Can the United Nations adapt to the 21st century?

Abstract

IT IS VITALLY IMPORTANT TO TAKE SERIOUSLY question of whether UN can cope with security problems of 21st century or not. We are seeing, over and over again, how international problems eventually come back to UN because it provides last, and sometimes best, hope of resolving them. And we have some unusually ominous problems to solve.Canada has been one of most consistent, supportive, and unflappable members of United Nations. It has stood with organization in good times and in bad. It also has a tradition of encouraging new ideas and new thinking about international affairs. Not many countries do this. In 1950s, we had Lester Pearson as champion of technique that is now called peacekeeping. A Canadian general, E.L.M. (Tommy) Burns, was first-ever commander of a UN peacekeeping force and did a great deal to set tradition and form that would be followed in later operations. More recently, in 2001, Canada sponsored international commission on intervention and state sovereignty that introduced at least one very important new concept, the responsibility to protect: international responsibility to protect peoples anywhere in world whose government has abandoned them and is in some cases persecuting them. The commission put responsibility for humanitarian intervention squarely in UN security council. The council discussed it at length but reached no determination before terrible events of 11 September 2001, which distracted attention from principle and practice of humanitarian intervention.Another Canadian who has done, or caused to be done, much innovative thinking about international affairs is David Malone, past president of International Peace Academy in New York. David Malone has managed to make a small but extremely active organization into a major catalyst for innovative practical thinking about international problems by diplomats, academics, UN secretariat, and people from different parts of private sector. He has just now returned to Canadian foreign service.Canada has always seen UN not as ideological problem, as some nations do, but as a matter of practical necessity that has to be imaginatively developed in response to many challenges of international world. Dag Hammarskjold once said that United Nations was an experiment in progress towards international community living in peace under laws of justice. That short sentence gives a concise but comprehensive picture of what UN actually isan experiment in progress.EARLY ASSUMPTIONSWhen I joined UN secretariat in 1945, I had been in army for six years and had little adult experience of civilian life. I was amazed at diplomats, a breed I had never encountered, and I was particularly amazed at general confidence that UN charter, which had been approved in San Francisco six months before, would actually work as it was written. The war had been so horrible that no one wanted to doubt that peace organization would work. With war still fresh in people's minds, it seemed obvious that victorious leaders of alliance in World War II should become five permanent members of security council who would supervise and, if necessary, enforce peace. We would thus have a system of collective security that would allow most nations to disarm to a large degree. World disarmament was much discussed at that time and was a high priority in charter. And because Great Depression was a major factor in producing fascism and nazism in Italy and Germany, there would be a UN economic and social council to ensure that there were no more depressions. The trusteeship council would be a kind of way station on road to independence for colonies of world, which covered a third of world's land surface at that time.This system made so much sense that it seemed almost impossible that it wouldn't work . …