Michael Ignatieff Quotes

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.

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

In the euphoria after the Cold War, there was a misplaced notion that the UN could solve every problem anywhere.

The nations must be organized internationally and induced to enter into partnership, subordinating in some measure national sovereignty to worldwide institutions and obligations.

Well, there's been plenty of ultimatums, and one thing that we better be very clear is that we can't continue to have the kind of defiance of the United Nations, the defiance of the international community that we've had.

The U.S.-led western alliance, while acting as an advocate of democracy, rule of law and human rights, is acting from the opposite position, rejecting the democratic principle of the sovereign right of states enshrined in the U.N. Charter and trying to decide for others what is good and what is bad.

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

If the American people are to say yes to U. N. peace keeping, the United Nations must know when to say no.

…though the American government did much to encourage the organs of the League, the fact that it stood aside, sharing neither the rights nor the duties of the League powers, was a fatal handicap to joint action.

When America rejected the League, she had deliberately chosen to rest solely upon treaties with the sanction of public opinion alone…

The mobilization of world opinion and methods of negotiation should be developed and used by every nation in order to strengthen the United Nations. Then if we are forced into war, it will be because there has been no way to prevent it through negotiation and the mobilization of world opinion. In which case we should have the voluntary support of many nations, which is far better than the decision of one nation alone, or even of a few nations.

The rules that organizations such as the United Nations rely on were not written by the majority of the world’s people, who have long seen powerful states declare exceptions for themselves. Newly powerful states will challenge this system --

One of the problems with the Security Council is that there are vetoes, and they do not allow us to do what might be justified from the point of view of sanctions.

If the U.N. is ineffective, the whole concept of multilateralism will collapse.

There was an implicit conviction that the UN would be stronger than the sum of its constituent member-states.

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.

The U.N. is one of many competitors in a marketplace of global problem solving.

I am against preventive war because it means measures by the UN against us.

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.

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.

Like Canada, we very much wanted the United Nations to be a relevant and effective body. But once those efforts failed, we no longer saw things from a multilateral perspective. For us, now, it is much more basic than that. It is about family.

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.

The purpose of the United Nations should be to protect the essential sovereignty of nations, large and small.

All in all, the League of Nations is not inevitably bound, as some maintain from time to time, to degenerate into an impotent appendage of first one, then another of the competing great powers.

Let us face it, the U.N. has failed. It has failed in its mission to promote world peace.