Упрощенная HTML-версия
Author : Gennady Gatilov
Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation
First of all, these dates - the Victory in World War
II and the establishment of the UN - are really
interconnected. Essentially, this organization was
built, as they say, on the ruins of World War II.
So it is quite logical that in celebrating the end of
World War II, we throw a kind of a bridge to the
establishment of the UN.
To make a brief historical digression, the first ses-
sion of the UN General Assembly took place in
London in February 1946, which made the deci-
sion to establish the UN headquarters in New York. At that time, the Soviet Union sup-
ported that choice. We believe that it was the only way of binding the U.S. to the UN.
The entire postwar period shows that there was no alternative to this organization. It is a
central multilateral forum that has a unique mandate and universally recognized legitimacy.
During the 70 years of its existence, the UN has passed through important stages of evo-
lution: decolonization, the Cold War confrontation, and the change in the balance of forces
following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It is also important to mention the current
acute stage in international relations that we are going through. This is a serious test for
the UN, caused by numerous issues in international relations as a whole. We are currently
working on this.
It would evidently be an exaggeration to say that the majority of countries in the world
support U.S. policy. After all, many countries have their own interests and their own agenda
and it does not necessarily coincide with the approaches and views that our American part-
ners promote in the organization. A case in point is the Middle East peace process, when
the U.S. is often on its own during UN General Assembly and Security Council voting. In
other words, the majority does not share its approaches and assessments of the situation
in the Middle East peace process. Overall, we believe in the consolidation of the efforts
of states and in searching for points of contact, as this is the only way of finding optimal
and effective solutions to the problems that we are encountering today, including the non-
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, drug trafficking, organized crime, man-
made disasters, and so on. In short, there are a lot of problems, and there is plenty of
Электронное приложение к журналу «
Международная жизнь
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International Affairs: Summary№3, 2015
The UN as a Mirror of the Turbulent World