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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 12/05
GCSP UN Dialogue Series
Derek Lutterbeck (ed.)
October 2005
Abstract
During the summer of 2005, the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), with the generous financial support of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland, Political Division III, organised a series of public presentations by distinguished personalities, focusing on the changing role of the UN system in the rapidly evolving international security landscape. The objective of these events was to provide a forum to discuss the most-pressing current challenges facing the UN, as well as other key players in the international system, and to chart possible ways forward in adapting the UN system to the demands of the contemporary security environment.
Over the past years and decades, the international system has undergone a number of profound transformations. With rapidly progressing globalisation, the development and spread of new technologies and the growing porosity of state borders, new actors and challenges have emerged in the international security field, calling for new and innovative responses for which the past may provide little, if any, guidance. 11 September 2001 was a landmark date, on which the fundamental pillars of the global system were shaken more than at any other moment since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The unprecedented and unpredictable acts of terrorism that occurred on that day, as well as the "war on terrorism" waged in response, opened new fissures within and between nations and the international community. As expressed by Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, on 23 September 2003, "the events of the past year have exposed deep divisions among members of the United Nations on fundamental questions of policy and principle". The US-led invasion of Iraq, as well as the doctrine of pre-emption adopted by the Bush administration, have seriously put into question the relevance of the UN as a collective security system and its underlying principles.
