as nation states have grown out of the time when we were tribal we have begin to think about ourselves as protectors of other nations or maybe not protectors of other nations but invaders and occupiers of other nations and so part of what we'll talk about i think is whether the responsibility to protect also means that we have a responsibility to take over in rule as we have seen our country do perhaps too often hard to discuss since who all of so we we thought he was a hero when he decided to leave that position and we became more and more convinced that he was a hero has been here before in this church and educated us and helped us to understand what was going on and now he's working on this particular part of our human endeavor so all please join me in welcoming and hunts one spawning and i hope that you will enjoy this they will have a question and answer back and forth and then we'll invite you to participate in asking questions as well thank you very much for being here tonight it's so good to see you i've been looking forward to this burt email if i would be able to be here tonight to be a part of the conversation with you about the responsibility to protect and i'm going to confess right now since i'm a pastor you know confession is good for us and i'm going to confess that i was not at all acquainted with that concept the responsibility to protect at least not as it's been formulated and written and so i've been doing quite a bit of reading here and there to try and get up to speed with it and part of what i've been reading has brought back all kinds of memories of the trips to iraq and then later to syria that we made and given me lots to think about one of the things i read was the two thousand and twelve report by the general secretary on the progress of the responsibility to protect and in that his evaluation was violence in countries and to ensure the human well being in countries where there is conflict and and discord and i in reading the paper that you wrote i think that was recently that bird sent me read that you don't share that same opinion that the general secretary does about the use of the responsibility to protect statement and and concept so i wanted to ask you about that he he concluded that it has been used effectively to provide for the well being of people and a disagreements can you tell me what your opinion of the effectiveness of that document and that concept has been formally in a form of sense fairly new if i can just go or step back if i made yes you can ask you can say this book sense then i think as far as the united nations where i did my work for thirty two long years i know a little bit about the u n charge and what the un un objectives but i can say that maybe until two thousand and five the concept of responsibility to protect in former political sense or something it was a canadian initiative in two thousand and one the government of canada in a moment of despair i guess when they looked back and they saw what the law of the earlier decades had brought in terms of genocide in terms of walk crimes in terms of mass murder they came to the conclusion the time had come to really rethink a concept which in the sovereignty i hope you can hear me better now the concept of sovereignty became an immensely important concept in the one nine hundred sixty s why nine hundred sixty s because that was really the decade when countries became independent more and more countries became independent and as they became independent the most precious objective was to finally have sovereignty to finally being masters of their own destiny so it became really a sucker sanct term nobody who tried to influence international relations question that concept everyone said we accept its sovereignty when i served in iraq there was no un resolution which didn't stress territorial integrity and sovereignty but then as the years went by and these countries had enjoyed decades of independence things happened and new concepts came into the debate for example the concept of failing states states that where governments were no longer in be able to t human rights to guarantee a functioning government apparatus it wasn't there so one began in the nineteen seventies to think about how one  to look at how the international community could more responsibly exercise the rights to prevent or when it happens to  happened which then in two thousand and five the un general assembly continue to debate and adopt and that is why suddenly argued yes sovereignty is important countries the internal elements had to do with guaranteeing human rights for all segments of the population no except was do we have the right to then as in external parties to intervene internally and the answer that was given yes we have that right in a short sentence human rights became more important and sovereignty that was i think the a major a major new element in international relations and my long winded roads to revenue most question is that the that this this riots this human rights that supersedes sovereignty  that this was a valuable concept but under one condition and that is easier said than done that th wouldn't be there would not be any hidden agenda and if you start applying and we must go into that more and more detail when you start applying this concept r two p responsibility to protect with a hidden agenda where you pretend up front example libya that you want to protect civilian populations and behind the curtain you are having something quite differently in mind then this concepts a good concept then becomes a dangerous concept and i think that stat is the difficulty i have that one must not assume that the existence of that concept leads to an application that is innocent it isn't innocent and it hasn't been innocent and we should maybe i should stop here for a moment then you could go on forever as far as i'm concerned but you're at the point now where i have another question that i'd like to address to relate to that effect of the sanctions on the iraqi people we were in the what eleventh year of the sanctions at that time against iraq and one of the statements he made that i puzzled over in our meeting and kept asking him to explain more deeply was the idea that i was hearing from him that it was the u s is power in applying resolution six six one for the just as the decision maker about the saying chanson the materials that would be allowed in and not allowed