"The idea that UN commitments should be followed by action is indeed a radical one, especially for the United States, where wilful neglect of its own commitments is the rule"
About this Quote
Calling “follow-through” radical is a neat bit of Sachsian acid: the joke lands because it’s true enough to sting. He’s taking a concept the UN is built on - states make commitments, then act on them - and flipping it into an indictment of the world’s most powerful member. The line isn’t just moral scolding; it’s a diagnosis of how international promises get laundered into public relations, especially when Washington is involved.
The specific intent is to puncture the comfortable fiction that the United States is merely a reluctant, overburdened enforcer of global order. Sachs frames neglect as “the rule,” not an occasional lapse, which shifts blame from bureaucratic friction to political habit. That word “wilful” matters: he’s not talking about capacity, but choice. In his telling, the failure isn’t that the UN is toothless; it’s that powerful states keep it that way while still harvesting legitimacy from the system’s language.
Subtext: the UN becomes a stage where commitments function as cost-free virtue signals, and the U.S. - exceptional in its self-image - is exceptional in its willingness to ignore constraints. The “radical” barb also tweaks American political culture, where multilateral obligations are often treated as optional suggestions, subordinate to domestic optics and strategic convenience.
Contextually, this fits Sachs’s long-running critique of U.S.-led global governance: lofty declarations on development, climate, and humanitarian norms paired with selective compliance, underfunding, or outright obstruction. The sentence works because it compresses a sprawling pattern into a single inversion: the truly extreme position, he suggests, is simply doing what you said you’d do.
The specific intent is to puncture the comfortable fiction that the United States is merely a reluctant, overburdened enforcer of global order. Sachs frames neglect as “the rule,” not an occasional lapse, which shifts blame from bureaucratic friction to political habit. That word “wilful” matters: he’s not talking about capacity, but choice. In his telling, the failure isn’t that the UN is toothless; it’s that powerful states keep it that way while still harvesting legitimacy from the system’s language.
Subtext: the UN becomes a stage where commitments function as cost-free virtue signals, and the U.S. - exceptional in its self-image - is exceptional in its willingness to ignore constraints. The “radical” barb also tweaks American political culture, where multilateral obligations are often treated as optional suggestions, subordinate to domestic optics and strategic convenience.
Contextually, this fits Sachs’s long-running critique of U.S.-led global governance: lofty declarations on development, climate, and humanitarian norms paired with selective compliance, underfunding, or outright obstruction. The sentence works because it compresses a sprawling pattern into a single inversion: the truly extreme position, he suggests, is simply doing what you said you’d do.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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