UN Secretary-General Confused By Sovereignty Issue

SG Kofi Annan, in his seminal address at the September opening of the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, while condemning state sovereignty "in a world transformed by geo-political, economic, technological and environmental changes..." sidestepped calling for a world government as a sensible replacement.

His conclusion that "State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined by the forces of globalization and international cooperation..." both indict the UN itself as impotent to deal with the real world and implicitly affirms the necessity for global government to do the complex job.

But rather than follow through on his indictment with a bold call for world law and its institutions-indeed as Article 28 of the UDHR calls for-true to diplomatic obfuscation, and career duty, in a veiled confession of present do-nothingness, he promised belatedly that "As secretary-general, I have made it my highest duty to restore the United Nations to its rightful role in the pursuit of peace and security..." (Emphasis added.)

The first President of the General Assembly, Dr. Herbert Evatt, was more blunt: "The United Nations was not set up to make peace," he wrote in a letter to Paris World Citizens in 1948, "but only to maintain it once it was made by the Great Powers..."

Today, however, the "Great Powers" have been reduced to the "Great Power," the United States, the biggest "Caesar" of all time whose military budget for the year 2000 is $268 billion!

Now Mr. Annan, hat in hand, must abandon the UN's "international territory," on NY's East River, "enter" the US and repair to Washington to plead with Jesse Helms, iconoclast chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, for US back dues. What irony!

Maybe, in the interests of true sovereignty and political correctness, the SG should reread article 21(3) of the UDHR: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government..."