fruit in a wave of arrests throughout Europe. Unhappily the terrible bombings in Madrid have not only confirmed that we are every bit as vulnerable to terrorist attack as the US but also that our efforts to protect ourselves have ways to go.

Fourth, by active support for United Nations action. Let us not forget that the UN comprises not only the Security Council, but also the General Assembly. It is through the General Assembly that the community of nations has laboriously negotiated a series of eleven conventions on different elements of terrorism, which are now being implemented by all its members. It is these conventions, which provide the legal framework for other countries to cooperate with our intelligence services and our law enforcement officials in our struggle to defeat this terrible scourge. In Europe, our Member States have, of course, ratified these conventions, and we are pressuring others to do the same. The number of countries who have done so has since grown by leaps and bounds.

The Security Council also lost no time in adopting Resolution 1373, which imposes a legal obligation on every member of the UN to adopt and implement legislation sealing off any financial flows to terrorist organizations, and this is being followed up vigorously in the Counter Terrorism Committee, currently under Spanish chairmanship. And in the European Union we are committed to helping those developing countries, which have most difficulty to help themselves, to implement it effectively.

It is through these UN instruments that all nations around the world are able to take ownership of these efforts, to rally to a worldwide consensus. This function of the UN cannot be emphasized enough.

The commonality of approach that I have described here is impressive. In a sense we are reproducing here our approach during the Cold War. We are united in our determination to oppose terrorism. We are providing, through the UN, a forum for comprehensive worldwide mechanisms to combat it. But we also need to remember to emphasise that we are defending a set of values, which world citizens can rally to rather than the values claimed by terrorists and their spokesmen. This is a complex task.

First, it is essential to ensure that we maintain the rule of law and respect human rights even in situations in which we feel under threat, for the credibility of the model we are presenting to the world will be judged on this. It is in this context that the United States surely needs to reflect very carefully before it claims that prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are not entitled to the same treatment as they would receive on US soil.

Human Development

Second, we all need to recognize that, around the world the peace and security of individuals are threatened in many ways not usually thought of as threats to international peace and security. The AIDS pandemic has the potential to decimate the earth's population in the decades to come. And the scourge of poverty still condemns large sections of the world's population to lives of abject misery and an early death. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's report to the Millenium Summit of the United Nations addressed this problem as follows:
"1.2 billion people have to live on less than $1 a day. The combination of extreme poverty with extreme inequality between countries, and often also within them, is an affront to our common humanity. It also makes many other problems worse, including conflict. And the world's population is still rising rapidly, with the increase concentrated in the poorest countries. We must act to reduce extreme poverty by half, in every part of the world, before 2015. The following are priority areas:

• Achieving sustained growth. This means, above all, ensuring that people in all developing countries can benefit from globalization.
  
  
• Generating opportunities for the young. By 2015, all children must complete primary schooling, with equal opportunities for both genders at all levels of education. And ways must be found to provide young people with decent work.
  
  
• Promoting health and combating HIV/AIDS. Health research must be redirected at the problems affecting 90 per cent of the world's people. By 2010 we should have cut the rate of HIV infection in young people by 25 per cent.
  
  
• Upgrading the slums. We must support the "Cities without Slums" action plan, which aims to improve the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.
  
  
• Including Africa. The Report challenges experts and philanthropic foundations to tackle low agricultural productivity in Africa. It also urges African governments to give higher priority to reducing poverty, and the rest of the world to help them.
  
  
• Building digital bridges. New technology offers an unprecedented chance for developing countries to "leapfrog" earlier stages of development. Everything must be done to maximize their peoples' access to new information networks.
  
  
• Demonstrating global solidarity. Rich countries must further open their markets to poor countries' products, must provide deeper and faster debt relief, and must give more and better focused development assistance. Ridding the world of the scourge of extreme poverty is a challenge to every one of us. We must not fail to meet it."

The development goals adopted by that summit of world leaders have come to be known as the Millenium Development Goals, or MDGs. The latest Human Development Report of the UN indicates that we are making no progress towards those goals in Latin America and the Caribbean, no progress in the Arab world, no progress in the countries of the former Soviet Union, and we are faced with a continuing deterioration of the situation in sub-Saharan Africa. The simple fact is that for a huge segment of the world's population we are not offering a better future than the zealots who suggest that the martyrdom, which comes from suicide bombing, is the highest aim to which they can aspire.

