World Order in an Age of Uncertainty
Kofi Annan addresses the students of SIPA at Columbia University in New York.
INTRODUCTION
Thank you for your kind introduction, Merit, and to SIPA for this invitation. As you know, SIPA and the UN are almost twin sisters, born at around the same time. SIPA has long been one of the go-to places for students and scholars of the United Nations system. So it makes sense to have created a UN studies specialization, playing to your strengths. I am pleased to have been associated with SIPA for many years now, and many of its alumni have worked at the United Nations, providing the institution with some of its best and brightest. That is why I am happy to be here tonight, on the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, to explore the major challenge that has always been at the heart of the UN: world order in what remains a world of uncertainty.
UNCERTAINTY IS NOTHING NEW
There is a tendency in human nature, especially as people grow older, like me, to look back on the past as some kind of halcyon age. Confronted with the breakdown of the Middle East, the rise of Islamist terrorism and the uncertainties surrounding the future of our planet, many people of my generation feel like M, the ageing fictional head the British secret service in James Bond, when she says, “Christ, I miss the Cold War.” That is objectively misguided. In those days, uncertainty meant the very real prospect of nuclear war between the USSR and the USA. The dominant deterrence doctrine of the age was called Mutually Assured Destruction. It was literally MAD.
We now know for a fact that we came within a hair’s breadth of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Had you grown up during that period, some of you might also have been drafted to go fight in Korea or, later, in Vietnam. Part of what makes our current age seem so violent and uncertain is the communications revolution. Today, the dramatic events in Syria are broadcast straight to your laptop within minutes. In reality, we live in era in which there have seldom been so few inter-state wars, and even those wars are on a limited scale by historical comparison.
Though I realise this might seem counter-intuitive, especially to those of you from countries affected by war, but yours is, by historical comparison, a very fortunate generation.
Overall, never has violence been so low and life expectancy so high. Never has the world’s youth been so educated. Never has science and technology been so advanced. Never have opportunities been so vast. In global terms, the progress is even more impressive. The average Human Development Index (HDI) has increased by 41 % overall and 60 % for the lower quartile of developing countries since 1970 . Since 1980, China’s HDI has increased by 70%, India’s by 59 % and Brazil’s by over 30%. In China alone, 663 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty between 1981 and 2008 .
THE END OF WESTERN HEGEMONY
That is not to say that everything is just fine today, but I wanted to put matters into perspective. I think that at the heart of the problems and anxieties besetting world order today is the end of the West’s historical preponderance, which has lasted for over two centuries.
Wealth and power are becoming more diffuse, with the rise of what some call “the Rest”.
International relations are, as a result, becoming more complex, with more partners at the table, crises involving changing combinations of global, regional and even local players.
That is not to say that the USA, or indeed the West in general, no longer matter. The USA, the EU, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, remain by far the most prosperous parts of the world, and still enjoy a considerable lead in science and technology, education, quality of life and economic competitiveness. Militarily, the USA is in a league of its own, the only country capable of projecting power all over the world with technology decades ahead of any rivals. The USA’s military budget is more than four times higher than the second biggest spender, China. More importantly, the West dominates the world’s systems, simply because it created them, from the Bretton Woods institutions to the United Nations.
But thanks largely to the adoption by the rest of many of the West’s ingredients of success, from the rule of law and market economics to modern agriculture, science and medicine the “Rest” is rising fast. Most importantly, demographic trends are turning the West into a smaller and smaller minority of the world’s population.
THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM: TRAPPED IN TIME
Unfortunately, the world’s inter-state architecture has not kept pace with these demographic and economic changes: it still reflects the world of 1945. Although the USA, Russia, France and the UK together represent only 7% of world population today, they still represent 80% of the permanent membership of the Security Council. Though the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) represent 42% of global population and 28% of the world economy, they have only 11% of voting rights in the Bretton Woods institutions.
The status quo cannot continue without undermining the legitimacy of the international system. These changes are unsettling for Westerners, but at a place like SIPA, where you are trained to adopt a global perspective, you have to realise that for many countries, the end of Western hegemony is actually perceived as a long overdue, step forward. In the eyes of non-Westerners, there is a certain justice about the return or the rise to political prominence of states that contain the majority of the world’s population.
But the problem is that while the traditional Western powers are less willing and able to take on the challenges of global leadership, resurgent and new powers are still finding their feet. They do not necessarily accept the costs and responsibilities involved. Some continue to see themselves as insurgent victims of world order, when in fact they are part of it and even benefit from the system. As the Italian political philosopher Antonio Gramsci put it, “crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” That is where we are.
THE WAY FORWARD
As a former Secretary-General of the United Nations, I encourage the world’s global and regional powers to work through the UN and the rules-based system it provides. Never before has the case for the United Nations been as strong as it is today. Unlike in the past, when civilisations rose or fell often in a zero-sum game, in today’s interconnected world, all countries will rise or fall together.
Major global issues like climate change, migration, and the breakdown of order in the Middle East will require international solutions with global legitimacy, which only the UN framework can confer. The recent agreement on the Sustainable Development Goals by 193 member states illustrates the potential of multilateralism. The alternative would have been the imposition of donor countries’ views on their beneficiaries. We must hope that the current negotiations on plans to tackle climate change will yield equally promising results in Paris next month.
With political will, the UN, though imperfect, can be adapted to the new realities of the world without being either abolished or side-lined. This will require brave leadership and willingness to compromise, but I see no alternative. Now that it is obvious that no one superpower will forever manage the world, it is in the interests of all states to uphold and strengthen international law, which protects us all. All countries have to realise that they violate the norms of international society at their peril. This is especially true of the permanent members of the Security Council who, when they invade foreign countries without authorisation, or refuse to sign up to major international conventions upon which international order rests, are sawing off the branches on which they sit.
I believe that people can play a vital role in reaffirming the central importance and potential of the UN system in addressing global problems, and resisting the temptations of leaders to go it alone, or violate international law.
One of the lessons I have learnt over the course of my career is that when leaders fail to lead, the people can make them follow.
We are seeing this now in Europe with the refugee crisis. People have the power to influence the course of events and the decisions of your governments, especially in democracies like the United States. Make use of the liberties you enjoy in this country.
In conclusion, and at a time when many are reflecting on the UN’s shortcomings, let me end by quoting my most illustrious predecessor Dag Hammarskjöld, who said, “The UN wasn’t created to take mankind to paradise, but rather, to save humanity from hell.” The UN and what it stands for has been and remains my life’s work. Now that I am no longer at the UN, I continue that work through my Foundation. I encourage each and every one of you, in your own way, to join our struggle for a fairer and more peaceful world.
Photo: Barbara Alper
