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"The United States doesn't depend on the services of those agencies because it has built up national services, but these have made a tremendous difference in many developing countries," he said. "Without them, there would be more disease, poverty and famine." In spite of its apparent successes, some of the more "radical" elements on the American political landscape are calling for the United States to withdraw its financial commitment and reconsider participation in the United Nations. Many proponents of this isolationist view believe the UN has evolved into a cumbersome, ineffective, sprawling bureaucracy, and the United States and regional organizations like NATO acting alone can be more effective. "The United Nations has become a whipping boy for know-nothings who are trying to establish themselves as authorities on something that they clearly know nothing about," Collett said. The United States' UN dues are between $250 and 300 million annually — less than the cost of a single B-l bomber; not to mention some $700 million is pumped into New York City's economy as a result of the UN headquarters' presence, he said. "The figures which were spent on the UN by our country are completely in every way dwarfed by the kind of military spending that is still go ing on in the US ^ " ~ even though the Cold War has ended — there is absolutely no excuse for that," Collett said. "It is immoral, insane and bad economics." The 52,000 people associated with the United Nations is equal in size to the number of civil service employees in Wyoming, a state with only a half million people. Even though Bill Clinton has expressed his support of the United Nations, Collett was perplexed with the president's speech at the UN's 50th anniversary commemoration in San Francisco in which he said the United Nations is in need of reform. "You can always make an organization better and things should be done, but I don't think there is a lot of dead wood in the 18 Fall 1995 — United Nations and I don't think it wastes money," he said. "I mean waste money? Who are you comparirg it with, the Pentagon or Italy?" Collett said America's active support and participation is of paramount importance for the mission of the UN to succeed. "This impression hat we get from the newspapers that somehow the United States and United Nations disagree about something is really a fallacious perspective," he said. "The United State s — and this is clear to the other govern menl s and anybody working within the UN — fl e United States very much determines whai the UN is going to do, because of its size, power and its role in the Security Council. "The Security Coi ncil decides nothing that the US doesn't ag ee to," he added. The United States is among the five permanent members o' the Security Council that also includes Russia, China, France and Great Britain.Not only that, Collett said the world looks at the United States as a benchmark of civilization as the world approaches the new millennium. "All of the other countries and I underline all — not only our allies, but those who are our former "The United Nations has become a whipping boy for know-nothings who are trying to establish themselves as authorities on something that the} clearly know nothing about." — Stephen Colleti: — enemies that are now in that gray field — look to the United States for leadership," he said. "We have to be careful because we have been ' guilty of isolationism at other critical times in history," he said, noting it leaves a very large vacuum when the United States does not live jp to its role. "We should learn from hisiory and assume the responsibilities that go with being a great, powerful and very rich nation. "We can give leadership; we should be giving leadership — we should be supporting a strong United Nations!" As to how the United States' leadership can manifest itself, Collett said the UN needs to increase the fcrums for negotiation and adjudication of disputes — from small fishing rights disputes' to larger territorial disputes. The World Court and other mediation entities need to ~>e built up and ex- The Collett File • Stephen W. Collett grew up in southwestern Ohio with a strong affiliation with the Wilmington and Ohio Valley Yearly Meetings of Friends (the Quakers). He attended Haverford College and then Wilmington, graduating in 1970 with double majors in philosophy/religion and history/ political science. While at WC, he worked on the College dairy farm. In 1973, he earned a master's degree in human geography from the University of Colorado, where he specialized in resource use, development and population issues. For the past 20 years, Collett, his wife, Berit, and their seven children have had their principal home in Farsund, Norway. The Colletts farmed there and, for 10 years, he taught economics, international affairs and geography at Agder College in Kristiansand. In 1986, Collett took a temporary position at Earl ham College for six months, teaching and serving as a special assistant to the president. Collett and his wife became directors of the Quaker United Nations Office in 1986. He specializes in questions of environment and development, and regional security and peacemaking. Also, he has authored and coauthored numerous books and articles on economic development, international trade and international organizations. panded in scope; also, population and environmental issues need to come even more to the forefront of UN attention, he said. "The two great challenges for the 21st century are the need to get our societies onto the path of sustainable development and to establish an international system for maintaining peace and security that will replace these kind of false mechanisms of the Cold War," he said. "It won't mean that you don't have
