By Arnaud Blin
After 2008, which revealed the huge financial
imbalances connected to globalization, 2009
raised the curtain on the geopolitical
instability characteristic of the contemporary
world. The year 2008 came to a wretched end with
the twofold Madoff-Bush debacle ensuing from the
arrogance, incompetence, and blindness of the
money mongers and politicians of the past 10
years. Already, 2009 has brought forth a conflict
from another age, throwing us 60 years back with
an umpteenth setback that, in a mere few weeks,
has swept up thousands of victims, mostly
civilians, in its violent turmoil. Yet hope does
subside, the hope that with Barack Obama a new
age is coming into sight. Never, not since
Franklin D. Roosevelt—one of the architects of
the United Nations—has an American president
given rise to so much hope. But can a president
of the United States represent anything other than the
interests of its country’s power? The UN,
confounded once again in its chronic helplessness
to weigh upon the conflict of the moment, and—supreme humiliation—a
victim of Israeli bombings,
remains a
front-stage player in international politics despite its many weaknesses.
Will the UN have in Obama a new Roosevelt who
might be able get the machine going again? This
could be a New Years’ wish, even though today the
world is no longer ticking exclusively to the
American clock. What is the UN’s role in the
world that is emerging, what role can it still
play? Does the UN even continue to make sense?
This is the question at the core of this discussion paper.