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2010 - The Challenges to Global Security: Jacques CHIRAC
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22/12/99
Jacques CHIRAC PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC
The
20th century brought the world to the brink of moral and physical annihilation:
the Holocaust was the most absolute negation of the values of humanism that
underpins democracy; and the Cold War saw us living on the verge of a nuclear
cataclysm. Our challenge for the 21st century is to learn from the mistakes of the past century, and use these lessons to build a more harmonious and peaceful world - a world that is more law-abiding and better organised. Every day we witness progress in the rule of law, rendering all the more intolerable those exceptions that still exist. The establishment of the International Criminal Court will provide a new instrument for affirming a universal conscience that respects human rights. Over and above that, it is important for the Security Council, the cornerstone of the UN and the only body legally empowered to act on behalf of the community of nations, to have its authority affirmed, as was recently the case in Kosovo and East Timor.
Harmony also presupposes stability, for example, the emergence of different centres of power co-operating with one another. Europe's contribution to this multipolar world will be essential. Today, after successfully creating the euro currency, the EU's great ambition is to play its full role and shoulder all its responsibilities in the international arena. This requires a genuine European foreign policy and a genuine autonomous defence capability.
France, with its main European partners, has put forward clear proposals for reaching this goal. Market forces and industrial logic support this process through mergers, which in turn are making industrial groups more able to compete on a global scale. This approach will also strengthen the Europeans' contribution to the vitality of NATO, which remains the bedrock of the European continent's collective defence.
Finally, a safer world presupposes the revival of the virtuous circle of the non-proliferation of weapons and disarmament. To implement the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT); maintain the strategic balance; open negotiations on the banning of the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons; fight biological and ballistic proliferation; and prohibit anti-personnel landmines are all objectives reflecting our people's expectations. On all these issues, the EU and USA, driven by their common values of humanism, must combine their efforts to point the way to a peaceful world.
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Jacques CHIRAC
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2010
- The Challenges To Global Security | Foreword:
Cliff Beal | King
Abdullah II | Kofi
Annan | Ehud Barak
| Tony Blair | Jacques
Chirac | Bill
Clinton | Sadako
Ogato | James
Orbinski | Romano
Prodi | Lord
Robertson Of Port Ellen | Mary
Robinson | Javier
Solana | Cornelio
Sommaruga | James
Wolfensohn | Postscript:
Edward N. Luttwak | Postscript:
Lawrence Freedman