in and when i pressed him he finally said the u s is committee six six one committee six six one yeah which was the committee that made all the decisions about what would be sanctioned and what would not be sanctioned in terms of materials entering iraq during that time during those eleven years and that was also just about the time when the so called smart sanctions were being initiated so as i was reading the general secretary's report our early from early this year about the progress and the state of affairs with  the responsibility to protect he in one place listed several instances which you did as well a few minutes ago of past atrocities and genocides that this what can i call it resolution decision was designed to prevent starting with holocaust and including some some of those you named and i thought it was particularly unusual that in two thousand and five and now in two thousand and twelve iraq was not in that list because i remember when we went in two thousand and two we had just been getting the news about the numbers of children who had died between ninety one and ninety eight excess deaths because of the sanctions because of the effect of the sanctions and there was some argument about what that number was i remember initially it was posited to be about five hundred thousand and then within the next a few years of additional research i think the number was close to seven hundred thousand during those years and then of course we all remember i think when the question was posed to madeleine albright about whether she thought it was worth it and she said yes it is worth it now i don't know what you would call that that mass effect of the sanctions over those eleven years but why why do you think that iraq is not included in any of the discourse in the general secretary's reports about the kinds of things that this  resolution agreement is designed to prevent and why has nothing emerged at least if something is emerged i'm not aware of it that would call the us to account and you know in reading about your article i believe you shared that there is responsibility but there's also accountability so how does that fit in  important question i keep saying if two hundred years after the armenian genocide in turkey we starts looking for accountability and that is hundred eighty years too late and right now as far as iraq is concerned i'm not saying that because i'm in the u s that i say it's not just the americans i mean there were others in the security council in fact in fact one can argue yes the engines of sanction policy were in london and in washington but after all let's not forget there were fifteen member countries in the security council they all are accountable and right now they are and i belong to those who insist that accountability is not cannot be just for the weak and the losers accountability has to include everyone we keep saying in our respective  democracies before the law everybody is equal well it doesn't seem that before international law everybody is equal maybe there is a deliberate effort to know to prevent this debate to go forward and hold people accountable you know about how can we allow impunity to prevail when a country has not only thousand children that die it's extra deaths as a result of sanctions is only one example and i would say it's an academic discussion to say where that five hundred with the six hundred where the seven hundred thousand i subscribe to give you one child one cumin being is so valuable that one extra death as a result of a faulty policy is one death too many i think that must be so crystal clear so i don't i think it's for dowd universities to do research on is it five hundred thousand six hundred thousand is five hundred twenty on the political level we have plenty of evidence that people died to shouldn't have died as a result not of the dictator but off of party in that sanctions committee six six one committee it's called six six one because resolution six six one of the six of august nine hundred ninety where they were the engine together with the british that is correct about the others condone the other student not get out of their seat and walk out and say we don't continue to do that it was eight the term that i learned to dislike forli when i lived in barked out the term collateral damage this is collateral damage we have to pay this price in the interest of a much broader picture about human rights and democracy in our values no it cannot be but that's how it was argued and the british and the americans got away with that so they they are maybe more accountable those governments then and then the other thirteen in the security council but the other thirteen old civil accountable i very much believe in that and  the concept of smart sanctions let me just refer to that also smart sanctions that concept a rolls only towards the end  of the thirteen years of sanctions against iraq when secular jimmy kofi annan said these comprehensive all embracing sanctions against an innocent people  instrument here his words a blunt instrument that shouldn't be used anymore so people started talking about smart sanctions i just completed  columbia university to yale to harvard to brandeis to the university of chicago where together with professor joy gordon from fairfield university the two of us try to look a little bit at sanctions on  smart sanctions are those sanctions which focus on the guilty and not on the innocent but in the case of iran this concept is a misnomer because the sanctions in that implications for the iranian people are almost as comprehensive as they were against the iraqi people so it's very clever you can say this is targeted and therefore the u security council really nothing to do with that to protect the people it's targeted if you target the economic sector the financial sector how you by extension you think you can say you 're not targeting as in the case of iraq the people but in the case of iran the true the brutal truth is that the iranians are very very much affected by these so called smart sanctions sanctions it's a misuse of a term in my view and the effects the impact on the people in iran increasingly visible people getting destitutes the infrastructure is in such a way that people cannot travel easily anymore in the education infrastructure is is affected so what one sees on the horizon is a similar picture of destitution as we have  seen in iraq maybe oh