In 1864, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to Edwin Stanton, his Secretary of War. He observed that “[y]ou cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today”. It was a different time, with different problems and different ways of solving them.
A lot has changed since then, and yet Linco…
Growing up in Europe as a child of the Cold War, the Iron Curtain was a fact of life, and I still vividly remember when the first breaches began to appear in the mid-1980s. The credit for that shift, which made a profound impression, is largely due to Mikhail Gorbachev, who passed away a few weeks a…
This spring, after a year in the grip of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, we looked forward to the summer. We were full of hope and anticipation. Despite our concern for our loved ones and our economies, there was a light at the end of the tunnel thanks to the scientific community, which…
In 1999, in his message for the New Millennium, the late Kofi Annan spoke words that still ring true almost two decades later:
“More than ever before in human history, we share a common destiny. We can master it only if we face it together. And that, my friends, is why we have the United Nations.”
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There have been several occasions this year when weapons of mass destruction have endangered our security, undermined international stability and caused terrible suffering. The year 2018 has made the importance of non-proliferation
abundantly clear. I agree with you, Mr. President, that, as politic…
Every era and every decade has its problems, great and small. The problems we face now seem overwhelming. These days many people worry about the future, which is understandable. The past few years have been marked by terrorist attacks all over the world.
In countries like Myanmar, Syria, the Centra…
One of the previous Secretary-Generals once said, “Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road”. These wise words by Dag Hammarskjöld have never been more fitting than they are today.
Fifteen years ago,…
On 17 July, in a summer already marked by alarming reports from Syria, Iraq and Gaza, our country was confronted with a
stark international reality. The 298 passengers of Flight MH-17 would be alive today if not for the Crimea conflict and the destabilization of eastern Ukraine. Of those victims, 1…
The direct threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters concerns us all. Both our international and our national security are at risk. As a country of origin for such fighters, the Netherlands raised its terrorism level to the second highest level 18 months ago. Our national security is directly affec…
