Saturdays 11:00-11:30
(when Parliament is in recess)
A look at politics outside the bubble.
Programme details
13 September 2008
Andrew Rawnsley and guests discuss whether organisations like NATO and UN are continuing to make the world a safer place.
The United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) are both products of the balance of global power as it was at the end of the World War Two.
Since then, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the so-called “war on terror” that followed the attacks of 9/11 have transformed the international security situation.
Are these organisations, conceived sixty years ago, contributing to global security – or are they, at worst, fuelling instability as some have suggested was the case in the recent conflict in Georgia?
In Beyond Westminster, Andrew Rawnsley seeks the views of two former Ambassadors to the UN: the outspoken U.S. ‘neo-con’ John Bolton and the UK’s David Hannay.
In discussion he is joined by the author Simon Jenkins, Dr Paul Cornish, head of the International Security Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs and Margot Light, Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics.
Guests
Lord Hannay
Lord Hannay was Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations from 1990 to 1995. Since then he has continued to be involved in UN diplomacy, first as Britain’s Special Envoy to Cyprus, then later as a member of Kofi Annan’s high-level panel on threats, challenges and change. He is now Director of the United Nations Association of the UK. His new book New World Disorder: The UN after the Cold War looks at how the UN has changed since the collapse of communism, and argues it must change again to meet the challenges of international security in the coming century.
John Bolton was United States ambassador to the UN from 2005 to 2006. His reputation as a critic of the UN made him a controversial choice and his appointment was never confirmed by the Senate. He famously once said that if the UN building lost ten stories, it would make no difference. But he insists he is a supporter of multilateral diplomacy. Before becoming ambassador to the UN he was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security at the State Department, where he developed an international initiative to stop weapons proliferation involving 75 countries. Last year he published his memoirs, Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations.
Simon Jenkins is a journalist, author and broadcaster. He has been editor of The Times and the London Evening Standard, political editor of the Economist, and editor of The Sunday Times’ celebrated Insight pages. A former ‘journalist of the year’ (1988) and ‘columnist of the year’ (1993), he was awarded a knighthood in 2004 for his services to journalism. He is now a columnist for The Guardian, where he has been critical of both the UN and NATO’s performance promoting international security.
Margot Light is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics. She has written extensively on Russian foreign policy and Russia's relationship with the West. Her most recent book Putin's Russia and the Enlarged Europe (co-authored with Roy Allison and Stephen White) looks at Russia’s ambivalent relationship with Europe and NATO, and reveals how Russia’s fear of exclusion from international institutions combines with a belief it should not be bound by the rules of membership.
Paul Cornish is Head of the International Security Programme and Carrington Chair in International Security at the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House. As a former officer in the Royal Tank Regiment and arms control analyst at the Foreign Office, he has both practical and academic experience in foreign affairs. His educational and professional background includes work at the University of St Andrews, the London School of Economics, the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and the University of Cambridge. His research interests include European security institutions, arms control and the legal and ethical dimensions of the use of armed force.
