Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes

Attempts to settle crises by unilateral sanctions outside the framework of U.N. Security Council decisions threaten international peace and stability. Such attempts are counterproductive and contradict the norms and principles of international law.

The United Nations remains our most important global actor. These days we are continuously reminded of the enormous responsibility of the Security Council to uphold international peace and stability.

The United Nations system is still the best instrument for making the world less fragile.

The United Nations is a failed institution in its current form.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

There is, and there will be, an increasing demand for a principled global security provider, for a superpower that believes in multilateralism and cooperation.

During the three decades of its existence, the effectiveness of the United Nations has, on the whole, tended to decrease, particularly in the field of peace and security and, more generally, all issues in which the developed countries feel they have important stakes.

When the world lacks muscular and wise American leadership, it devolves into total chaos, which, in turn, produces unspeakable evils.

It is a commonplace that the League of Nations is not yet-what its most enthusiastic protagonists intended it to be.

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.

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

… unless the United Nations stops becoming simply a debating society for anti-American rhetoric, I'm going to show them the door.

The U.N. system, born after the Second World War, collapsed. It's worthless.

It's one of my government's ambitions to secure a seat for Ireland on the U.N. Security Council so that we can play an even greater role in international affairs and try to build what we all believe in, which is a world of laws.

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 key to U.N. reform is giving Americans a clearer picture of what the U.N. is and what it isn't, what it can be and what it can't be.

American foreign policy, for all its shortcomings, has underpinned political stability around the world.

We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today's complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not.

The U.N. is much more than the case of Iraq.

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

To solve the problem of organizing world peace we must establish world law and order.

The U.N. can be very frustrating and at times impotent, but it can also be a valuable forum for discussion and resolution of world problems. We should not walk away from it just because it's failed to live up to its promise.

In a case like Iraq the UN has again shown what important role it plays as the guarantor for protecting international peace and stability in the global political structure.

We have actively sought and are actively seeking to make the United Nations an effective instrument of international cooperation.