Tad Daley and David Lionel. “Reinventing the United Nations”. The Foreign Service Journal. September 2006 – “The structure of the institution, too, has become embarrassingly anachronistic: Britain and France are only medium-rank world powers by any reckoning, yet both hold Security Council vetoes. In contrast, Germany, Japan, India, Brazil, and many other nations possessing significant geopolitical weight have virtually no voice”[…]
“But how will we ever get rid of the veto if no one even says that we ought to get rid of the veto? How can we ever change the political realities of the near term if we don’t even discuss what might be desirable in the long term? If politics, as every undergraduate knows, is the art of the possible, then this kind of conversation can serve as a catalyst for expanding the parameters of political possibility.
Make your way then, with haste, to the Jefferson Memorial. There you will find these words: ‘I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.’
The time has come to weave a new coat for a third-generation world organization. We must seize the opportunity to invent a garment of our own, one designed not for our ancestors, but for weathering the storms, exploring the vistas, and reaching for the promise of the uncharted 21st century.”
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