sure it's not like you anticipated my next question thank you i wanted to hear your reflections about the sanctions that are being imposed currently on iran i raised the question earlier about accountability those countries that were participating in sanctions on iraq because my fear and my perception today is that there is so much continued lying or deception going on in terms of what is happening in syria as there was about libya and that the end game has little to do with the so called support of the rebel forces against the government but rather our own interests in both those countries as part of our interest in the middle east and so how does how do you see the the responsibility to protect that applied internationally is a shield for other kinds of activities of the u s and other countries just like it was in iraq and one of those things is the carrying out of a proxy war against syria as i understand it well if i came a step back but coming back to syria i would like to remind ourselves  what happened in the first application of this concept responsibility to protect it was libya no other president in two thousand and five summit  began to accept the r two p as a form tool form of responsibility in the international toolkit it's what you say strikes a strong chord with me you talk about lying this and misinformation in the case of syria let's look at what happened in libya it it when you start looking at the resolution this resolution one nine seven three that was adopted in two thousand and eleven in the spring of two thousand and eleven what do we read there let me look here at my notes it says and this was the is the difference to iraq where we had no fly zones also these no fly zones in iraq were illegal and no the no fly zone in libya was legal whether we like it or not the security council adopted didn't that made it internationally legally correct ok in that resolution we read about a flight ban no planes in libyan airspace the second thing is you call it no boots on the ground nor foreign military on libyan soil third is an arms embargo the force is freezing the assets of the government and the justification for that was we must protect the libyan civilian population all right so far so good but then when it was all over in october of two thousand and eleven how did the picture look first of all it didn't take long before the french the british and in the background a bit the americans openly discussed regime change so was it about protecting the people or was it about regime change secondly there were armed militias the outside arms them there were four no boots on the ground well they were following special forces on the ground and maybe not i just want to say maybe not in visible identifiable uniforms but in some civilian clothes i don't think the libyan air space has ever had more traffic during the years when they were supposed to be no fly zone planes were flying all the time but only of a kind these were nato planes and by the way just to show you how complicated and fragmented this so called nato alliance is only five only five of the twenty eight nato member countries actually participated with military equipment in that li adventure my own country while we were criticized from all sides some said you should avoid veto do it others said you should have supported it we abstained but was probably a weak response but anyway nato planes were flying all over the place yes government accounts were frozen but money was flowing freely to the opposition and the secretary general and now we are coming to what you call prime minister rasmussen he had the audacity to go before the world and declare that the libyan mission of nato on behalf of the united nations security council had been successful so what is this that is lying dishonest it simply isn't correct i heard him say this at the forty eighth munich security conference last last february this year and he also repeated it in the annual report on nato and it was simply a wrong and incorrect and and terribly unethical response to the reality and to the fact that these three governments that where the new state the french the british and the americans had openly declared after a while this is about regime change it's not a lot protecting the civilian population and certainly not protecting those in quote innocent people that were on the gadhafi side so you know and then are you surprised when you now look at the news and you see the security council and you see the russians and the and chinese abstaining vetoing bombarding any of the of these attempts to well mrs clinton wants to that and i think this is not an ideological statement it's affection state in my opinion that the united nations cannot possibly support regime change where would we end up if suddenly in the security council you say well sorry the government of germany under mrs merkel is no good it should call or some other country in africa and latin america asia the same it's not possible that's not what the u n is about the u n wasn't created to to be about that the u n was created to prepare to have to have a forum where people could come together and discuss a conflict and solve it hopefully peacefully and there is no more there is no such concept as an aggressive un initiated military conf the un is very clear on that the un charter as an article fifty one in which it says you can respond with military force for the sake of self defense that's judge jackson robert jackson who said the worst crime you can commit is the crime of aggression well what did we do on the nineteenth of march in moving into iraq that was that was aggression and was not self defense self defense nine hundred ninety one operation desert storm u s led coalition was completely legal you cannot have a country marching into the new bring countries where said iraq marching into kuwait so that was legal why was it then not illegal when you moved in on the nineteenth of march with a coalition force into iraq to get rid of the dictator maybe that was the real answer but allegedly because you wanted to bring responsibility to protect to the iraqi people anyway i'm just trying to show you how this concept for the first time and the only time so far are two p was applied in the case of libya and lying in the case of syria there is absolutely those in the security council support that including the us you pretend it's to protect protect who whom the syrian