CIAO DATE: 10/05

America's Interests in the United Nations: A U.S. Response to the Report of the UN Secretary-General's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change

Peter Burleigh
James Cunningham
Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick
Donald F. McHenry
Edward Perkins
Thomas R. Pickering

April 2005

Institute for the Study of Diplomacy
Georgetown University

 

Foreword

During the UN General Assembly meeting in September 2003, Secretary-General Kofi Annan created a High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change to provide him and the member states of the United Nations with ideas about the policies and institutions required for the United Nations to be effective in the twenty-first century. The panel submitted to him in December 2004 a report entitled "A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibilities," an analysis of how to improve the collective institutionalized response to the most pressing threats and challenges to global peace and security. The report also presented more than one hundred specific recommendations to the secretary-general and the member states.

With a view to informing the U.S. administration, the Congress, and the public as they consider reactions and approaches to the panel's recommendations and the broader question of the U.S.'s engagement with the United Nations, the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, with the support of the United Nations Foundation, developed a program to examine the panel's report from the perspective of U.S. interests in the United Nations in the years ahead.

The program brought together U.S. permanent representatives and long-serving acting permanent representatives to the United Nations from every U.S. administration of the last twenty-five years. They included ambassadors Thomas R. Pickering, Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick, Donald F. McHenry, Edward Perkins, James Cunningham, and Peter Burleigh. The permanent representatives held a lengthy private discussion followed by a public presentation on the campus of Georgetown University on February 14, 2005, chaired by ISD Board Chairman Pickering. There was no attempt to achieve a consensus of views on the part of the permanent representatives, although on some issues a near consensus was reached. Rather, the discussion elicited expression of a variety of views on the report itself and discussion of some issues not treated in the report, many of which point to recommendations likely to elicit support from the United States and those that may not. The participants did not try to address the more than one hundred recommendations of the High-Level Panel but did take on a number of the most noteworthy.

The report of the deliberations was prepared by former Ambassador Thomas Weston, the project's program manager, and Parag Khanna, the program rapporteur.

Front Cover (PDF Format, 1 pages, 714.2 KB)
Frontispiece (PDF Format, 3 pages, 998.4 KB)
Foreword (PDF Format, 2 pages, 659.9 KB)
Summary (PDF Format, 3 pages, 986.8 KB)
Report of the High Level Panel (PDF Format, 1 pages, 334.2 KB)
Deliberations of the Permanent Representatives: Part 1 (PDF Format, 3 pages, 987.3 KB)
Deliberations of the Permanent Representatives: Part 2 (PDF Format, 3 pages, 984.3 KB)
Deliberations of the Permanent Representatives: Part 3 (PDF Format, 2 pages, 661.5 KB)
Deliberations of the Permanent Representatives: Part 4 (PDF Format, 2 pages, 662.1 KB)
Summary of the Secretary-General's Report: Part 1 (PDF Format, 3 pages, 983.1 KB)
Summary of the Secretary-General's Report: Part 2 (PDF Format, 2 pages, 652.8 KB)
Back Cover (PDF Format, 2 pages, 660.4 KB)