World affairs are too important to be decided by the UN

21 Apr 2004

Final vote: 129 For,174 Against

The debate took place at: Royal Geographical Society, Ondaatje Theatre.

Speaker bios correct on date of event.

Speakers for the motion:

Devon Cross: President of the Donors Forum on International Affairs, representing a consortium of foundations active in foreign policy and national security grant making. She was Executive Director of the Gilder Foundation in New York City, and prior to that served as President of the Donner Canadian Foundation in Toronto, both of which were private foundations involved in public policy issues. From 1984-1993, Mrs Cross was Director of the Smith Richardson Foundation in New York, where she supervised a grant portfolio of $12 million per annum in domestic and foreign policy research. Mrs Cross has an extensive background in international relations, as well as nearly 15 years in the foundation world. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and John Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, and worked for the International Security Studies Program at the Smithsonian Institute, Foreign Policy Magazine, and the Washington Quarterly, a publication of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Mrs Cross serves on the Defence Policy Board, and Executive Committee of the Aron-Wohlstetter European-American Workshop, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Additional boards include the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, the Peter Munk Charitable Foundation, the Centre for Security Policy and she also advises several individual donors. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, Jay Cross, President of the New York Jets, and their daughters, Avery and Hadley.

John O'Sullivan: Educated at London University and he stood for Parliament as a Conservative in the 1970 General Election for Gateshead West. He is Editor of the National Interest and a Distinguished Fellow in International Relations at the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom. He is also Editor-at-Large at National Review magazine where he served as Editor-in-Chief for 9 years. He is the former Editor in Chief of United Press International and he was an Editorial Consultant to Hollinger International Inc. and a leading member of the team that created the National Post. Previous posts include Special Adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Associate Editor of the London Times, Assistant Editor of the London Daily Telegraph, and Editor of Policy Review. He is the Founder and Co-Chairman of the New Atlantic Initiative, an international bipartisan effort dedicated to reinvigorating and expanding the Atlantic Community of democracies. Mr. O'Sullivan has published articles in numerous magazines, newspapers and journals. He is on the Advisory Council of the Social Affairs Unit London, and the Honorary Board of the Civic Institute in Prague. He was made a Commander of the British Empire (C.B.E.) in the 1991 New Year's Honors List. He lectures on British and American politics.

Dimitri K. Simes: President of The Nixon Center, a non-partisan Washington public policy institution founded by President Richard Nixon shortly before his death in 1994. Simes is also Publisher of the influential foreign affairs magazine, The National Interest and Director of the American Commission on Russia Policy. Simes was selected to lead the Center by President Nixon, to whom he served as an informal foreign policy advisor and with whom he travelled four times to Russia and other former Soviet states as well as Western and Central Europe. Before becoming President of The Nixon Center, Simes served as Chairman of the Center for Russian and Eurasian Programs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he was also a Senior Associate. Earlier, he was the Director of the Soviet and East European Research Program and a Research Professor of Soviet Studies at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the John Hopkins University. Prior to his work at SAIS, Simes was a Senior Research Fellow and subsequently the Director of Soviet Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In addition to teaching at SAIS, Simes taught at the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia University. He has also served as a consultant to the National intelligence Council at the CIA. Prior to emigrating from the Soviet Union in 1973, Simes graduated from the School of History of Moscow State University. From 1967 to 1972, he was a Research Assistant and later a Research Associate at the Institute of World Economy and International Affairs in Moscow, an influential foreign policy think tank in the Soviet Union at that time. Mr Simes frequently comments on US-Russian relations and American foreign policy in the national media. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, Foreign Affairs, National Interest, Foreign Policy and other prominent publications. Mr Simes has also served as a consultant to CBS and NBS. He has authored and co-authored several books including "Detente and Conflict: Soviet Foreign Policy 1972-1977" and "Soviet Succession: Leadership in Transition". His most recent book, "After the Collapse: Russia Seeks its place as a great power", was released by Simon & Schuster in March 1999.

Speakers against the motion:

Professor Oliver Ramsbotham: Professor of Conflict Resolution at the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford. The Department is the largest centre for the study of conflict in the world, with a teaching and research staff of 50 and 350 students from more than 60 countries, more than half of them post-graduate. Oliver Ramsbotham was Head of Department until recently. He has also been Co-Director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution in the Department, which has built a world-wide reputation as a leading centre of expertise. With two colleagues he has written the best known book on the field (now being rewritten for a second edition) and has published influential books on the nuclear weapons issue, the European defence debate, humanitarian intervention, Islamic and Christian relations, and United Nations Peacekeeping. He has been instrumental in helping set up conflict resolution centres in a number of countries, particularly in Africa and Asia, has been asked to advise on a number of new courses including that at the United Nations University of Peace (Costa Rica). He has co-written the main conflict resolution training programme for UN peacekeepers at the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). He believes that it is essential that in the twenty-first century the most important world political issues should be managed through the only truly global political organisation - the UN.

Professor Sir Adam Roberts: Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford University, and a Fellow of Balliol College. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and a Member of the Council, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London. His books include Nations in Arms: The Theory and Practice of Territorial Defence, 2nd edn., Macmillan, 1986; (ed. with Benedict Kingsbury), United Nations, Divided World: The UN's Roles in International Relations, 2nd edn., Oxford University Press, 1993; and (ed. with Richard Guelff), Documents on the Laws of War, 3rd edn., Oxford University Press, 2000.

Sir Marrack Goulding: Educated at St. Paul's School, London, and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he received First Class Honours in Literae Humaniores (Greek and Latin Language and Literature, Ancient History, Greek and Modern Philosophy). He worked the British Diplomatic Service between 1959 and 1985. He served in the Foreign Office from 1964 - 1968 and 1972-75. From 1975 to 1977, he served with the Central Policy Review Staff at the Cabinet Office, London, working mainly on British overseas representation, international energy questions and housing policy. He has held overseas posts in the Middle East, North Africa, Portugal, New York (UK Mission to UN) and Angola (Ambassador). He was UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping from 1986-93 and Political Affairs (1993-97). He was elected Warden of St Antony's College, Oxford in 1996 and took up his position in October 1997. He was knighted (KCMG) in June 1997.

Chair: Helena Kennedy QC Labour peer and former chair of the Power inquiry which was set up in 2004 to explore how political participation could be increased in Britain.

World affairs are too important to be decided by the UN

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