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Author : A. Orlov
Director, Institute for International Studies, Moscow State Institute (University) of International Rela-
tions, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation
THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY of the United Na-
tions Organization is an international event of signal
importance. Set up as a fundamental element of the
international system, the UN remains its corner-
stone with no alternatives no matter what its numer-
ous critics are saying in chorus.
Today, the UN looks like an eternal structure, the
history of which goes back into hoary antiquity. In
fact, its history goes notfurther than World War II
and the efforts of the anti-Hitler coalition to identify
and formulate the basic principles of the future in-
ternational structure.
The great role of President Roosevelt in setting up the UN is generally recognized. "No single
person was more instrumental in the founding of the United Nations than Franklin Delano
Roosevelt," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a ceremony at the dedication of a public
space in honor of the U.S. leader - the Four Freedoms Park - on Roosevelt Island in New York's
East River within sight of the UN Headquarters complex on the island of Manhattan. "He had
the vision. He helped develop the plans. He even gave us our name."
The UN survived many hard durability tests; at some points, it looked as if it was sliding into a
deep crisis or even had come dangerously close to disintegration. Each time, common sense tri-
umphed and the ship remained afloat.
Today, the UN has found itself, once more, in the epicenter of international confrontation, not
yet global but in certain respects moving in this direction. Very much like during the Cold War
years, the great powers cannot agree not only on common approaches to certain regional crises;
they disagree on several fundamental principles of world order.
As could be expected, the West blames Russia for this man-made collapse of its own doing and
its own failures and blunders. The ingenuity of Western propaganda cannot but amaze. The
West and the Western media do not hesitate to put everything upside down to make chaos look
as a more or less well-organized construction. We in Russia regret that the enlightened Western
society takes these lies at face value and that this will go on for an indefinitely long time. Foreign
Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov has deemed it necessary to point out that everything that is
going on in the world indicates that nopower, no matter how strong its economy and how great
its military might, can cope with the contemporary security threats and challenges singlehandedly.
This means that today and in future the system of international relations should rely on the col-
lective mechanisms of cooperation, the most efficient of them being the United Nations Or-
ganization set up, as President Putin has pointed out, to protect the world against destructive
global conflicts. The UN does not operate in a vacuum: it is a mirror of the contemporary world
and of its positive and especially negative sides, the number of which increases with every passing
year.
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