"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"
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Hans Blix is doing something diplomats rarely get credit for: calling out power without sounding like he’s calling out power. The line is structured as a polite conditional, but it lands as an indictment. “If the Security Council is only relevant if it agrees with the United States” isn’t a hypothetical; it’s a mirror held up to Washington’s selective multilateralism. Blix turns a procedural question into a legitimacy crisis: the UN is not meant to function as a global echo chamber for the strongest member, and treating it that way hollows out the very concept of collective security.
The elegance is in the restraint. He never says “the U.S. is undermining international law.” He says “relevant,” a bureaucratic word that carries a moral payload: relevance here means more than usefulness; it means authority. When relevance becomes contingent on U.S. approval, the Security Council stops being an arbiter and becomes a prop. Blix’s “we have come a long way” signals a slow, alarming drift - normalization of bypassing institutions when they get inconvenient. “A direction that I do not like very much” is understatement as weaponry, the kind that lets a diplomat speak in a register that can’t easily be dismissed as ideological.
Context matters: this is the early-2000s UN atmosphere, with Iraq inspections and mounting pressure for war. Blix, as chief inspector, was caught between American impatience and a Security Council split. The subtext is that unilateralism doesn’t just produce one conflict; it rewrites the rules so that future conflicts become easier to justify.
The elegance is in the restraint. He never says “the U.S. is undermining international law.” He says “relevant,” a bureaucratic word that carries a moral payload: relevance here means more than usefulness; it means authority. When relevance becomes contingent on U.S. approval, the Security Council stops being an arbiter and becomes a prop. Blix’s “we have come a long way” signals a slow, alarming drift - normalization of bypassing institutions when they get inconvenient. “A direction that I do not like very much” is understatement as weaponry, the kind that lets a diplomat speak in a register that can’t easily be dismissed as ideological.
Context matters: this is the early-2000s UN atmosphere, with Iraq inspections and mounting pressure for war. Blix, as chief inspector, was caught between American impatience and a Security Council split. The subtext is that unilateralism doesn’t just produce one conflict; it rewrites the rules so that future conflicts become easier to justify.
Quote Details
| Topic | Peace |
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