Reporting Iran's dossier to the UN security council will be unconstructive and the end of diplomacy.
Human rights and international criminal law both illustrate the contradictory potential of international law. On one level, the imposition of human rights norms is a restraint on interventionary diplomacy, especially if coupled with respect for the legal norm of self-determination. But on another level, the protection of human rights creates a pretext for intervention as given approval by the UN Security Council in the form of the R2P (responsibility to protect) norm, as used in the 2011 Libyan intervention. The same applies with international criminal accountability.
From now on, nothing is impossible for Israel, which is a normal country like any other. We won't wait another half a century to sit on the Security Council.
Just as the Security Council was largely irrelevant to the great struggle of the last half of the twentieth century - freedom against Communism - so too it is largely on the sidelines in our contemporary struggles against international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
They act as they please: here and there, they use force against sovereign states, building coalitions based on the principle 'If you are not with us, you are against us.' To make this aggression look legitimate, they force the necessary resolutions from international organizations, and if for some reason this does not work, they simply ignore the UN Security Council and the UN overall.
I think we've already voted at the U.N., in the Security Council, to get rid of nuclear weapons. Let's get rid of them. Let's get rid of ours and then Iran will stop, I believe. And so everybody else will, because if everybody doesn't have them, then we're safe, at least safe from a nuclear attack.
We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today's complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not.
The United Nations' founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America's consent, the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.
Now we characterise Russian-Chinese relations as a strategic partnership, even a special strategic partnership. We have never had such a level of trust with China before. China is our major trade and economic partner among foreign states. We implement joint multi-billion projects. We cooperate not only within the UN Security Council, which is logical, as both China and Russia are permanent members of the UN Security Council, but also within such regional organisations as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, BRICS, etc.
You've got to deploy serious political assets around a plan [in Darfur]. And the George W.] Bush administration has never had a plan. Ever. The Europeans don't want to do anything, saying, "The Americans are in charge of that." And in fact the Americans are in charge of naming it and bringing these resolutions every few weeks to the Security Council.
Somewhat by historical happenstance the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China - also were the original five countries to have nuclear weapons.
No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.
I have often said that we have two UNs; the UN that is a Secretariat, that implements the mandates handed over to it by the General Assembly and the Security Council, and the UN that is the member states who sit in the Council, take the decisions, hand over the mandates, or take decisions in the General Assembly.
If the nuclear dossier is referred to the U. N. Security Council, Iran will have to resume uranium enrichment.
But it became clear as time went on that in Mr. Bush's mind the New World Order was founded on a convergence of goals and interests between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, so strong and permanent that they would work as a team through the U.N. Security Council.
He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do. He lies and cheats; he snubs the mandate and authority of international weapons inspectors; and he games the system to keep buying time against enforcement of the just and legitimate demands of the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States and our allies. Those are simply the facts.
The United States of America is a threat to world peace. Because what [America] is saying is that if you are afraid of a veto in the Security Council, you can go outside and take action and violate the sovereignty of other countries. That is the message they are sending to the world. That must be condemned in the strongest terms.
The U.S. - the idea that the U.S. has introduced and imposed principles of international law, that's hardly even a joke. The United States has even gone so far as to veto Security Council resolutions calling on all states to observe international law. That was in the 1980s under Reagan.
Our President feels, and apparently many in the United Nations Security Council feel, that it is necessary to disarm Iraq before Iraq can again use weapons of mass destruction on her neighbors or she makes some liaison with terrorists who will use these weapons either against Iraq's neighbors or ourselves.
Third, we will continue to draw on our substantial counterterrorism capabilities to prevent ISIL attacks. Working with our partners, we will redouble our efforts to cut off its funding; improve our intelligence; strengthen our defenses; counter its warped ideology; and stem the flow of foreign fighters into - and out of - the Middle East. And in two weeks, I will chair a meeting of the UN Security Council to further mobilize the international community around this effort.
Disarming Iraq is legal under a series of U.N. resolutions. Iraq is in flagrant violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
But I would say if the Security Council is only relevant if it agrees with the United States, then we have come a long way in a direction that I do not like very much.
Iraq has a new opportunity to comply with all these relevant resolutions of the Security Council.
There's a sense that we've obtained from various quarters in the Security Council that the notion of an international tribunal is not really practical. Certainly Indonesia is not convinced, and we get a sense that the rest of the Security Council will need to be convinced about the recommendations.
What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: