Year: 2020
Type: other
Abstract: Javier Pérez de Cuéllar's death on 4 March 2020, weeks after he turned 100 years old, evoked the time of unparalleled peacemaking success that was his decade as UN Secretary-General.There is no room for invidious comparisons; we are not today where we were then.But as we watch the Sisyphean travails of some UN mediators, a modicum of nostalgia is understandable.In a few months, thirty years will have elapsed since Pérez de Cuéllar left office after an unparalleled string of peacemaking successes as part of the transition out of the Cold War.Other than the first-ever meeting of the Security Council at the summit level, on 31 January 1992, which sang his praise, Pérez de Cuéllar's time in office was somewhat drowned out by the spectacular setbacks (Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda) that marred his successor's five-year term and it remains largely unexamined.Now that we have the necessary remove, I cannot think of a better way to memorialize him than to discuss his imprint on history.The UN's architects managed to fix many of the flaws of the League Covenant but, in the new organization's Charter, they relied heavily on the willingness of the five permanent members of the Security Council (P5) to work together to maintain international peace and security, acting on behalf of the membership as a whole rather than in their national interests.By the late 1940s, as the Cold War set in, that premise evaporated, largely paralyzing the Security Council and impairing the ability of the first four Secretaries-General to perform the role they might have played.Détente notwithstanding, the paralysis remained when Pérez de Cuéllar took office in 1982.He came to office as a lifetime observer of the world scene
Author: Àlvaro de Soto
Institution: Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4235900229