people or your own interests standing assembly should react there is a way there is one way only one but it's one way in which the u n general assembly can say what you fifteen and the un security council would you are doing there we don't accept and that just called a uniting uniting for peace resolution that is resolution three seven seven if you like to read more about it resolution three seven seven of nine fifty where it was said if two thirds of the member countries of the united nations objects to a decision by the u n security council then the security council  and that should be now the order of the day to do that but where do you see it why why is it why one can speculate but in the case of iraq when it was a question of deciding over whether or not there should be in a war against invasion it was secretary of state colin powell who travelled and rode and said if you support this resolution this uniting for peace resolution we in the u s government consider that as his words as an unfriendly act and it will have implications that's bribery because for many of the poor countries that voted on sanctions on iraq there was one country that didn't vote for that and that was yemen and at the end of this voting the american went over to his colleague from yemen and said ambassador this was the most expensive vote you have if your country has ever carried out and the week following week the aid program to to a very poor one of the poorest countries on earth yemen was stopped by the u s that's bribery and when we have that's part blackmail bribery whatever you want to call it and  i don't think i need to stress what these kind of acts do to international relations what they do to trust among each other and over time th and today the u n security council is so immensely divided that there's no chance at all that they will do anything to apply th time i go to israel in the west bank almost every year sometimes twice a year and i know that kerry and go frequently especially into gaza and maybe many of the others if you do too it's my question is what are your reflections about the responsibility to protect in relation to the palestinian people so which is blue eyed and naive and that of course is that the united nations has a responsibility to continue year after year  to apply this concept to and the palestinian to the palestinians there's no question that the u n security council and the general assembly have a responsibility to protect shouldn't have been any let me hold here and just remind us to make the point better last july southern sudan became the hundred and ninety third member country of the united nations that took no time it was in a week that this all were settled and arranged how many more decades must the palestinians wait they have been waiting since nine hundred forty eight sixty seven  you can pick a date but for many many years have they waited to get that which others gets sort of bye bye bye bye the shortest possible route and that is membership first of f statehood and secondly membership and it is shameful that almost a year after abu marson the prime minister of of palestine has had applied to the un security council for membership and council decided on procedural grounds to sit on the paper not act on it and nothing is changed s responsibility to protect is very selective in the attempt to apply it and it has a very it has a very short history and it will continue to have that short history as long as we have the stubble stand you know thank you for answering my question thing is that we created this this functional police organization called the united nations which in my opinion actually is something to laugh at it's not really something to respect i came from  i would in my seminars at the university i'm teaching in germany now i always say the united nations has many faces the united nations has a political face that's the face we've talked about here the security council the general assembly but one must not forget the fifty five thousand international civil servants that are every single day maybe in a bureaucratic way maybe not as competent as some expect but fifty five thousand people in the whole system the world health organization eunice  protect them i want to say they do what one should do the political side is the problem and space no shortage i hand out to my students three sheet  page sheet which shows fifteen one five u n reports that have been compiled over the over the last fifteen years that make very good and very strong  recommendations but the political will to take these and implement doesn't exist why because member governments well i don't want to leave a church here and be considered as anti american but if jesse helms the chairman of the foreign relations committee of the u s senate comes into the u n security council when i am an octet after lloyd  worthy canadian foreign ministers had just said the united nations is there for the benefit of all its member countries and jesse helms comes and says pointing at these fifteen  you do what we want you to do in the u s congress we would support you and if you don't do that we will marginalize you with that attitude you won't gets reforms on the ground for example  but first of all let me remind ourselves who is in the u n security council the p five group the five permanent members is it a queen students that all five are representing the winners of the second world war china russia france u k and the u s they are adamant to initiatives they don't  want major reforms that are demanded by countries like presume japan india south africa and others who say hey listen we represent a much bigger chunk of global population than france england and so on so there's a stalemate how do we get out of this i wish i had a good answer for you but there is no shortage of solid proposals to make the united nations a more a stronger institution the veto for example this veto for many years it was the russians who were to veto anything that had to do with criticism of the of the u s s r t collection of russian states recently it's more the us any critical observation on israel is vetoed by the security council and the veto s become counterproductive so they have their concrete proposals on how to make it make that council more productive one example that i i think it's very worthy of consideration if you're innocent and that is a two thirds majority should replace the