Canada
in the United Nations and NATO
Notes for remarks by Hon. David Kilgour,
M.P. Edmonton Southeast,
Secretary of State (Latin America &
Africa)
to Edmonton Public Schools Collaborative
Social Studies Professional Development
Day
November 19, 1999, Faculty Club, University
of Alberta
It is a great
pleasure to speak to such an important group
as this. As someone who has raised teenagers,
I think you all deserve medals. Of course
my teenagers are all angels, but I know that
sometimes it takes Herculean efforts to interest
young people in social studies when there
are so many things competing for their attention.
Your job
is an extremely important one because you
hold the future of Canada’s international
relations in your classrooms. I am often
struck by the higher level of global knowledge
among Canadians compared with our friends
south of the border. That awareness is in
large part a result of our first-rate social
studies teachers and strong public education
system.
I’ve
been asked to discuss with you Canada’s
role in the United Nations, and also to
comment on our role in NATO. Canada’s
foreign policy has long been one of engagement
rather than isolationism. We are open to
the world and prefer to act multilaterally
on the global stage, as one of many and
in close cooperation with like-minded countries.
Rejecting
isolationism
That notion of openness has, until recently,
enjoyed support from all Canada’s major
political parties since the founding of
the United Nations 54 years ago. Isolationism
has long been a strong undercurrent in American
politics, but it has not taken root here.
That is why some of the recent dialogue
on Canada’s foreign policy has been
particularly disturbing. I do not wish to
engage in partisan polemic except to say
that Canada has gained influence on the
global stage through active participation
– not by withdrawing. International
institutions are not perfect, but Canada
has been at the forefront in seeking reforms
at the United Nations and other organizations.
Such changes can only come about through
active engagement – not by threatening
to take our marbles and walk away when we
don’t like the rules.
In that regard,
I note that President Clinton and Congress
have apparently reached an agreement that
would allow the Americans to pay part of
their arrears to the UN. There may be concerns
about details of the agreement, but it is
a clear signal that the United States recognizes
the value of active participation in the
UN. It is a rejection of isolationism.
If Canada
is in fact "the world’s greatest
joiner," this is not a bad thing, but
rather a cause for pride. Our active participation
in the UN, NATO, the OSCE, the Commonwealth,
La Francophonie, the Organization of American
States, the World Trade Organization and
others has brought us significant international
influence. Testimony to that influence was
our successful campaign for a two-year seat
on the UN Security Council. During that
campaign when I visited foreign capitals
as Secretary of State for Latin America
and Africa, I was struck by the genuinely
strong praise for Canada’s international
role.
Canada on
the Security Council
Canada has used its seat on the Security
Council to advance three key policy goals:
1. To broaden
the interpretation of the Security Council’s
mandate to include human security issues
along with traditional security issues.
I’ll have more to say on this in a
moment.
2. To reassert
the primacy of the Security Council in peace
and security issues; and
3. To increase
transparency of the Council’s work.
Through the
Security Council we have advanced our human
security agenda on a number of major issues
affecting the world’s people. In February
this year we served in the one-month rotating
seat as Security Council President. We used
that tenure to advance – among other
initiatives – attention to protection
of civilians in armed conflict. Canada’s
resolution on this subject won unanimous
support and has lead to a report with recommendations
from Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Recent conflicts
in Kosovo and Sierra Leone showed that "civilianization"
of armed conflict has become one of the
most common and lamentable features of modern
war. More than ever, non-combatants, especially
the most vulnerable, are not merely caught
in the crossfire, but are themselves principal
targets. In the past decade, casualties
from armed conflict have doubled to about
one million a year. In the First World War
civilian casualties accounted for five per
cent. Today, in modern conflict, closer
to 80 per cent of casualties are civilian.
The nature
of war has changed in other ways. Most conflicts
today occur inside rather than between states.
Wars from within can be just as brutal and
ugly as conflicts between nations. Sadly,
we have witnessed genocide in Rwanda, in
the fragments of the former Yugoslavia and
elsewhere. In failed states warlords and
vigilantes have filled the vacuum, aided
by international arms traffickers. Brutalization
and exploitation of civilians, involving
gross violations of humanitarian law, have
led to massive refugee flows. Such situations
cannot simply be seen as internal matters.
They affect us all.
New threats
to human security
"Human security" then is now a
cornerstone of Canadian foreign policy in
the United Nations and elsewhere. Understanding
the concept of human security involves seeing
the world through a different lens from
that used in the decades of the Cold War.
The world has changed, and now some of the
greatest threats to civilians come from
non-state actors and go beyond traditional
understandings of security. These include
terrorism, international organized crime,
drug trafficking and money laundering, small
weapons proliferation, exploitation of children,
disease, famine and environmental degradation.
The United
Nations was conceived as an international
body involving, as its name suggests, the
nations of the world. In the wake of the
Second World War, the nation state was the
dominant actor in the global polity. In
the period of decolonization that followed,
and in the Cold War, the role of the nation
state was intensified. The end of the Cold
War has not brought the world peace that
many hoped for – only the realization
that the challenges to human security that
we now confront occur on many levels, both
local and global, and are multifaceted.
Increasingly they involve such non-state
actors as transnational corporations, non-governmental
organizations, civil society, and ultimately
individuals.
In a stirring
speech to both houses of Parliament last
April, Czech President Vaclav Havel observed
the declining role of the state and the
notion that what takes place within a country’s
borders is nobody else’s business.
"I believe,"
he said, "that in the coming century
most states will begin to transform from
cult-like objects, which are charged with
emotional contents, into much simpler and
more civil administrative units, which will
be less powerful and, especially, more rational
and will constitute merely one of the levels
in a complex and stratified planetary societal
self-organization. This change, among other
things, should gradually antiquate the idea
of non-intervention, that is, the concept
of saying that what happens in another state,
or the measure of respect for human rights
there, is none of our business."
Havel observed
that the responsibilities of the state can
only go in two directions: down or up. Downwards
to the organs and structures of civil society,
or upwards to various regional, transnational
or global communities or organizations.
This transfer, he said, has already begun.
Havel went
on to note the obvious implication of this:
the United Nations must undergo substantial
reform if it is to perform the tasks it
faces in the next century. It can no longer
maintain conditions from a period when the
organization was formed. It must become
less bureaucratic and more effective, and
must belong to all inhabitants of the globe.
In other words, it must not simply be a
club of governments in which one state,
through the Security Council veto, can outvote
the rest of the world.
Reforming
the UN
The Canadian government shares much of Havel’s
vision, in particular on the need to reform
the UN to bring it more in line with a changing
global environment. We too have taken a
strong stand against the abuse of the veto
that the five permanent members hold. I’ve
mentioned our policy goals of making the
Security Council’s work more transparent
and reasserting the primacy of the Council
in peace and security issues.
In recent
years at the UN and in other fora such as
G-8 meetings, we have played a leadership
role in calling for other reforms: of finance
and management, conflict prevention and
resolution, peacekeeping and peacebuilding,
and reforms to the UN’s economic and
social development activities. We strongly
support the set of reforms introduced in
1997 by Secretary General Annan aimed at
streamlining and modernizing the UN. Under
his leadership, the UN has been streamlined
with 1,000 positions cut. Savings in administration
are being channelled to development projects.
The changes are being implemented, and a
Canadian, Deputy Secretary-General Louise
Frechéte, is overseeing their implementation.
Canada has
advocated various measures to improve the
UN’s financing and management, and
to solve cash flow problems. We favour greater
cost-effectiveness throughout the system,
better management of human resources, a
delayering of bureaucracy, and better coordinated
management of the UN system. Canada advocates
a zero nominal growth for UN budgets and
a reform of the scale of assessments based
on equity and which better reflects countries’
capacities to pay.
In the field
of conflict prevention and resolution, Canada
has made a number of recommendations aimed
at increasing the UN’s rapid deployment
capability.
The make-up
of the Security Council has been controversial
and there have been proposals to expand
its membership to take into account the
increased international role of countries
that were not among the major World War
II allies, as well as developing countries.
Canada wants to see a Security Council that
is more effective, transparent, and broadly
representative. Above all, it should be
less elitist and more democratic. We believe,
however, that any expansion of the Security
Council should be for the non-permanent
members.
Canada the
peacekeeper
Canada has been a strong supporter of peacekeeping
operations since their beginnings with the
Suez Crisis in 1956. It was for his role
in that crisis that Lester B. Pearson received
a Nobel Peace Prize. Since then, Canada
has participated in the overwhelming majority
of peacekeeping operations established by
the Security Council – most recently
in East Timor. We are the sixth largest
UN troop contributor, with more than 1,000
personnel deployed in UN operations around
the world. Tens of thousands of Canadians
have served in 30 different UN missions,
and more than 100 lost their lives doing
so. It is no wonder then that Canada has
a stake in improving the efficiency of peacekeeping
operations.
Unfortunately
the UN has failed to respond to some of
the most serious international crises of
the past half century. This is partly a
result of its unwieldy structure, partly
a lack of resources and partly due to the
difficulty of arriving at a global consensus
with 188 member countries. In particular
the veto power of the five permanent members
effectively paralyzed the Security Council
during the Cold War. The threat of veto
was one of the reasons the UN was unable
to act decisively in Kosovo.
