Canada Mission UN/Via Twitter

Bob Rae

September 8, 2023

As permanent representatives gathered at the United Nations General Assembly in New York for the ceremonial swearing-in of the new president of the General Assembly — this year, Dennis Francis of Trinidad and Tobago — the moment took on a back-to-school feeling. In this annual ritual, diplomats in New York briefly set aside differences, shake hands, ask after family, and share jokes and good wishes as yet another year begins again.

The key word in all this is “briefly”. As I have observed before, the words “United Nations” really conjure up two very different visions. The first is of an organization, with flaws and faults, that attempts to deal with the most difficult of human crises around the world. The second is a collection of member states of an organization who are reluctant to give to the UN and its agencies the money and power they so clearly need to deal with those challenges. At a time when chaos and destruction are being leveraged for power consolidation purposes in unprecedented ways, the intractability of the second vision has hit whole new levels.

On the limits of this body, I like to quote the late American Ambassador Richard Holbrooke: “Don’t blame Madison Square Garden when the Knicks lose.” Certainly, the organization called the United Nations has its problems and limitations, but the responsibility for the vast majority of these must be attributed to member states themselves. The UN only has the powers and capacities that member states are prepared to give it.

Just as domestic politics in so many countries have become more polarized, more personal in their attacks, and more divisive, so too at the UN. But this divisiveness has roots deep in our collective history, and is firmly based in the conflicts and divisions of the wider world. The failure of the League of Nations, the organization that struggled unsuccessfully to contain the violence of the interwar years, can be traced to many factors, including the decision of the United States Senate to defeat the treaty that created the League and a structure that gave every country a vote. Also, the refusal of many countries — the Soviet Union, Germany, Japan, and Italy — to accept the jurisdiction of the League and the overwhelming power of nationalism and self-interest as the Depression and violence took over the world. The failure to launch the League has become forever linked to the failure to prevent the cataclysms of World War II and the Holocaust.

What was true then is true now: the institutions we have created are only as strong as we allow them to be. The security capacity of the UN is limited by vetoes on the Security Council, vetoes created at the insistence of the victors of World War II. The response to climate change, the existential issue of our time, is in the hands of member states, not the UN. The uneven response to the pandemic, the source of so much ill feeling and resentment in the world still today, is the responsibility of wealthy member states whose populations insisted on being at the front of the vaccine queue.

This is no time for timidity or the rote repetition of bromides — it will require all member states, including Canada, to dig down deeper in the fight for a better world.

But it was President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine for the second time, on February 24th, 2022, that has brought the world to a dangerous precipice, and shown all of us how the unleashing of primeval violence is not just something in our past but very much in our present. This war of aggression and conquest is without moral or legal justification. Sanctions have been applied, economic ties have been cut off, hundreds of thousands have been killed and maimed, millions have been forced to leave their homes or to leave Ukraine altogether. Even more, the economic and social costs of this conflict have been spread around the world.

The inflation and food and energy insecurity that can clearly be attributed to the war were piled on top of the pain of climate change and the pandemic lockdown. For the poorest and most vulnerable, the results have been catastrophic. And the victims of these hardships lash out at all sides for the damage that has been inflicted on their lives.

All this plays out at the United Nations. It is not a dance of impersonal forces. The Russian and Chinese propaganda machines are going full tilt. Close ties that date back to the 50s and 60s have never been allowed to wither, and indeed have been strengthened by Chinese aid assistance and Russian military intervention. Resentments have also been fuelled by inattention, neglect, and complacency on the part of Western governments who assumed that the rough economic outcomes of the world were part of the natural order of things.

The challenge now is to build stronger trust, and stronger institutions, which in turn will require a greater commitment to the common good, the rule of law, and the claims of social and economic justice. This is no time for timidity or the rote repetition of bromides — it will require all member states, including Canada, to dig down deeper in the fight for a better world. The stronger the connection between our talk and our walk, the better off we shall all be.

But no matter how candid our self-assessments, it is even more important that we remain consistent in our support for democracy, human rights, equality and the values that lie at the heart of the Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The growth of authoritarian governments, only too ready to abuse the rights of the individual, is not something we can view with indifference. For all our faults, we need to trust our instincts about the values we hold dear. Governments that accept their accountability to the law, and to their electorates are worth fighting for in the court of world opinion. Those that remain in power through corruption and contempt for their people do not deserve our respect. We should be prepared to admit our mistakes. But we should never apologize for believing in human dignity and the value of truth.

At the end of her brilliant book George Orwell and Russia, Masha Karp quotes from Orwell’s late essay Looking Back on the Spanish War. “Against that shifting phantasmagoric world in which black may be white tomorrow and yesterday’s weather can be changed by decree, there are in reality only two safeguards. One is that no matter how much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing, as it were, behind your back…the other is that so long as some parts of the earth remain unconquered, the liberal tradition can be kept alive.”

What Ukrainians have shown us is that the stealing of land is not a thing of permanence if hearts and souls remain unconquered, and friends and allies can provide the support required. It is that extraordinary spirit that should animate us all as we engage in the good fight.

Bob Rae is Canada’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations.