"If the United Nations does not attempt to chart a course for the world's people in the first decades of the new millennium, who will?"
About this Quote
Annan frames the United Nations not as a debating society but as the last institution with a plausible claim to global stewardship. The line is built as a rhetorical trap: a conditional that sounds humble ("If the UN does not attempt...") followed by a question that quietly forecloses alternatives. It forces the listener to inventory the other options - great powers with vetoes, markets with no conscience, NGOs with no mandate - and find them wanting. The result is a plea that reads like a challenge.
The specific intent is twofold. First, it’s a call for relevance in the early 2000s, when the UN was being pulled between humanitarian aspirations and hard-edged geopolitics: post-Cold War optimism curdling into interventions, state collapse, and the shock of transnational terrorism. Second, it’s a defense of multilateralism at a moment when unilateral action was becoming fashionable, especially in Washington. Annan is asking member states to stop treating the UN as a convenient backdrop and start treating it as a tool requiring investment, reform, and political risk.
The subtext is sharper than the measured diction suggests. "Attempt" admits limits; the UN can’t command, only convene. "Chart a course" evokes navigation through a fog of globalization, pandemics, climate, and inequality - problems that ignore borders while politics stubbornly clings to them. The question, "who will?", is less hopeful than it sounds: it hints that if the UN abdicates, the vacuum won’t be filled by something better. It will be filled by power.
The specific intent is twofold. First, it’s a call for relevance in the early 2000s, when the UN was being pulled between humanitarian aspirations and hard-edged geopolitics: post-Cold War optimism curdling into interventions, state collapse, and the shock of transnational terrorism. Second, it’s a defense of multilateralism at a moment when unilateral action was becoming fashionable, especially in Washington. Annan is asking member states to stop treating the UN as a convenient backdrop and start treating it as a tool requiring investment, reform, and political risk.
The subtext is sharper than the measured diction suggests. "Attempt" admits limits; the UN can’t command, only convene. "Chart a course" evokes navigation through a fog of globalization, pandemics, climate, and inequality - problems that ignore borders while politics stubbornly clings to them. The question, "who will?", is less hopeful than it sounds: it hints that if the UN abdicates, the vacuum won’t be filled by something better. It will be filled by power.
Quote Details
| Topic | Vision & Strategy |
|---|---|
| Source | Kofi Annan, foreword to "We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century" (Millennium Report), United Nations, 2000 (foreword/introductory passage). |
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