That one could take a while, Mr. Chair, but I'll give it a quick stab.
Mr. Van Loan points out some “failures”. If we take Iraq and Yugoslavia, they're failures on the part of the UN Security Council to agree on a course of action, and that has had serious consequences, I think. If you step back and take a look at the broader picture, since the creation of the United Nations 60 years ago, you've had a huge expansion of the number of states. There are now 191 members, I think, of the UN, so 140 new states have been created, but the number of state-to-state conflicts has gone way down.
In the last 15 years, the University of British Columbia--and I can't remember which department--did a study, not of state-to-state conflicts, but of armed conflicts, including civil wars and other sorts of wars, and the numbers have gone way down. I think it's partly because the United Nations has been more active recently. It has found ways to head off interstate conflicts and has been addressing the failed and failing states. So there have been some dramatic examples, and Iraq is the one that has shaken the whole United Nations framework. I think we have to be honest about that.
That isn't to say that the United Nations isn't still central in fulfilling its mandate given it by the international community--its first mandate, which is on international peace and security. I don't think that precludes.... Even in the United Nations charter, it foresees sometimes acting with, through, or in concert with regional organizations, when they make more sense. I think the case of Sudan is a good one, where the first recourse, the African Union, makes eminent good sense.
I would be a little more inclined to think that the first resort should be the universal body to which Canada subscribes, the United Nations, and if, for whatever reason, that doesn't work, there may be situations that cry out for other sorts of action.