Yasushi Akashi, former Under Secretary General of the United Nations

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Heather McKinney
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1 The Public Forum Keynote Speech Yasushi Akashi, former Under Secretary General of the United Nations The central topic for this evening is the Report published in the beginning of December 2004 by the High-Level Panel of experts appointed by the U.N. Secretary-General. As an important starting point, I would like to say that this report of the High-Level Panel has made an important contribution to the on going debate on global threats and how to cope with them. And they made a number of recommendations, in fact one hundred and one in number, which constitute a significant intellectual achievement with regards to complex subject matters confronting the international community today. I would like to make some personal observations and comments, rather candid comments, on several aspects of this Report. I hope that in this way I will be able to contribute to a stimulating discussion on the subjects which are dealt with in this round table. I completely agree with the basic premise of the report of the U.N. experts that we have to think of security today in a broader and more comprehensive context. Security threats are very much interconnected and are oftentimes across or beyond national boundaries. They have to be considered at the national, international as well as at the domestic levels. The report of the high-level experts finds six categories of major threats to the contemporary world. The first one is the economic and social threat, including poverty, infectious diseases and environmental degradation. The second kind of threat is interstate conflicts, and the third one is internal or domestic conflicts. The fourth one is the threat of weapons of mass destruction; nuclear, biological, as well as chemical. And the fifth threat is that of terrorism. The sixth and the last threat is that of transnational organized crimes, such as drug trafficking. I find that these six categories of threats are really comprehensive, and the order in which they are enumerated is very interesting. For instance, terrorism is enumerated as the fifth threat, although many Americans may disagree with it and say that the terrorist threat should come first. And interestingly enough, although the report itself indicates that internal conflicts has become more frequent and more prevalent than international conflicts today, this report puts international threats as the second category and internal threats as the third. I think that we who live in East Asia or in Asia as a whole may find this order of priority entirely acceptable, because in Asia we still suffer from more traditional kinds of threats in addition to new and contemporary threats. But these six kinds of threats are not measured or assessed with regard to the degree of their imminence. I wish that, if some indication of time-span of threats becoming reality could have been indicated, the report would have achieved grater usefulness. For instance, the threat of weapons of mass distraction, or the threat of nuclear proliferation is dealt with a great deal of urgency in this Report. And I wonder how the degree of urgency might differ from one kind of threat to another. This question is vital for policy-makers in

2 particular. The report gives a synopsis at the beginning of each chapter, but I find that there are sometimes discrepancies between the synopsis and the body part. I would strongly recommend that you read the report as a whole when it becomes available to you, because the synopsis does not do justice to the full text of the report. Despite the fact that economic and social threat is mentioned as the first category of threat, the chapter which deals with the terrorism has a very interesting formulation. The report says that terrorism flourishes in environments of despair, humiliation, poverty, political oppression, extremism and human right abuse. It also flourishes in the context of regional conflicts and foreign occupation. And it profits from weak state capacity to maintain law and order. I think this latter formulation is more complex and more acceptable because it reflects the complexity of a subject, such as the rise of the terrorism. And it does not attribute the terrorism to a simple causation, such as economic conditions or poverty. Despite its great merit to draw our attention to major threats and problems of the United Nations today, the report occasionally makes mistakes. For instance, in paragraph 77 of the report, it is pointed out that the U.N. Security Council has become more effective and more efficient, it citing the number of the resolutions adopted by the Council over the years. But I find this a strange way of measuring the Security Council s effectiveness. I was responsible for the U.N. peacekeeping in Cambodia and subsequently in the former Yugoslavia. In the case of Cambodia, the Security Council adopted less than ten resolutions. And yet, these resolutions were extremely pertinent and dealt effectively with the problems on hand. In the case of the former Yugoslavia, close to two-hundreds resolutions and presidential statements were issued, but I m afraid that the Security Council evaded the real substance of the issue, and engaged in political compromises, often evading the crux of the matter. Thus you cannot judge the Security Council s effectiveness simply by the number of the resolutions adopted. An important contribution of the report is the discussion on the legitimacy of the use of force. This problem has been stimulated by the Iraq War, which has been extremely controversial in many countries, including in Japan. The report points out five basic criteria which may justify or legitimatize the use of force. The first one is the seriousness of threat. The second one is whether proper purpose is being to be achieved by coping with such a threat. The third one is whether the use of force is the last, and not the first resort, or a resort to be made when all other avenues of solution have been tried. The fourth one is whether proportional means has been utilized. In other words, the means and the ends to be achieved have to be in balance. If too strong a means is utilized to achieve a purpose, it will not be justified. The fifth and last criterion is so called Balance of Consequences. That is, if the consequence of the use of force is successful in improving the situation than the situation of non-use of force, then this particular use of force can be justified and becomes legitimate. These are very interesting ideas, and they may contribute to the clarification of issues relating to the

