WE ARE ON THE WRONG PATH
by Robert Muller


How can we manage this wonderfully rich, life-teeming planet in peace, justice and happiness for all?...

There is little doubt that world insecurity and armaments, especially the spread and proliferation of nuclear weapons in the air, in and on the ground, in and on the seas, and with the dreaded possibility of tomorrow in outer space, will stand out as humanity's greatest failure not only in modern times, but in the entire history since the dawn of man.

In front of this gigantic failure, most of humanity is sacred, desperate, hopeless and doubtful about the future and the capacity of human nature itself to survive. Growing numbers of people have ceased to have children to spare them the consciousness of the human curse and gigantic mismanagement of this planet. Millions are demonstrating in the streets. And governments are increasingly helpless, locked in their nemesis and in the forward momentum of what they have unleashed. The military itself confesses that it can no longer plan and control nuclear armaments; it is now armaments which plan and control the military. The sorcerer's apprentice has been let loose in the world...

So the world is desperate again, weary of all disarmament talk, and is looking for the prophet , for the voice in the desert who will help us out of the ordeal. Well, the prophet is right in the midst of us, and he has been present in the UN and its disarmament debates for along time, always fighting for his determined viewpoint an conviction. He is Zenon Rossides, the Ambassador of Cyprus. I strongly believe that his time has come and that his voice will be heard.

What is basically his message so often, so forcefully and so beautifully stated in his speeches and in General Assembly resolutions overwhelmingly adopted, as reproduced below and in earlier volumes? His message is simply this: We are on the wrong path. There will be no disarmament without international security. In a world of insecurity and anarchy, disarmament negotiations are hopeless. Concurrently with the disarmament effort we must make a start with security, and then there will be disarmament. We must go back, correct the original error and follow the way outlined by the Charter...

Security plus disarmament was the core of the thinking of the drafters of the Charter, and it is embodied therein for everyone to see. The UN Military Staff Committee met for a good number of months at Hunter College in New York at the highest military level. The best political brains of the Allies assisted them in their task of planning a proper system of world security. Alas, the cold war, for some disastrous and unexplained reason, was allowed to break out, putting an end to their work and marking the beginning of the arms race. This is the truth of the matter. This is how it went wrong. And still goes on wrong. But the files and the spirit of that time are still there, waiting to be reopened for the benefit of human survival...

Since the League of Nations days, long efforts by eminent jurists and international bodies for a definition met with hardly any conclusive agreement. In the United Nations repeated endeavours in Special Committees and the International Law Commission resulted in failure, to the point of temporarily abandoning the effort. When later it was resumed, Ambassador Rossides, as a member of the new Special Committee, initiated a systematic and continuous consideration of the subject over a number of years, until in 1973 a compromise proposal by him, as Chairman of the Committee, was finally accepted and unanimously adopted by the General Assembly in 1974. The definition of Aggression was a milestone in the development of the United Nations.

On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the United Nations, not having attained the goals of the primary purpose of the Organization or reached the summit of our dreams and hopes, we must beg of governments and world leaders to look back and see where we took the wrong path on our climb, leaving us hanging midway up with an insurmountable cliff in front of us, to the risk of the very survival of humankind. Let us go back and start the right way, the way indicated by the Charter.

On the last day of his life, Franklin Roosevelt, the gigantic dreamer of the United Nations to whom the world owes so much, was writing these sentences for a speech he never delivered to the San Francisco Conference:

"The work, my friends, is peace; more than an end of this war -- an end to the beginning of all wars; ... as we go forward toward the greatest contribution that any generation of human beings can make in this world -- the contribution that any generation of human beings can make in this world -- the contribution of lasting peace -- I ask you to keep up your faith. The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with a strong and active faith."

May the leaders of the world remember these wise words of a great man who know the remedy to world chaos and seeds of human hope. And may the delegates to the Security Council be inspired by the image of a soldier painted by the artist as a symbol on the mural in the Council's Chamber: a soldier depositing his arms, taking off his helmet and wanting to walk straight into the Security Council. Yes, that artist, like Zenon Rossides, like Franklin Roosevelt, had the right view and know the right path: the road to disarmament goes through security. Coupled with frequent meetings between Heads of State, again as exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt and the great allied leaders during World War II, this is the key, the sole key to a viable future.


Robert G. Muller was born in Belgium. During the war he was a member of the French underground movement and received his Doctorate in Law and Economics from the University of Strasbourg. From 1948 he served in numerous capacities in the United Nations until his retirement after 33 years from the post of Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations. Afterwards, he was Chancellor of the University of Peace in Costa Rica.

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