中欧社会论坛 - China Europa Forum

Authors: Kennedy Graham & Tania Felicio

Date: janvier 2005

Published by Royal Institute for International Relations (IRRI-KIIB)

URL: www.irri-kiib.be

INTRODUCTION

‘I believe we can develop a new vision of global security. A vision that respects human rights while confronting the threats of our age, including the threat of terrorism. A vision that draws upon the resources and legitimacy of a network of effective and mutually reinforcing multilateral mechanisms – regional and global – that are flexible and responsive to our rapidly changing and integrating world.’

H.E. Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, July 2003.

‘The fact is, however, that the Security Council does not deal with all regional arrangements on the same footing. While the Council may give a particular regional organization an opportunity to assist in preventing or settling a crisis, it may ignore another regional organization in a similar situation. We believe that the proper functioning of the international collective security system in the coming years will require the Council’s efficient use of assistance by the regional organizations in addressing various crises.’

H.E. Amr Moussa, Secretary-General of the Arab League, April 2003.

These two quotes, one by the UN Secretary-General, the other by one of his counterparts from a regional organization, capture the essence of the security challenge facing the world in the early 21st century. One offers a vision of a future security system that is holistic and global in nature, emphasising the concept of legitimacy that can come ‘only from the United Nations’. The other critiques the Security Council for alleged inconsistency in its political judgements, tagging the future vision with a prerequisite of greater consistency and impartiality on the part of the global body. The essential themes implicit – flexibility and pragmatism on the one hand and impartiality and consistency on the other – testify to the nuanced judgement and careful calibration of operations that will be required if what might be called the future ‘regional-global security mechanism’ is to realise its potential.

Dialectical only in their prima facie relationship, the two themes are in fact mutually reconcilable. Only by combining flexibility with impartiality, and pragmatism with consistency, will the endemic uncertainties and occasional tensions between the global body responsible for international peace and security and the regional agencies that are meant to play a supporting role in that endeavour be defused and the global-regional dialectic, in turn, be synthesised.

The aim of this Egmont Paper is to explore the history and the future potential of the ‘regional-global mechanism’ for maintaining international peace and security. It is based on the recognition accorded by the international community over the past decade of the potential for greater involvement by regional agencies in conflict prevention and management in all regions, in co-operation with the United Nations.

The metamorphosis in the nature of regionalism – from its almost exclusively economic and defence dimensions, from the 1940s to the 1980s, towards a comprehensive multi-sectoral movement of the 1990s involving political, cultural, economic and security issues in the broadest contemporary sense – is transforming international organizations as regions develop an integrated skein of mutual interests among member states. But much of this, most particularly in the area of security, has been ad hoc and haphazard. The challenge of the next decade is to replace this improvised, politically-selective, resource-skewed approach to regionalism with a more planned, consistent yet flexible, and resource-balanced style of regional and global governance – most especially on the part of the UN Security Council.

The paper undertakes four tasks:

• It reviews the relationship between regional and global dimensions of peace and security, tracing the constitutional and institutional development of regional agencies;

• It analyses the regional security mechanism, identifying the complexities inherent in the contemporary scene, and introducing a ‘typology of security regionalism’ to understand it better;

• It reflects on the multidimensional nature of regional security – the cultural, political and legal dimensions – and draws conclusions from the above descriptive and analytical parts;

• It concludes with some prescriptive views, and recommendations, on how to construct a ‘regional-global mechanism’ in the future, to answer to the Secretary-General’s vision.

Two fundamental propositions are put forward: that the UN agree upon a set of, perhaps eight, ‘security regions’, and that an ‘associated chapter VIII regional agency’ be identified to represent each one in the Security Council. Such an arrangement would have far-reaching implications for Security Council reform.

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