Celebrating 90 Years - Foreign Policy Association

Good Diplomacy
versus Bad Diplomacy
96 | FOREIGN POLICY ASSOCIATION
(Continued)
We have all learned since 9/11
that legitimacy comes from
building credible partnerships
around the world, above all via
the United Nations.
We have all learned since 9/11, in Afghanistan
and Iraq and in Sudan and Congo, that legitimacy
comes from building credible partnerships
around the world, above all via the United
Nations. It is easy to list the issues on which
the United Nations struggles to deliver: Darfur,
Zimbabwe, the Millennium Development Goals,
inadequate pressure on Iran. But over a longer
period, the United Nations brings legitimacy and
achieves lasting results.
Didn’t President Kennedy say that we should
expect 25 countries to have nuclear weapons by
the year 1975 and even more by the end of the
century? Thanks to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, which became possible only through the
United Nations, the number of nuclear countries
remains in single digits.
After 9/11, the United Nations put in place a
robust framework in international law to combat
terrorism. This effort is making a difference.
U.N. peacekeeping has brought many countries
from conflict to stability and on to democracy,
among them Namibia, Cambodia, El Salvador,
Bosnia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Today the
United Nations is operating in tough places:
Afghanistan, Congo, Sudan, Nepal, Lebanon,
and many other countries. The United Nations is
working to replace violence with politics.
When I joined the British Foreign Office,
scores of countries around the world were run
by nasty dictatorships. The Soviet Union gave
a sinister legitimacy to repressive governments.
Today the regimes that rule without serious engagement
with their people are diminishing to
an increasingly embarrassed minority. Even in
countries such as North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe,
and Uzbekistan, the democratizing impact
of new technology is making a difference.
Consider China, a fast-modernizing country in
which the power of cell phones and millions
The Soviet Union gave a sinister
legitimacy to repressive gov-
ernments. Today the regimes
that rule without serious en-
gagement with their people are
diminishing to an increasingly
embarrassed minority.