3 justification of the use of force. But I hope you agree with me that these guidelines will not resolve all the controversies on the use of force. They are rather general in character. And, therefore, for decision makers, whether these criteria and guidelines are sufficient in order to decide on the use or non-use of force remains somewhat doubtful. The report of the High-Level Panel of Experts has made a signal contribution in other respects. For instance, on the state responsibility to protect its people or citizens, the report makes very clear recommendations. This follows the exercise made by the Commission of experts, created by the Canadian government a few years ago. I see the handwriting of people like Gareth Evans, former Foreign Minister of Australia, in making an intellectual contribution to the formulation of the state responsibility, namely that under certain circumstances, the intervention by the international community such as the United Nations will be fully justified for humanitarian reasons. With regards to the definition of terrorism, the report is also very clear-cut. In the U.N. General Assembly, years have past continuing a sterile debate on what is and is not terrorism. The report has given us one tentative and extremely useful definition of terrorism. We should note that the Secretary - General of the League of Arab States, Mr. Amre Moussa, is a member of this expert group, and therefore we may be permitted to hope that the U.N. General Assembly may well pass a resolution, embodying the recommendation of this expert report. I have spent some time discussing recommendations of the expert report other than the Security Council reform, partly because Japanese media have tended to focus on the Security Council reform only and not much on other aspects. I would like to recognize and express my appreciation for the effort and endeavors made by this group to formulate two kinds of alternative solutions, so called Plan A and Plan B. Plan A includes a recommendation to add to the Security Council six new permanent members, in addition to three new non-permanent members, making a Security Council of twenty-four members. Plan B comes out also with the total numbers of twenty four, but instead of adding new permanent members, it proposes to create a new category of semi-permanent members, who can be elected consecutively in four year terms. To the countries like Japan and Germany, Plan A is definitely more attractive and more realistic in rectifying some of the weaknesses in the structure of the Security Council today. But at the same time I admit that for the middle powers, such as Canada, Egypt, Australia, or Sweden, Plan B may be more attractive. We do not know yet whether in the end Plan A, Plan B or some other alternative may be adopted by the U.N. General Assembly. We may know the result toward the end of this year or afterwards. While the report suggests that, those member states that make grater contributions to international peace and security financially, militarily, and diplomatically, should participate in the Council s work, we do not know how such considerations will be translated into particular formulas. I wish that the report could have made a deeper study of the implications of Article 23 of the U.N.

4 Charter, which is a provision dealing with the qualifications of non-permanent members. I think that one of the serious problems relating to the composition of the Security Council over the years has been the fact that only insufficient attention has been devoted to what is already in Article 23 of the Charter. This provision says that in deciding on the non-permanent membership of the Security Council, considerations should be given in the first instance to the contributions of the member states to the maintenance of international peace and security and to other purposes of the U.N. Charter, and then, to the geographical distribution. But the fact is that in the U.N. history more weight has been given to the geographical distribution than to individual states capacity and qualifications to contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security. The report also makes a recommendation that there should be a review of the composition of the Security Council in the year But I m not sure what this recommendation means. Is this review subject to the veto provision in the present Charter? I guess it is. If so, the review might be without much substance. With regards to the veto, I agree with the report that the veto has to be kept in the Charter. The veto reflects the reality of world power today, and we may consider it as some kind of necessary evil or as a safety valve, in the sense of keeping major powers in the United Nations, unlike the League of Nations which did not enjoy the participation of some of the major powers. United States never joined it, Japan withdrew from it, so did Germany. The Soviet Union was expelled. The League had only France and U.K. as major powers; this was the fatal weakness of the League. It is good that United Nations has kept all major power within its forum. But the report does not say anything about the desirable scope of the veto. I think the progress in international affairs calls for a constant review of the veto provision, which may have to be kept in the foreseeable future in Chapter 7, dealing with sanctions. However, why should we continue to keep the veto to apply to all of Chapter 6, dealing with the peaceful settlement of disputes, or to the election of the U.N. Secretary General. Some hard study and examination of the degree of applicability of the veto in the future seems to be called for. Basically, the report takes a conservative position; it says that there is no need to revise Chapter 7 on sanctions, or to change Article 51, on the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense. Perhaps so. I would agree with the report that a lot can be made towards a more effective United Nations by interpretation and by the application of the provisions as exist today. As Japanese Constitution has been flexible enough to enable us to cope with some new developments, the U.N. Charter has stood the test of time in more instances than one. But even the Charter may have to be looked at under fresh light from time to time, and this year, the year 2005, which is the 60 th anniversary of the United Nations, is a very good opportunity to do so. The idea of a Peace Building Commission as a subsidiary organ of the Security Council is an interesting proposal, but I don t think it is very original. There is also a proposal to create a post of Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations to deal with peace and security. A few years ago, another Deputy Secretary-General s post was created to deal with administration and coordination

5 which I think works well. But I fail to understand why another Deputy Secretary-General s post dealing with peace and security has to be created when the Secretary-General himself is dealing with peace and security. Of course we are aware that some rivalry and dispute has existed between the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operation and the U.N. Department of Political Affairs. I have always argued that these two departments should be merged together. But merging them together and creating a Deputy Secretary-General are not distinct matters. It may in fact have the effect of downgrading Under Secretaries-General in charge of respective two departments. The report calls for strengthening and expansion of the U.N. work in the area of prevention, early warning and mediation. Certainly, I hope the U.N. will continue to be active in those domains. But the creation of posts and resources does not necessarily make the U.N. more effective in these domains. Canada has the Lester Pearson Center, and Norway has been engaged in many activities of mediation and peacemaking. We do not have to ask the U.N. to do everything in these domains. I think we can have a coalition of the willing type of exercise in the area of prevention and mediation. For instance, I work closely as the Representative of the Japanese Government on peace building and rehabilitation in Sri Lanka, together with Norway, the United States, and the European Union. I found that this system of four co-chairs works well without over-burdening the United Nations. Early warning is good, but it is not the lack of early warning that has made the U.N. suddenly confronting some of the crises such as Kosovo and the Congo. In fact, I remember that, in the U.N. Secretariat, there were discussions on and preparations for impending crises in Kosovo and the Congo, more than two years before their actual outbreak. The U.N. Secretary-General has been warning the Security Council about other impending crises in Africa. But the Security Council, because of its inertia or its conflicting priority, did not find it possible to heed the warning given by the U.N. Secretary-General. So it s a matter of political decision and priority of member governments rather than lack of institutional mechanism that makes the U.N. less than most active and dynamic in those domains. Then, we are faced with some fundamental problems of today world s politics. As the report makes it clear, the real master of the United Nations is its member states. And whether they can take strong common action or not depends on the political will of the member states, particularly that of the major states. In order to do that, there has to be a shared and joint perception with regards to the nature of threats and the solution to be sought to cope with these threats. The report admits the following: The reforms we propose will not by themselves make the United Nations more effective. In the absence of Member States reaching agreement on the security consensus contained in the present report, the United Nations will underachieve. Its institutions will still only be as strong as the energy, resources and attention devoted to them by Member States and their leaders. So, in a sense we are back to square one. We cannot escape the fact that the United Nations will

6 continue to face conflict or dilemma between its ideals and reality. In order to make these useful recommendations of the Experts Panel more than moralistic exaltation, we have to be down to earth and pursue a tortuous process which is incremental, step by step towards a more effective United Nations. Although it is not explicitly stated, the major objective of experts exercise was to cope with the problem of the United States and the United Nations, which has become very difficult, as we all know well, since the outbreak of the Iraq War. I m reminded of an important work published by Mr. Ed Luck on the relationship between U.N. and U.S. He talks about a deep and long standing ambivalence of the United States toward the United Nations. It has existed since 1919, the beginning of the League of Nations, if not earlier. We have often witnessed a strong yearning for international peace among Americans and the U.S. government. We have also been a witness to frequent hostility towards the Organization, shown by the U.S. government. The United States has shown deep distrust of the majority rule at the United Nations. We have seen such distrust in conjunction with the North-South issue and the Middle East issues. We are faced with a special kind of exceptionalism of the United States, whish has existed since its establishment as a British colonies in 17 th century, and more so since its independence in I think Japan and the European Union have an important role to play in making the United Nations closer to the United States, or making the U.S. closer to the UN. If you read a recent speech made by President Bush in Halifax, Canada, in the beginning of December, there were elements which indicate that the United States is quite prepared to work with the United Nations, with regional organizations and others, and to go beyond its unilateral pursuit of national interests. We should not just confront the United States. We should rather be able to persuade the United States to come along with us on as many opportunities as possible. Like an old married couple that cannot live with each other but cannot live without each other, the United Nations needs the United States, and vise versa. I venture to think that the United States also needs the United Nations. Thank you for your attention.

The Future of the United Nations

The Future of the United Nations H.E. Yoriko Kawaguchi Former Foreign Minister of Japan February 16, 2005 Thank you for your very kind introduction. It is my honor and great pleasure to speak to such a