Stephen Hopgood Quotes

But I would say if the Security Council is only relevant if it agrees with the United States, then we have come a long way in a direction that I do not like very much.

When the big powers are in agreement, the U. N. performs. When they aren't, the U. N. is paralyzed.

We shouldn't discuss the world of tomorrow in terms of becoming a balance to the United States. The real issue is whether the United States will define herself as part of the U.N. system-or not.

What makes the United Nations an appropriate source of legitimacy for intervention is that it is the only place where the claims of the strong are put through the test of justification in front of the weak.

Every government is in some respects a problem for every other government.

If governments do not want to work with the U.N. and the international organizations, there is a limit to what you can do. And there is also a limit to patience.

No country can dictate its laws to the world.

Just as the United States doesn't like others to take charge, other countries also don't like the United States to play a dominant role in the United Nations.

It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation-states, however powerful. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the imperatives of global environmental cooperation.

International institutions like the UN can only be as effective as its members allow it to be.

The notion that the U.S. can impose its will unilaterally on the World Bank reflects a fundamental misunderstanding about how multilateral organizations should work.

It's very liberating for me to realize that I don't have to step up to the plate with a plot that involves the U.N. Security Council.

It is not just for a few states to sit and veto global approvals.

There are nearly 200 countries and a population of over 6 billion in today's world. International affairs should be addressed by all countries through consultations rather than monopolised by a few powers.

The performance of international institutions will be symptomatic of the domestic political priorities of influential member states. International institutions don't really have a life and a mind of their own.

There is a movement to get an international criminal court in the world, voted for by hundreds of states-but with the noticeable absence of the United States of America.

The problem with the United Nations is that while democracy within nations is the best available form of government, democracy among nations can be a moral disaster - especially if some nations are not democracies.

Probably the most useful thing I can do as secretary of state is to assist the president in adapting and renewing the transnational institutions that were created after World War II.

What we need now is a Treaty of the World not a Treaty of Rome.

There is no such thing as the United Nations.

But I believe that the DPKO at this time was very much involved with American administration and was acting, taking on consideration the demand or the recommendation of the American administration. American administration was very powerful.

There are big issues, like the reform of the Security Council. These kinds of questions are something the President of the General Assembly must keep his eye on.

The League is dead; long live the United Nations.

Multilateralism is the democracy of international society.

Multilateralism may be little more than a polite way of camouflaging what is in practice unilateralism with allies.