To the extent that it is starvation and misery, which provide terrorists with the warped excuses, with which they attempt to justify their actions and obtain at least the acquiescence of the societies in which they operate, we are currently losing our fight against them. But we do at least have a convincing recipe to deal with it. And it is one which was produced by the painstaking efforts of the world community, working through the mechanism of the series of major UN conferences, which have addressed problems of development in recent years. Let me mention the May 2001 conference on the Least-developed countries in Brussels, the March 2002 conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, and the September 2002 conference on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. In this context let me draw your attention in particular to the declaration drawn up in Monterrey. It provides a blueprint for all actors in the world of international development to work together in concert towards the end of eliminating poverty. For the first time there exists a worldwide consensus upon which to build. It is the UN system which has created it. It is largely for governments to implement it.

The International Criminal Court

But the world does not suffer just from terror nor from the threat posed by the possession of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of unsavory regimes - which, I would remind you was the official US and British reason to intervene in Iraq. Nor can everything be blamed on underdevelopment.

African development, for example, has long been held back by autocratic leaders misappropriating their countries' resources and refusing to step down long after their sell-by-date. In doing so they trample on our values, which are the only ones, on the basis of which successful development can come about in their countries.

In the Balkans, the break-up of the Soviet Empire unleashed an orgy of nationalist bloodlust, and it has taken years of patient diplomacy, a military action by NATO, led by the United States, and several years of patient nation-building by the UN and by the EU to get that unhappy region back on a track towards a society based on the values we share, and someday, we hope, to a membership of the European Union. And Milosevic is now on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity.

But why do African dictators think they can get away with it?

Why did Milosevic think that he could, we believe, pursue massive ethnic cleansing with impunity? (I am choosing my words carefully, because even Milosevic has a right to be presumed innocent before being proved guilty).

In Europe we believe that the answer to this question is that we have had no international legal system defining crimes against humanity, committing States to bring their perpetrators to justice, and setting up a court to be ready to try them. In other words we believe that if the International Criminal Court had been in place, with the backing of the world community, ten years ago the Milosevics of this world would have thought twice. The lack of an international system to bring such criminals to justice was a serious gap in the multilateral system we set up last century.

Here, of course, the US takes a different view. As it turns out, the attempt to set up a system, which will deter wrongdoers in the future, is supported by the world community minus one. In this case the US is turning its back on the use of a multilateral instrument attempting to apply one of the fundamental principles of US society - the rule of law.

In Europe, we believe that the Court provides a way for the rule of law to end impunity for those who violate in the most serious fashion the values which are not just ours but those of the world community. We also believe that the US, which shares those values, will eventually come to see it in this way and come in out of the cold.

Global Climate Change

Apropos of cold, let me now address the main continuing threat to the realization of our common vision for humanity. This is the question-mark over the long-term sustainability of development around the world. The world's biggest ever conference in Johannesburg two years ago addressed just this issue. It will occupy us for the foreseeable future, not just for my lifetime but for yours as well.

The concept of sustainability was first incorporated into our Treaty with the Treaty of Amsterdam and Article 2EEC now defines the aim of the Union's economic policies as promoting "a harmonious, balanced and sustainable development…" In our system this gives it the equivalent of the force of constitutional law. The adoption by the European Council at Gothenburg in June 2001 of a Strategy for Sustainable Development has begun to turn this into practical policy. This is one of very few examples of an international discussion then being reflected in internal changes within the Union.

The driving force behind it was the consciousness of global environmental interdependence - the idea that we are all citizens of "Spaceship Earth" - and the need for international solidarity in dealing with it. The discussion has triggered the realization that EU policies have an obligation to ensure that our children and children's children are afforded the same opportunities for a good life as are we, and thus the need to ensure that economic development preserves and does not diminish the resources, natural and otherwise, on which it is based.

This is also why we are so attached to the Kyoto Protocol on Global Climate Change. The EU has already achieved its first target under the Protocol and stabilized its emission levels of greenhouse gases at their 1990 level. We are also well on the way to achieve our second commitment and reduce them by 8% over the next ten years.

In May 2002 the US submitted its 3rd national communication to the UN Climate Change Convention. It was the first time a document from the Bush administration had acknowledged the human responsibility for climate change. Furthermore it predicted that the US itself will experience far-reaching and even devastating environmental consequences. So what is the US doing?

Your government has said that it will not ratify Kyoto, because it is a flawed treaty, it will go a different route. So let us suppose for a moment that Kyoto is not the ideal way forward. What then is the US doing?

On 14 February 2002 President Bush forwarded his proposals on greenhouse gas emissions to Congress. If they are implemented and achieve the desired results they will indeed reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of US economic output. But the US economy will continue to grow, and even on the Administration's own estimates, US output of greenhouse gases will have risen 30% above the 1990 level by 2012.