veto when two thirds in the un security council are supporting something then it should have weight but this in ordinate n is doesn't have political weight our weight is the weight of conscience all weight is the weight of conscience oh wait we do not have a political weight except to make sure that what we do is strictly in accordance with the spirit of the letter of the u n charter ok that's that's that's one thing secondly the un is couldn't be couldn't be at the level of a weaker level than the just right now financially and otherwise if you push into the united nations people who have a dubious background or worse who come from intelligence it's already a terrible violation of this this book defines where clearly we should work for the united nations if you give to the united nations a budget if you approve a budget which is less i know what i'm talking about less than columbia university has an annual budget and if you add if you compare the new york fire department and the new of police department these two i made a comparison the they have a a budget that is double the budget the united nations yes so we are kept at a very low for we sayn germany very low flame we are not allowed the leash is very short and then you expect that a few of us who believe in the u n where they are we are serving in the u n on not can make a big difference then i can only say to myself the difference we can make is by sitting in a church like this one here and steve baiting with you trying to convince you that it is worse it's not wars it's worth your time to reflect on these kind of issues the answers theoretically available the implementation is lacking calm please please and that very little courage by nations to come and stand up and say sorry russia we don't accept this sorry russia you are a us we don't accept this that isn't happening and that's a tragedy particularly in this country when you remember who were the people i just this morning looked at the us us constitution i was interesting and then it struck me the u s constitution has the same wording with one little difference in the case of the un there's an s in the case of the us based the essence like what am i talking about the us constitution starts by saying we the people of the united states and how does this start we the people because they're more than one people we the people not we the government and yet this booklet makes that point about the people and their decisions and their preferences nor example you remember when they did the protest movements in the u k against the u s and the against the u n sanctions the majority in the u k were against sanctions the majority in spain way against the sanctions the majority in italy where against the sanctions and their parliaments did the opposite is that democracy i don't think so and then you want  humble individuals like myself traveling yes we travel a lot yes we try a lot we ride we think we sometimes even protest i'm very uneasy when i stand in front of downing street and with is a much bigger canvas of political decision making which leaves people like you and howard does that mean we shouldn't continue to try no it doesn't mean that should continue to try and the more we in i was in harvard a young person i saw in yale i was in harvard too but in yearly a young person asked me last week what can we do what can we as young people do and my answer was the best thing you can do is a quip yourself with knowledge because when you have knowledge that you can fight back but if you don't have the knowledge what can you do you can overwrought by by those who think th truly in my experience of the same sions and in the time period since then i've said this so many times hands if you look up in the english dictionary and it says gentleman your definition are very well because you have courage because you have truth because you speak these words so clearly that i think they compel as to be more courageous ourselves when we were in iraq with you you compelled us to continue and when we came back we said to everyone that we could think of hans  reduce the relationship between themselves and the country that they think is straying off the power and then you have multilateral sanctions and in the case of iraq and iran the sanctions imposed by the u n security council in the case of iraq they were the most comprehensive sanctions that had ever been imposed on  country every single individual in that country was what was affected by that example i knew a person who needed surgery out of iraq in the neighboring country  he had a bank account in england and he was not able to get his resources to pay for the operation because there were sanctions so very comprehensive this why mr kofi annan talked about the bl instrument of comprehensive sanctions must be eliminated in the case of iraq iran and iran the term i referred to was smart sanctions but the impact is quite similar to th impact that prevailed in iraq so these are measures to say to a country we do not agree with the way you participate in the community of nations and therefore we will punish you that i think is maybe a simpler way of putting it well the problem with the responsibility to protect protect and humanitarian war is specifically united states that it's a different problem we have here in the united states and all the other member countries the historical actors to cause wars to happen in the decision process to war in the united states are a matter of historical record it is like the oil industry financial interests supporting the dollar germany and the general industrial base united states which depends on having a powerful dollar and  forcing other countries to sell their stuff for dollars and you also have religious interests and you have sinus interests and other interests that actually are part of the coalition that causes the united states to go to war not of the war since at least world war two been self defense and i can't recall if any of them were actually humanitarian or motivated by the responsibility or motive to protect anybody so we have a really different problem here in the united states than you might have in a philosophical level or a global united nations approach to this and so what i'd like to suggest is that these the responsibility to protect is like the five percent in the united states who might have humanitarian interests and these people are not sufficient they