Nonstate Threats and the Principled Reform of the UN‪.‬

When considering the threats to collective security in the twenty-first century outlined by the report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, two issues stand out. First, in terms of general nonstate threats, I regard poverty as the most significant. Poverty, like war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, is as old as the recorded history of man. Poverty translates into instability and violence at the heart of the international system. Terrorists are seldom poor: they are wretched, but not the wretched of the earth. They do take advantage of poverty, however. Globalization and technology have paradoxically reinforced the threats of poverty and terrorism, but also the means for overcoming these. As a UN report put it, "In the global village, someone else's poverty very soon becomes one's own problem: lack of markets for one's own products, illegal immigration, pollution, contagious disease, insecurity, fanaticism, terrorism." (1) Deeply flawed policies of the Bretton Woods Institutions have sometimes had a disastrous impact, from Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa. Among the means to defeat poverty, therefore, are the implementation of the UN Millennium Development Goals, the reform of the UN Economic and Social Council, and a UN-influenced reform of the Bretton Woods Institutions and the WTO. Second, in terms of threats from specific nonstate actors, I believe the most important issue to be not which particular threat is most significant, but rather how the international community will approach such threats. Here, I argue that the principles of fairness, equal regard for all human beings, impartiality, and prudence ought to guide the design and decision-making of the Security Council. Let us take as an example the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to nonstate actors. Any preferential treatment for an individual from a state that is an ally in the battle against international terrorism would undermine the universality of UN Security Council Resolution 1540 and make counter-proliferation more difficult. When it comes to counterterrorism, these principles presuppose genuine international cooperation. Hence, UN Security Council resolutions, though these have played an important and effective role, are not sufficient: multilateralism is critical. Therefore, there is no alternative to the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism being negotiated multilaterally in the Sixth Committee. The basis for ethical multilateralism can indeed be found in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, proclaimed on July 4, 1776, out of "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind."