Singapore, 1999

First let convey my

warmest congratulations to you, Mr. President, on your

election. As we enter the new millennium, the United

Nations is crossing a significant threshold, and we need

a seasoned hand to lead us. Your long experience with the

23

United Nations, first as a freedom fighter, now as Foreign

Minister of Namibia, will stand us in good stead.

Let me also thank your distinguished predecessor,

Mr. Didier Opertti of Uruguay, for the good work he did

last year.

As a fellow small State, Singapore would also like to

warmly welcome the three new Members to the United

Nations: Kiribati, Nauru and Tonga. We hope that they will

also join the forum of small States.

I wish to pose this question: Will the United Nations

survive in the twenty-first century? I have framed this

question provocatively because I believe that the United

Nations has not yet adequately come to grips with the

central challenges of its next phase of development. Unless

it does so, my question may not be just rhetorical.

To be sure, the United Nations has been seized of

efforts at reform for several years. But what is required

must go beyond the modification of existing institutions or

organizational structures. The issue is not just how to make

the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Secretariat

or other organs work more effectively, although that is

important. But we cannot succeed if we neglect the broader

context of such endeavours. The key question is whether

the current United Nations is conceptually and

constitutionally sound.

The simple but hard-won lesson of this century's

experiments with international organizations, from the

League to the United Nations, is that the United Nations

must work within the framework of the state system. If the

United Nations has worked better or has lasted longer than

the League, it is because the United Nations has

accommodated the state system rather than posed a direct

threat to it. Its Member States see the United Nations as an

additional protective umbrella, not as a body that

diminishes them.

The League's Covenant was based on different

premises. It emphasized disarmament. It promoted

collective security. It required States to submit disputes to

arbitration and judicial settlement. By doing so, the League

posed an explicit challenge to the rights of States. On the

other hand, the United Nations can do nothing that its

Members do not expressly allow it to do. Our Charter is

clear and explicit that the United Nations is based on the

principle of the sovereign equality of its Members. It also

stresses the concomitant principle of non-interference in

internal affairs.

But these premises are now under pressure. As the

twentieth century draws to a close, the state system is on

the verge of major transformation. This will profoundly

affect all Members and the United Nations itself.

I do not predict the end of the nation State. The

concept of sovereignty is undergoing profound

modification, but it does not seem likely that the nation

State will simply disappear. No viable alternative to

organizing international political life has yet emerged, no

matter how inadequate or ineffective the current form

may have become. Radical proposals for restructuring the

framework of the state system will inevitably invite

disappointment. The United Nations must therefore work

within the existing framework, even as that framework is

being transformed. Herein lie the subtlety and the

difficulty of the new challenge.

Two forces are impelling change: the pressures of a

truly integrated world economy and the end of the cold

war. Neither is adequately understood; even less

understood is their interplay. This dialectic simultaneously

impels an unprecedented degree of international

cooperation and makes international cooperation more

difficult to achieve.

There have always been issues which required States

to work together. Interdependence is not new. In a sense,

it is as old as the state system. To be sure, the number

and scope of transnational issues that require international

cooperative action have now expanded, but this is a

change of degree, not of kind. Globalization is not just

more interdependence.

While globalization's effects are most evident in

finance and economics, there are far-reaching implications

across a range of issues. It affects the very notion of

statehood and government as they have hitherto been

understood.

The essential function of any Government is to

govern — to provide public goods and services to its

citizens within its borders. But in a globalized economy,

national borders no longer include sufficient territory to

function as self-contained economic units. Financial

geography and economic geography no longer coincide

with political geography. This mismatch means that

Governments no longer have a monopoly of legitimate

24

power within their own state boundaries. This does not

challenge the de jure sovereignty of States, but profoundly

alters every Government's de facto capacity to govern.

The challenge is not, as it was throughout history,

merely of one State circumscribing the sovereignty of

another — of the powerful forcing their will on the weak.

The real challenge is now within each State, no matter how

powerful.

Dealing with this phenomenon poses a different kind

of challenge than just insisting on the legal concept of

sovereignty or persuading Governments to work together on

specific issues. It forces a reconceptualization of the very

idea of government and statehood. It requires a complete

change of mindset by the powerful as well as by the weak.

This will be difficult and painful to achieve.

What is required is an unprecedented and qualitatively

new kind of international cooperation, not just cooperation

based on the alignment of national interests, as has occurred

throughout history. It requires the redefinition of what

constitutes both “nation” and “interests”. States can no

longer just collide or cooperate at the boundaries of their

sovereignties. It demands nothing less than shared

responsibility for governance and a pooling of

sovereignties.

For this new kind of international cooperation to be

constructed and take root, the imperative of cooperation

must be supported by practical experience that demonstrates

that it is superior to any other political alternative. It is here

that the intersection and interplay of globalization and the

post-cold-war international order complicate matters.

The end of the cold war at first seemed to promise a

new dawn for the United Nations, opening up vast

potentialities for international cooperation unfettered by

ideological conflict. But these hopes have now been dashed.

In reality, the end of the cold war may have made

international cooperation less likely.

Paradoxically, the ever-greater integration of the world

economy has been accompanied by increasing political

fragmentation. The cold war was not just an ideological

geopolitical struggle; the cold war imposed identities that

transcended nationalism. Even those who sought to escape

the cold war in fact defined themselves in relation to it.

Irrespective of which side we stood for, the cold war was

the organizing principle for international action and the

concept by which we understood global events.

To those disoriented by the pressures of

globalization, the end of the cold war provided an

opportunity to seek reassurance and a new identity in real

or imagined ethnic nationalisms. The resulting

proliferation of States and the lack of a clear organizing

principle for international action have made cooperation

problematic.

The end of ideological conflict and the increasing

influence of market principles in all areas of life are

making economic efficiency an essential condition for

evaluating political actions. But globalization has

simultaneously eroded the ability of States to muster the

political consensus of their own citizens for such action.

It is therefore not very surprising that the right kind of

new response has not yet been forthcoming.

Of course, lip service is being paid to the need for

new international institutions to deal with new

transnational problems or to the reform of existing

international institutions, the United Nations among them.

But the more usual reaction to the mismatch between

economic geography and the political geography of state

boundaries has been defensive or a sterile triumphalism:

a new protectionism, xenophobic or nostalgic nationalisms

or, where a country feels strong and confident enough, a

new kind of extraterritoriality, reminiscent of the

nineteenth century. Strong States try to project their

national laws beyond their boundaries or insist on their

standards as conditionalities for trade and other kinds of

cooperative interactions.

The recognition that problems are global, and the

almost universal acceptance of the market, commands at

best only superficial international consensus. The real

responses, the most concrete and practical responses, have

been regional rather than universal.

This process is most advanced in Europe and North

America, through the European Union and the North

American Free Trade Agreement, and less so in Latin

America and Asia, through the Southern Cone Common

Market, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Council

and the Association of South-East Asian Nations Free

Trade Area. Tentative linkages are being explored

between regions. Africa has been only peripherally

engaged. But relying on regionalism as more than a

stopgap in a globalized world creates a latent instability.

If projected unchecked into the twenty-first century, this

must ultimately affect basic issues of war and peace. It is

obviously unacceptable for an entire continent to be

marginalized.

25

So a truly universal approach to shared responsibility

for global governance and pooling of sovereignties to deal

with global problems requires an international consensus on

what is legitimately in the general interest of still sovereign

States. No matter how compelling the issue or problem, this

is not self-evident.

The definition of what is in the legitimate public

interest within a specific State or nation is the product of a

long historical process, cultural attributes and a level of

economic development. It is the basic stuff of most political

contests in most States. Consensus is not easy to reach

domestically. It certainly will be even more difficult in an

international system that is concurrently united and divided

by globalization and the end of the cold war.

The international problem is compounded because the

expectation that the post-cold-war international system

would be multipolar has proved premature. A multipolar

world is still more a matter of potential rather than a

current reality. This has engendered discomfort.

The war in Kosovo focused such feelings. It threw

into brutal relief a trend that has been under way for some

time: that the absolute sovereignty of States has to be

qualified to require compliance with generally accepted

standards of conduct and respect for human rights.

This is not all that novel a notion. The traditional

approach of non-interference in domestic affairs was never

as absolute in practice as in theory. The doctrine of

humanitarian intervention dates from the nineteenth century,

when the powerful claimed the right to intervene in the

affairs of the weak. The war in Kosovo resonated with such

historical memories, thus adding to the discomfort.

It is a fact that sovereignty now coexists uneasily with

a different current of international law concerned with the

rights of individuals. These trends have not yet been

reconciled. But both trends are facts that cannot be wished

away. In any case, their logical compatibility is not the real

issue.

Notwithstanding Kosovo, it does not appear that the

majority of States have much to fear if they treat their

citizens well. There are many countries that treat their

citizens badly without any suggestion of any sanction

harsher than moral disapproval. Concern for human rights

has always been selective.

The more critical issue is related but different. The

loss of territorial reference points engendered by

globalization's mismatch between economic and political

geographies and the loss of strategic meaning after the

end of the cold war have made most international

reactions ad hoc.

We lurch from crisis to crisis, with no clear sense of

direction or consistency. Why Kosovo or East Timor and

not Africa? Are the rights of humans everywhere not

universal? How to choose when to intervene among the

all-too-many conflicts? In his statement to the General

Assembly this year, the Secretary-General has posed

several thoughtful challenges for us: “Nothing in the

Charter precludes a recognition that there are rights

beyond borders.” What the Charter does say is that armed

force shall not be used, save in the common interest. The

Secretary-General then asked, what is the common

interest? Who shall define it? Who will defend it? Under

whose authority? With what means of intervention?

I agree with the Secretary-General that these

questions will need to be answered and criteria

established. Rules and objective criteria for such

interventions are urgently needed. Failure to do so will

breed uncertainty and instability. If a new balance has to

be struck between sovereignty and other values, it should

be struck knowingly and with our eyes open. The

alternative is to be led, one step at a time, with the best

of intentions, by ad hoc solutions.

This will be a major challenge for the international

community if the United Nations is to remain relevant in

the coming century. This is because we can expect to face

many more situations which will pose the dilemma of

reconciling State sovereignty with international

intervention to redress violations of human rights.

We are all familiar with the pressures of the

international media and non-governmental actors. These

are realities but provide no satisfactory answers. It is not

politically acceptable that questions of international peace

and stability should be decided on an ad hoc basis. It is

even less acceptable that consensus on the need for more

peaceful modes of international cooperation should reflect

the preoccupations of a few.

What we need is to replicate on a global scale those

conditions that have made the pluralistic societies in

advanced economies still capable of collective action. No

Government anywhere can rule by coercion alone or lead

legitimately merely because it wields supreme power.

Resort to coercion or naked power is more often than not

taken to be a symptom of failure of government and not

its defining feature.

26

What is required, therefore, on the international stage

is what has already been accepted domestically — indeed,

insisted upon in the name of democracy: a modest

acceptance of the reality of diversity and a nuanced

appreciation of the difference between friends, friendly

critics and honest disagreements. Persuading those already

disoriented by globalization and rapid technological changes

requires patient and skilful diplomacy in the artful balance

of competing interests.

Despite the handicaps under which it laboured, and for

all its imperfections, the United Nations has played a

critical role in some of the great world issues of the first

four decades of its existence. It eased the pangs of

decolonization. It provided a cathartic theatre to vent the

most dangerous passions of the cold war. It provided the

means for the super-Powers to back down from unwanted

confrontations without grievous political costs to either.

From time to time, it scored notable successes in

peacekeeping operations around the world. At the same

time, the United Nations, through its specialized agencies,

continues to play a vital developmental role for the majority

of its Members.

But the United Nations experiences of the last decade

have been less happy. The United Nations has played at

best only a very marginal role in the great developments of

the closing years of the twentieth century that I have tried

to describe. It risks becoming increasingly divorced from

the very international realities in which it is inescapably

embedded.

Like all organizations of sovereign States, the United

Nations can only provide a mechanism for its Members to

use for whatever purpose their agreements or disagreements

dictate. But the United Nations cannot be just a tool of the

few, a repository for issues that no country is willing or

knows how to confront, or a convenient scapegoat. The

hard fact is that these are the roles that the United Nations

has been forced to play in recent years. It cannot continue

on this path without permanent damage.

In our century, the trend towards international

organization, towards the development of a more

predictable pattern of relationships between States and

international regimes that transcend individual sovereignties

is, I believe, established. There is no going back. Whether

we like it or not, the world has become too complex to be

dealt with except multilaterally.

But this does not mean that any particular international

institution will necessarily play an effective role in the

organization of international life in the next century. The

United Nations cannot assume that it will survive intact,

just by clinging on to structures and processes conceived

in 1945. The world has changed dramatically since then.

It will continue to do so. The United Nations has no

choice but to change in tandem.

This imperative is clear. What is unclear is how the

United Nations should change. That is why I have posed

more questions than I have provided answers. The process

of discussion must start now. The mechanism is at our

disposal. The responsibility to use it is ours. Whether we

will engage ourselves in this responsibility quickly

enough to make a difference to the United Nations is for

us to choose. I do not know how much time we have. I

only know that the time left is finite.