don't have enough shaft politically to actually move the united states to protect any countries but instead they become useful idiots to support the latest war and so they're really don't need d n a responsibility project to protect stuff here in the united states well thank you for has to accept the concept as it was identified in the u n summit of two thousand and five you know it's it is a very valuable concept and in any end if you look at it it really isn't new  it's only in a formal sense new but if you read the charter every pages about our war collective responsibility to to protect and we go off we stray off the highway when we apply it the way we have done it in the case of libya and you know this this hidden agenda i talk about background and iraq is i'm very well familiar with the iraq situation and i can tell you it was it was nauseating the way we played our game in iraq and it had not some the simplistic given it's about oil no it was about much more than oil it was about the control of oil it's one thing it was about our belief that western values are better than others other countries other cultures more whether it isn't better that we accept the ad to regina tee off of this situation that we are not with that we are willing in a very simplistic way i put it to you that we're willing to recognize you can eat rice with a fork you can eat rice with chopsticks and you can eat rice with your fingers who tells you or me that one is one method dispenser than the  other i think that is that they saw so clear we when when the un started with there were fifty one member countries they were mostly western in fact the un was so western that something happened which in international law is probably unique russia the us s r at the time had three votes in the general assembly you probably didn't know that three votes in order to create a little bit of a balance ukraine and b in a superficial way our successes over the years we have come to believe that what we do must be the best maybe it's good maybe others can learn but we can also learn from other and that mentality that us that has to be created and then concepts like are too p c received powerful meaning but if we're using this as a pretext to continue  o be out for our limited interest then i'm afraid things will go wrong continue to go wrong think you have a long admired your clarity and courage in a world where there's much too little of those mind struggle with our two p is twofold and  like you to comment on that first it is there's much to support and in more restrictive in fifteen centuries of the just war tradition just war theory has primarily functioned almost exclusively function justified war and r two p has the danger of being just another restrictive just war theory and i'm not sure that just war it can be it can in any useful way secondly it is primarily dependent on military answers so my question to you is how do you see r two p relating to just war and secondly what is the world of nonviolent intervention in r two p or in any on any global scale about this whole idea of just wars reject it even then but over the years the churches have restarted now i remember when i resigned from iraq and i was invited by the protestant church in germany to speak and they were defending the concept of just war i was so horrified no the ultimate arts your it's just war but today you don't see that anymore i have a very interesting unfortunates in german otherwise i would give it to you paper on this subject where the conclusion is this is no longer acceptable and r two p yes i do agree fully with you the danger is stairs we have seen in libya that what is perceived to be a just war then is given the title r two p but that i think is not acceptable and we see in the case of syria it doesn't float to doesn't go this whole booklet is a bargain on violence solution of conflicts and there is a chapter six that makes that point and there's a chapter seven that says under exceptional circumstances not just war but just the right of self defense the right of self in other words you can react militarily if it is very clear that you are about to be attacked you can do that but it is for the security council that must legitimize that security council doesn't do that then what do you think is your right of response because you perceive that somebody is about to attack you is illegal so the preference of course this a peace organization the preference is to apply nonviolent means of conflict resolution you know and the the problem is that this booklet is used like you use a tool in a box when it suits you again not you us but you international community you use it and if it is not useful you ignore it march nineteenth two thousand and three the british and the american governments said this country that was invaded it was legal so sometimes it's used correctly sometimes it's not used correctly it was labia was another case where this was not condoned by the u what you are proposing here is so fantastic i propose nothing yet seen here and if you are a member of the united nations then this is for you international law and when colonel gaddafi a few years ago went to the stern assembly to make the speeches these wonderful rhetorical statements the best the world has seen or heard but the moment they walk out of the general assembly they do something quite differently but gadhafi took this booklet and he wanted to rip it thank god it was too thick he couldn't repair it but the point is every member country is at liberty to say goodbye to the united nations but as long as there are who reminds you of this so it's that double standards we are we having this frightful legacy of double standards in international relations year after year and if a country is so powerful as the united states of america its military then it gets away with that should it get away with it no it should not will it in the future get away i don't think so because we are undergoing maybe not so noticeable fundamental about but really fundamental changes in international relations right now the eastern extension of nato is grooming russia its own new enemy these  empty missile defense systems that we are building in in turkey spain remain here and poland now after czech dropped out and germany being a help which hurts me a lot i think the german public pacific policy is grooming china as the new anime you know you can compete with china