Pierre Schori Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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9/11 has come upon us and seems to define a new era. As the Ambassador of Sweden to the UN, you have been there to watch these events and the changes within the UN. Let's talk a little about that. How has 9/11 changed things for the UN as an organization and the problems that it must focus on?
I was standing in my room on the 46th floor, just opposite the UN in New York, and I saw the first tower being hit. I didn't know by what; there was a small fire. I went to a EU ambassador meeting then, and I called my wife, saying, "Keep informing me of what's going on. Look at the TV." Then when we were sitting there with ambassadors, the message came there was a plane. And then we all rushed back to our offices, and then from there, I saw the second plane, and my colleagues and I watched the two towers fall down. We were crying, we were, you know, everything. We couldn't communicate with the outside world -- only by e-mail, not by phone. There was a shock, but also a strong solidarity when we realized what this was all about. We had vigils in Sweden, like in every other place, and the e-mails you got, and we had the same headlines, "We are all New Yorkers," and all that.
The day after, both the Security Council and the General Assembly convened an extraordinary session, and unanimously, unanimously, voted for a resolution and solidarity with the United States and its people, and for the right of self-defense.
Had we continued on that path, we would be in a completely different situation today, because we were all for [your need to] go at the root of the causes, which was Taliban, in this case, and al Qaeda, and terrorism; but also to fight the breeding ground for potential terrorists, to fight poverty -- the pre-9/11 agendas of the UN, to fight poverty and to liberate people from fear and hunger and so on.
So there was a strong solidarity. And, then, of course, some months later, a year later, we got the war in Afghanistan, and, okay. Some people wondered how long is this war going on, and so on. But then the distraction became Iraq, which changed a lot, because Afghanistan was not a finished job. Terrorism there was not finished. It all changed, and we have the situation we have today, unfortunately. The UN was put aside, and we had to think about other things, how to match this.
My first reaction after 9/11 was to ask how will the United States and its people handle their anger and sorrow? That will decide a lot in world policy, I thought. Today I think: how will the United States handle its superpower position? Because that will also decide a lot.
The UN had an agenda before this change in the world's perception. To what extent is that agenda still relevant for dealing with the causes of terror? Obviously, there was a need for a military solution, and the UN recognized that, up to a certain point, in Afghanistan. What about the UN agenda that was in place before 9/11? How does it inform our understanding of the causes of terrorism and how one should respond to it in other ways, besides the military?
I came in 2000, in the fall, and that was when the Millennium Summit took place in New York, with the largest gathering ever of prime ministers and presidents. What they did there was to adopt an agenda, the Millennium Declaration, which was based upon a report from Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General, where he had tried to analyze the threats and opportunities for the twenty-first century, and what should be done about it. He had about ten points, ten "millennium development goals," which he asked the leaders to subscribe to, which they did.
That analysis was very interesting, because a few months later the CIA came out with their analysis, which was called Global Threats 2015. I compared the two, Kofi Annan's report and George Tenet's report, and I found they more or less spoke about the same thing. But the interesting thing, the conclusion I drew, was that Kofi Annan, with his limited resources, came up with that, and he engaged the whole world for them; while George Tenet, with the best and the brightest, all the resources they have in the intelligence community, he couldn't come up with anything better. Of course, the multinational aspect was less prominent, obviously.
So we all set about, in the fall of 2000, to work on these millennium development goals, which were benchmarks, and Kofi Annan would report one year later on it to the General Assembly, and say, "This is what you have done. This is what you have not done. And this is what you should do." So we all saw a new bright future of energy, and to combat and meet other challenges and threats of the new century. Terrorism was also there, [but] not so much. Of course, a year later he couldn't deliver his report because of 9/11. But it was there. That agenda, the pre-9/11 agenda, is still there: poverty, HIV/AIDS, environment, rule of law, and so on, and so-called fragile states and what do about them. So it's still there. It must come back, and hopefully it will now, but there is a distraction, and that is Iraq, of course, which sucks up so much energy, so many resources, so much political emotion.
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