disputes, but you need ways of managing disputes, peaceful settlement of disputes and of treating crisis situations and complex human emergencies when they arise," he added, noting a commitment to a "new global partnership" is required to accomplish these monumental tasks. Collett said nation-building and sustainable development will cost money, and if developing countries take the same course of extravagant energy use and degradation of the environment utilized by First World countries in order to become modernized, "then we're all going down the tubes together." He also sees the United Nations' peacekeeping role via military operations as evolving to become one of exclusively protecting and providing assistance to people entangled in what he describes as "complex human emergencies," which could be anything from a natural disaster to a war that breaks out between countries or within a country. "We are now at the dawn of a new era that is extremely exciting and interesting in which the military has a completely revised role not to go to war in aggressive action to take land or enforce the desire of one coun try upon another," he said, noting the end of the Cold War offers chances for an era of cooperation that was nonexistent during the UN's first 45 years "When there w; is a problem someplace, both the East and West would be trying to get as much out of it as they could — often with a legacy of arms and despotism," he said. "Well, now they are not in that business any longer. "I think what is exciting right now is that, coming out of the Cold War, things have opened up anc the UN can be more of what the charter su| gests can be done by an intergovernmental body," he added. Collett said the UN has gotten itself into serious trouble n hot spots like Somalia and Bosnia, where its action has not been well-coordinated or its mission well defined. He would prefer to have seen the UN role be more attuned to that of supplying aid, and as a buffer between rival factions. While Bosnia has been less than a resounding success, he said the UN has engaged in more than a dozen peacekeeping operations since 1989, and at least 13 of those — in places like Cyprus, Kashmir and the Middle East — have been very impor Ideas 'Begin to Bloom 1 As the Quaker UN representative and director of the Quaker United Nations Office at UN headquarters in New York, Stephen W. Collett and his staff seek to bring Quaker viewpoints and influence to bear on policy-making between governments. "Our mandate is to support the process of the United Nations," Collett said. "There are several hundred years of Quaker history in working with problems of conflict, and we try to bring those perspectives to people working on the UN problems." The program, which is sponsored jointly by the Friends World Committee for Consultation and the American Friends Service Committee, hosts Quaker House in both New York and Geneva, where staff can convene off-the-record meetings for diplomats and United Nations Secretariat, providing informal but structured discussion of critical issues. "Quaker House is very well known and we are often approached and asked, 'Could the Quakers organize a meeting on this or that?'" Collett said. "We host lunches, teas and weekend conferences, often on very critical areas of negotiations where we can get them for an off-the-record sort of prenegotiating phase to work out problems. "Quaker House is a place where ideas begin to bloom." In the last yeai, he has organized two weekend conferences on the topic of reform of the UN Security Council with goals of increasing its size and enhancing procedures and working methods. Collett's wife, Berit, who also is a program person in the office, organized a conference on preparations for the fourth World Conference on Women, which occ arred in Beijing, China, this September. Collett said Quakers were very much a part of the establishment of the United Nations in San Francisco 50 years ago, as they had been involved with encouraging this at Quaker UN tant in maintaining peace, even if a final peace has not yet reached fruition. In addition to the ever-present peacekeeping emphasis, Collett said the area of environmental issues should prove to be a primary rallying point for the United Nations into the next century, as more and more countries implement environmentfriendly policies. He also feels it will produce a positive economic impact on both developed and developing nations. "I believe this will be good for our society — it's going to feel good," he said. "You see this in children when they identify with endangered species and recycling, because it makes sense to them and they feel plugged into a world in which otherwise they would not. "And it's going to be good for business. It means the next wave of the industrial revolution is going to be one of environmentally sound, sustainable products — cars that don't pollute, new chemicals that don't hurt the ozone layer," he added. "B ut we' re going to have to do it around the world, not just in Wilmington, Cincinnati or the United States — we can't do it alone," he said. "Those are the challenges." kind of international organization for peace with Woodrow Wilson's ill-fated League of Nations after World War I. In fact, the original concept of the United Nations can be traced as far back as the seventeenth century when, in the early days of the Quaker movement, William Penn wrote, in 1693, an essay on the peace of Europe and how to establish a council where governments would meet regularly and talk about their problems instead of just going to war over them, Collett said. A passage from Penn's landmark essay reads: "It were a great motive to the tranquility of the world that they might freely converse face to face." Collett said Quakers have supported that idea ever since. "What people need to do is to meet and talk and put their heads together about problems and come up with joint responses and common approaches to problems," he said. "That's the idea behind the Quaker UN." The Link 19
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Page 4 and 5: Marble Hall A Story for the Ages by
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Page 15 and 16: Joining the Struggle Stacy Dahl '94
Page 17: The UN Turns by Randy Sarvis A his
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