but you can compete peacefully with china but you don't start in  south korea in the philippines in vietnam in australia to start expanding your bases your military presence and hope that you will contain china no you will not contain china who are we this morning i looked up the numbers you have a population of about three hundred million american citizens in canada there are another thirty eight million people that makes it three hundred c three hundred fifty in europe to your europe has about five hundred million people that makes eight hundred fifty million people out of seven point three billion people we are we are just as a minority and so we are increasingly we in europe and you here are increasingly incapable of calling the shots so what are we doing why are we then going that road of more confrontation and i see it i see it so clearly in front of me now because what is brewing what is linked for example to the specific policy change of the u s is intimately linked to developments in central asia after two thousand and fourteen when the u s and international coalition forces come home what do we leave behind a totally confused fragmented central asia not just afghanistan and then sides would be taken who some will go with the us some will go with china and we have a beautiful new major conflict and that cannot possibly thank you yes even though my eyes aren't blue it's ok if you held up several times to the charter of the united nations it occurred to me that essentially there is no oversight on whatever actions the security council takes is one of the proposed reforms leaving aside all the political difficulties of implementing it having an independent court the same way as in principle we contend we have in this country an independent court system which compares the actions of congress with the constitution of the united states has that been a proposal put forth for the united nations not to my knowledge no to my knowledge no we have a court system we have the international criminal court which is an institution and we have the international court  second court which is a united nations court have in its preview the ability to judge actions as they are actually carried out for example in libya and stand up and possibility are they impartial i don't think so and the international court of justice which is not even the u n court has tried seven africans yes we are the european yes we are the americans yes we are the asians yes so it's partially now people accept this when i say that but that's the  children is arguably genocide and the federal judge upheld by the appeals court said we don't need to hear whether or not the evidence whether this is genocide we have to accept it was genocide but congress has immunize itself from any threat of suit in a federal court of genocide so they just missed the case and i think that's an awful and stunning indictment of our court system where the supreme court even would not hear the case here a petition essentially concluding that if congress wishes to commit genocide our court system will not look at that in the same way parties ok if two states agree and most often the warring parties iraq u s for example don't agree together to go to the international court of justice but interesting the  un court of justice can also issue at the request of any of any u n body only un bodies if the world health organization or unicef or want to ask the court of justice for an advisory opinion they can do so and in that case the international court of justice court theoretically  the un un is in many ways unfortunately also very shy why use the un shy well for one very practical reason the un relies on countries like yours to get budget of the united nations i mean the u n is with two point six billion that's the this year's budget two point six billion is what the secretary it has in new york to finance new york plus a few were sent to us in different parts of the world two point six billion if you add everything every agency of the united nations and their resource then you get for last year just about including peacekeeping operations twenty four billion dollars not twenty four billion dollars to you and me sounds like a lot but if i tell you no as a comparison in comparison these figures are not i mean they are so in my hard disk so clearly that i can rely on them we in two thousand and five two thousand and six two thousand and seven the monthly the monthly cost of keeping the u s military in iraq twelve billion dollars that means one hundred forty four billion dollars a year against a budget of twenty four that is the whole n system had a resource that was equal to two months two months of maintaining the troops in iraq during those those years that shows you and if you break it down also  maybe one more figure to the u n would publish reports on iraq and on the inflow off in quote humanitarian goods and the value of these goods first of all it wasn't because what the person in the public does know ways that every single cent of what went into iraq as humanitarian goods was paid for by the iraqis themselves it came out of oil money  salary was paid by the iraqi government every u n action was paid for by the by the by the iraqis saw the u n says we had sixty four actually arrived in iraq don't ask me now why the difference i can explain but now maybe twenty eight billion that's where the u n stopped the u n should have gone one big step further and tell you and then you and i can understand it that this amounted to fifty one cent per person per day for the average iraqis we assume twenty three million iraqis at that time fifty one cents a cup of coffee i tell students you can get for fifty one cents they had fifty one cents sixty to seventy percent of the people relied on the samantha in iraq these are the orders of magnitude that make you angry because it's all so little and so in adequate and there are proportional states the tobin tax you have heard of the top tax assessing financial transactions if canada to the us or germany to belgium tiny fraction of a percent to be added and the resources out of that would go for international activities including the united nations read this to happen the un would be in much better shape we could do much more and we could do it maybe better we could recruit also at different levels it's not meant to be the un isn't supposed to be a strong institution we see the end result