Canada in
NATO
I’ve been asked also to comment on
Canada’s role in NATO, and this is
as good a place as any. As you know, it
was ultimately NATO that had to bring force
to bear on the regime of Slobodan
Milosevic,
which was conducting so-called "ethnic
cleaning" against Kosovar Albanians.
It became apparent that the UN had neither
the will to act nor the means, and the international
community could no longer stand idly by.
Canada would have strongly preferred that
the United Nations Security Council explicitly
authorize NATO’s mission. Unfortunately
some members of the council remained wedded
to the old ideas of national sovereignty
and non-interference to which Havel referred.
NATO did
not provoke this tragedy – it responded
to it. Although Alliance territory was not
itself under threat, NATO could not ignore
the humanitarian crisis occurring on its
European doorstep. The NATO action was a
departure from the Alliance’s traditional
role of defending its members’ territory,
but it was a response that recognized the
need to adapt to the new global reality.
Conflicts such as Kosovo have serious impacts
on neighbouring countries, resulting in
massive flows of refugees and threatening
to destabilize the region. In this sense,
human security and national security are
not mutually exclusive. Rather they are
opposite sides of the same global security
coin.
This year
NATO celebrated its 50th birthday. No longer
does NATO face the enormous conventional
threat of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union
and its 350,000 soldiers in East Germany.
Today former Warsaw Pact countries are themselves
joining NATO. The changes in Europe are
as much a testimony of NATO’s success
as they are to the failure of communism.
Many believe that the chance of nuclear
war was much less likely and peace was maintained
in Europe precisely because of NATO’s
strength in the past 50 years. It is a success
unparalleled in history. As historian Jack
Granatstein observed, NATO was one of the
few alliances to win a war without fighting
and to have gone on once its nominal enemy
was off the field.
NATO still
relevant
NATO continues to be relevant even after
the Cold War, but like the UN its role must
evolve to meet changing conditions and new
threats to human security. Today the idea
of "soft power" is an important
element of Canadian foreign policy. This
means the use of persuasion and the power
of ideas to accomplish what brute force
cannot. It should not, however, be mistaken
for weakness. The term "soft power"
was coined by Harvard professor Joseph Nye
Jr. He recognized that "hard command
power" continues to play a role. One
could argue that "soft power"
cannot be effective if not for the contingency
of "hard power." Yugoslavia was
such a case where the power of persuasion
and other non-violent pressure failed to
bring results. That is why it is important
to retain a strong NATO with Canada’s
active participation. More than 70 per cent
of Canadians continue to support NATO and
Canada’s membership in the alliance.
As a large
territory with a small population, Canada
cannot act alone to defend itself –
we must act collectively. Membership in
NATO is entirely consistent with the multilateral
focus of our foreign policy. By actively
participating in NATO, we gain a seat at
the table in the world’s most powerful
defence alliance. NATO continues to be essential
for the stabilization of Europe and as a
bulwark against the "re-nationalization"
of defence policies. The Alliance is a cornerstone
of Canada’s relations with Europe.
Conclusion
To conclude, let me return to the United
Nations. As the world’s only multilateral
organization whose membership is nearly
universal and whose agenda covers all areas
of human activity, participation in the
UN is vital. It is the cornerstone of a
rule-based international system, and is
where much of the world’s multilateral
diplomacy is conducted. Canada, as a middle
power, must function multilaterally. We
simply cannot go it alone.
Canada has
been actively committed to the UN since
its founding in 1945 in San Francisco, where
Canada played a key role in drafting its
charter. John Humphrey, a Canadian, was
the principal author of the Universal Declaration
on Human Rights. Canadians have occupied
important positions within the UN system,
including the Presidency of the General
Assembly (Lester Pearson in 1952-53), and
Canada has served six times on the Security
Council. In January 1998, a Canadian, Louise
Fréchette, was appointed as the first-ever
UN Deputy Secretary-General.
We are the
seventh largest contributor to the UN budget,
after the U.S., Japan, Germany, France,
the U.K. and Italy. We always pay our annual
contributions – now at nearly U.S.
$30 million – in full, on time, and
without conditions.
Any organization
of its size and importance can be expected
to have flaws and failures, including some
serious ones. Changes are needed, and Canada
is at the forefront of working to bring
them about. Secretary General Annan has
repeatedly stated that reform is an ongoing
process, not a single event. Many of the
reforms already accomplished were ones originally
advocated by Canada. This progress has been
achieved through active membership –
not by walking away or refusing to pay our
dues. The United Nations is and must remain
central to Canadian foreign policy.
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