Singapore, 1995

Allow me first to

congratulate His Excellency Mr. Diogo Freitas do Amaral,

and Portugal, on his election to lead the General

Assembly through this important fiftieth session. I should

also like to record Singapore’s appreciation to his

distinguished predecessor, His Excellency Mr. Amara

Essy of Côte d’Ivoire. I also take this opportunity to

thank our Secretary-General, Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali,

for his continuing dedication to the purposes of the

United Nations.

In recent years the United Nations has had much to

do with peace-keeping and human rights. They are

important matters, but the United Nations is not just about

peace-keeping or human rights. International economic

cooperation is one of the important purposes of the

United Nations as defined by our Charter. Poverty breeds

conflict, but abject poverty makes a mockery of all civil

liberties.

Our Secretary-General’s Agenda for Development

should give cause for all of us to reflect on the United

Nations role in the world economy. Of the five decades

of the existence of the United Nations, four have been

dedicated to development. Vast sums have been

expended, but with what result?

Specialized agencies like the United Nations

Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health

Organization (WHO), the United Nations Population Fund

(UNFPA) and the United Nations Development

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Programme (UNDP) do not hit the headlines, but are the

most successful institutions in the United Nations system.

They make quiet, unglamorous, but no-less-valuable

contributions to human dignity and international order than

do the Blue Helmets or the High Commissioner for Human

Rights.

Unfortunately, however, there is a limit to what the

specialized agencies can do to help uplift the individual

national economies. The latest United Nations World

Economic and Social Survey announces the good news that

the global economy has reached the cruising speed of 3 per

cent growth. But for many countries this news is somewhat

abstract and irrelevant to their day-to-day concerns.

That same report speaks delicately of distinctions

between robust, vulnerable and weak developing economies.

This polite language only masks the continuing reality of

degradation, poverty, misery, disease and death.

Ten years ago the United Nations Conference on

Trade and Development (UNCTAD) officially classified 36

Member States as least developed. Five years ago this

number had risen to 42, and as of August this year there

were 48 least developed countries. All forecasts project an

even more skewed distribution of global income. The

marginalization of more than a quarter of the membership

of the United Nations in the world economy must surely be

recognized as a serious problem. Those Members cannot be

shunted aside indefinitely without provoking a major

breakdown of international order.

Yet today key development institutions are under

attack. Indeed, the very role of the United Nations in the

global economy risks marginalization.

Why is this so? First, lack of a consensus on a post-

cold-war strategic rationale for development is one

important factor. Secondly, the endemic tension between

the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions, a

contest for power and control, is another factor. Thirdly, the

failure of Member States, especially major contributors, to

pay their dues in full and on time has created severe

budgetary pressures on the United Nations to cut back

development programmes.

These, however, are only partial explanations. The key

factor is the failure of the United Nations to respond to the

central economic phenomenon of our time: the globalization

of the international economy and the emergence of what

has been termed a borderless world.

For better or for worse, sovereign nation-States will

be around for a long time to come. Governments are and

will continue to be key players in the world economy. But

a model of sovereign States, interacting only at the

margins of their existence, no longer adequately describes

the contemporary world economy. Modern technology and

communications have led to money, trade and investments

flashing across borders in ways that Governments cannot

control. This is redefining the very notions of resources,

wealth and value.

Therefore, we have to cope with a globalized

international economy in which national actions are no

longer adequate or effective, but in which, at the same

time, Governments and States still cannot be disregarded.

Europe, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region have

responded in different ways, such as with the European

Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement

(NAFTA) and, in a looser form, the Asia-Pacific

Economic Cooperation (APEC). Africa is also looking at

its own regional economic groupings. These experiments

represent some of the most significant developments in

contemporary international relations. They may define a

post-cold-war structure for international order in the next

century.

The United Nations, like its individual Members, is

struggling to comprehend and catch up with the

implications of a globalized international economy. But

the United Nations has been more sluggish to respond

than many of its Members.

When we speak of regionalization in the United

Nations, we are referring primarily to the regional

commissions, which, however, are entirely divorced from

the important regional economic groupings. This is a

symptom of a wider problem.

At a time when most significant developments in the

world economy are taking place outside the United

Nations, one can legitimately ask what the role of the

United Nations is in the new world economy. There is a

danger that it will play no role at all unless it urgently

takes stock of its current approach to economic issues.

Saving the United Nations from being relegated to

irrelevance requires an attitudinal shift that cuts across

both North and South. Member States from both the

North and the South must accept a new discipline. We

must forsake ideology for pragmatism and posturing for

practicality in order to concentrate on a more focused and

compact economic agenda. This will give the United

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Nations the tools it needs to cope with the new kind of

global economy that is emerging.

The United Nations must emphasize its strengths, not

its weaknesses. It is not the best forum to negotiate

specialized and technical matters. Neither is the United

Nations an executive body for matters of trade or finance;

that role properly belongs to the Bretton Woods institutions

and the World Trade Organization. The strengths of the

United Nations are political, which is a plus because the

new world economy demands political as well as technical

responses.

The new globalized economy has sharply focused

development issues that policy makers and theoreticians

have grappled with for decades. The strictly economic

debate over appropriate development strategies is over.

Opting out is clearly not an option. It will only accelerate

the pace of marginalization. However, it has become

equally clear that the magic of the market is not enough.

Only the United Nations can meet the two resulting

political challenges. They are, first, coping with the political

consequences of rapid but uneven economic growth and,

secondly, helping the least developed to build the

institutions that will allow them to plug into the globalized

economy. Let me elaborate.

First, the process of rapid growth in some countries

has caused political tensions between the successful

developing countries and the mature Western economies.

The latter have continued to grow, but more slowly and

without significant increases in employment or

improvements in real living standards.

Job creation and job protection will certainly be high

on the agendas of political leaders throughout the

industrialized world for at least the next decade. There has

been a concerted and sometimes very vocal effort to link

economic issues to workers’ rights, human rights, social

conditions and environmental standards. Developing

countries view this as bad faith, feeling that the

industrialized countries are using any pretext to hobble and

handicap the developing world.

The critical issue is not really the rights and wrongs of

the case. It is managing shifts in relative positions of

power. A way has to be found to contain the inevitable

strains and stresses between the old rich and the newly

affluent economies. Continuing tensions are debilitating and

will slow growth for everyone.

The goal is to shape an international order that will

both optimize conditions for growth and facilitate the

rescue of the least developed countries. There will be

little attention paid to their needs if there is constant

jostling and tension between the successful developing

countries and the mature economies.

There is therefore a need for overarching

frameworks that can help manage relations between the

successful developing countries and the mature

economies. There is a need to impose a global coherence

and discipline on the emerging international system built

around regional economic groupings. This is not a

function that can be performed by the Bretton Woods

institutions or even the World Trade Organization. After

all, the first reaction of Europe and the United States to

the conclusion of the Uruguay Round was more assertive

unilateralism.

To play a role in forging such frameworks, the

United Nations must find the political will to reach

genuine consensus — not just on paper — on a realistic

global economic agenda. But this will require self-

discipline.

When one reads the action plans and agendas of

many United Nations economic bodies, it is sometimes a

depressing exercise in political archaeology. Layer upon

layer of issues, some dating back to the 1960s and the

1970s, are added with every passing session of the

General Assembly and conference. Their relevance to

contemporary problems is dubious.

What is very puzzling is that, in reality, most

Member States have in actual national practice long since

discarded the attitudes and policies which are still

faithfully placed on the United Nations agenda and

solemnly debated and discussed in an archaic annual

ritual. United Nations economic bodies must therefore

eschew the temptation to pretend to micro-manage

international economic affairs by delving into the nitty-

gritty of issues they sometimes imperfectly comprehend.

But I do not advocate a completely laissez-faire

approach. A globalized economy urgently demands

management precisely because it is rapidly moving

beyond the control of even the most powerful. But it

requires different management techniques. The day of the

hegemonic manager of the international economic system

is passing. In the new world economy, international order

can be assured only by the development of rule-based

multilateral regimes that define broad parameters for

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economic forces that are not susceptible to micro-

management. So the United Nations is the only universal

international Organization with a Charter that gives it a

mandate to range across the spectrum of issues that require

attention. If the United Nations can find the political will

and self-discipline, it will be potentially well placed, in our

view, to develop a genuine consensus on an agenda for

such regimes.

Rule-based multilateral regimes are not just in the

interest of small and weak States. The predictability and

stability they confer benefits all of us. It will be

increasingly uncomfortable and difficult for even the

strongest to assert themselves unilaterally in a globalized

economy where business, finance, trade and industry cannot

always be neatly categorized along national lines. A blow

aimed at an opponent’s chin may end up bruising one’s

own shoulder. If the United Nations can develop consensus

on an agenda, its relationship with the Bretton Woods

institutions and the World Trade Organization will naturally

fall into place. It will clearly be their responsibility to flesh

out and implement the global regimes on an agenda agreed

to by the United Nations. But these institutions are correct

to resist if, as is now all too often the case, the agenda is

impractical and delves too deeply into matters of detail.

Secondly, the new globalized international economy

has challenged the belief that developing countries could

grow simply by relaxing controls and privatizing. This is a

necessary but insufficient condition. In all of the most

successful developing countries, good, strong and stable

government has always played a key role. The World

Bank’s 1993 report entitled “The East Asian Miracle”

reveals that the miracle was not so much a miracle after all.

The secret was getting the macroeconomic fundamentals

right. But that has been known for decades. Yet there has

been no growth in much of the world. The difference was

public policy. Developing countries that try to follow the

East Asian model often fail, not because they do not know

what the correct economic policies are, but because they

lack the political underpinnings to make such policies stick.

It is the government that will determine whether a country

can plug into the fast moving global economy, or whether

it will be bypassed.

Therefore, an urgent and delicate problem is how the

United Nations can help the least developed to build

government and political institutions that will enable them

to plug into the globalized economy for development,

without intruding too brashly into their domestic affairs.

Article 2, paragraph 7, of the Charter is still the basic

cornerstone of the United Nations. A multilateral approach

to this sensitive question may be more acceptable than

crude bilateralism.

But to deal realistically with this issue, the United

Nations must set aside what has become a largely

theological debate about the relationship between

democracy, development and human rights — a phrase

which has become part of the accepted language of

development debates. But it is harmful and misleading if

it implies an inevitable or simple linear causality. Of

course, these concepts may well be linked in some way.

But let us be clear that what we are really talking about

is the relationship between democracy and human rights,

on the one hand, and development, on the other. In other

words, the causality is not linear, simple or inevitable.

There is no question that repression is wrong and

unhealthy and will stifle growth. There is also ample

empirical evidence to prove beyond any doubt that

economic growth requires political stability and good

government. The terms “democracy” and “good

government” are often used as if they were synonyms. Of

course they overlap to a degree, but they are not the same

thing.

Singapore’s experience is that good government

must be erected on three interrelated pillars: political

accountability, a long-term orientation, and social justice.

For long-term stability, Governments must govern with

the support of the governed. Governments that do not

deliver will not last. But this fact and the need for

periodic free and fair elections do not prescribe any

particular model of political system or ideology. So the

clash and clamour of contending interests, street

demonstrations and a rambunctious and abusive press may

make for more exciting television for some Western

audiences. It may even work for some countries. But

more often than not it contradicts the second pillar of

good government, which is long-term orientation. That

requires the ability to resist populist and sectional

pressures and, on occasion, administer bitter medicine to

overcome economic challenges. Singapore’s experience

has convinced us that the first duty of government is to

govern, and also govern fairly. At times, this will require

a firm hand.

The third element of good government is social

justice. There should be equal opportunities for all groups.

If the Government is fair to all ethnic, religious and social

groups, it will not be beholden to any special interest.

This is important in any society. It has been one of the

reasons for Singapore’s political stability and social

cohesion. But Singapore does not hold itself up as a

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model, although we are happy, and prepared, to share our

experience with anyone who may be interested. No one can

prescribe any particular model of political development for

any country. Indeed, when this is attempted dogmatically,

with only a superficial understanding of the complexities of

specific situations, it leads to disaster. Our basic assumption

is a fundamentally pragmatic and pluralist one — that there

are no models that can be applied everywhere.

So growth and stability are linked by a complex and

subtle dynamic: an unrelenting search for an equilibrium

between the rights of the individual, the claims of the

community to which every individual must belong, and the

no less urgent need for Governments to govern effectively

and fairly. No balance between individual liberty and

growth can be valid for all countries are for all time. Every

society must find its own appropriate equilibrium in the

context of its own historical and cultural experiences if the

country is to progress.

Singapore straddles the developed and the developing

worlds. Our population generally enjoys a comfortable

standard of living, and our economy has a relatively

sophisticated service and industrial sector, performing

global roles. But Singapore also has structural

vulnerabilities; it has resource limitations that prevent us

from being fully developed as yet. Therefore, it is with a

special perspective that we in Singapore observe the

ongoing debates in and about the United Nations economic

institutions. Sometimes we wonder: whose interests are

really served by a prolonged debate, increasingly divorced

from global economic reality? Is it the interest of those who

want to preserve these institutions, or of those who would

prefer to relegate them to some historical dead end? I do

not have the answer to that question, but I raise it as one

that merits urgent attention. I do not think there is much

time left.