This is hardly surprising in the light of current US legislation. Let me take just one example. I guess we are all assuming that Governor Schwarzenegger turns up for work in one of his Hummers. And we all know the extent to which suburban shopping malls are now dominated by SUVs and minivans. Yet all these vehicles are exempted from the mileage restrictions placed on automobile manufacturers by the US CAFÉ legislation.

Unless something is done, the rest of the world will be dealing with this threat to all our futures without the US, which will blithely continue to produce a greater and greater proportion of the gases, which cause climate change.

This US attitude flies in the face of the tried and trusted recipe which served us so well in the last century. It refuses to face up to a threat we have clearly identified. It refuses to accept a multilateral approach to dealing with it, which the international community has adopted after years of painful negotiations, in which the US participated. And it rejects the principle of international solidarity. Such a lack of solidarity is unworthy of a country whose people are known for their generosity of spirit.

Economic Growth

I wish to be clear on one fundamental idea. I do not belong, and nor does the European Union in its declared policies, to the school of thought which blames economic growth for our difficulties. It is economic growth, which has so greatly improved the lot of so many countries in South-east Asia, and is currently allowing millions of people in China and India to escape from extreme poverty.
In the EU, we believe that globalization is largely a result of irreversible technological change. We believe that the liberalization of trade contributes greatly as a motor of growth. But we also believe that we need to lay down a framework within which negative side-effects of liberalization and globalization are avoided and its benefits made available to as broad a cross-section of the world's population as possible. In this we are largely at one with the views of the US government.

The most pressing piece of business on this front is to do what we did not manage to do in Cancun last summer and agree on the modalities for successfully concluding the latest round of trade negotiations in the WTO, which were launched under the heading of the Doha Development Round. It is important that their results live up to that title.

Conclusion

I do not believe that this broad-brush survey of current foreign policy challenges and our response to them suggests a decisive rift across the Atlantic. On the whole it is still true that we share an important set of values, which have served us well in the past and can do so in the future. The one big exception is our attitude to the sustainability of development on this planet. But, in these turbulent times the need for dialogue between us to ensure that we retain not only a bedrock of common values but also a common understanding on how best to defend them around the world is more necessary than ever.

Some observers worry whether this will be possible. Robert Jervis of Columbia University, for example, wrote an article, which appeared last August in the journal, "Foreign Policy", entitled "The Compulsive Empire". In it, he argues that nations enjoying unrivalled global power have always defined their interests in increasingly expansive terms and that resisting this historical mission creep is the greatest challenge facing the United States today.

What is clear is that the temptation exists for the United States to believe that it can achieve its policy aims and defend its interests unilaterally, because of its unrivalled military capabilities, and need not engage wholeheartedly in the messy, time-consuming, and not always very effective business of multilateralism in general and the UN in particular. I hope I have given you reason this afternoon to realize that this is an illusion. In today's interdependent world there is simply no alternative to the multilateral system.

But if we want the US to accept this conclusion wholeheartedly, or even halfheartedly, the rest of the world community will need to ensure that the UN is the best it can possibly be.

The Secretary-General was thus absolutely right to call last September for a major reform of the system and to set up a high-level panel both to examine the challenges it faces and to propose how best it can deal with them. That panel will report in December this year. It will need to deal with at least the following questions.

For the Security Council, how best can the UN charter accommodate a right to self-defence against new threats to security? Under what circumstances can it be invoked and by whom? Can formal criteria for armed intervention in a country for humanitarian reasons be formulated? When, if ever, should states be free to take action in the absence of explicit SC authorization? More generally, how can the perceived legitimacy of the Security Council be further increased at the same time as its decision-making capacities improved? In this context the issue of the number of permanent members and their veto power will need to be addressed.

For the General Assembly two issues stand out. If this is to function as the major forum within which the countries of the world give voice to their concerns and their aspirations, what needs to be done so that its deliberations become required viewing on the TV screens of the world? And in its legislative function, how can the international conventions, so painfully negotiated under its aegis, be implemented and effectively monitored?

For the Economic and Social Council, ECOSOC, the primary task must be to give it a much more effective role in the implementation and management of the Monterrey consensus.

Do I have recipes for these changes? I do not. The essence of the multilateral method is the time-consuming construction of consensus within working groups with large participation. It is not easy. It requires listening to the ideas of others much more than propagating one's own. It is often not much fun. But in the absence of a set of silver bullets for the challenges of the world it is the only way forward.

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