Address of the President of the Czech Republic at the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly
Mister President, ladies and gentlemen,
If you have many topics in your short speech, you have none; and if you have many priorities in your speech, you have also none. So let me concentrate on one topic and one priority only - the fight against the international terrorism.
You may ask why just the president of a small Central European country speaks about terrorism. There are two reasons – at first, the terrorism is an outrage of human civilization and at the same time the main danger for human civilization. And the second reason, as you know just now practically all European countries face a big migration wave which was provoked as a consequence of terroristic actions in the Middle East and in Africa.
It is wonderful to criticize terrorism, it is wonderful to organize demonstrations and manifestations against terrorism, and it is nice to prepare the declaration protesting against terrorism. Al-Baghdadi reading those declarations will be careful, I am sure.
Anyway, there are three illusions concerning the terrorism. The first one is an illusion that terrorism will vanish, that it is something like historical fluctuation and without human endeavor or using only local means we are able to eliminate or reduce terroristic actions. Contrary-wise, the terroristic movement is growing like cancer, there is diffusion of terrorism, there is a growing number of so-called failed states, a growing number of assassinations, cruelties, murders, annihilation of culture like in the case of the Palmira monuments and so on and so on. And we cannot deny this growing process.
The illusion number two. We reduce the terroristic organization to a so-called Islamic State only, but there are many other terroristic organizations, for instance al-Qaeda, Taliban, al-Nusra, Boko Haram and others, and two outstanding politicians from the Arab world told me that the cover organization is the Muslim Brotherhood. If so, there is a terroristic network and this network cannot be reduced to the Islamic State only.
The third illusion is based on the standard form of war against terrorism. You know that nearly all generals prepared the previous war. And what I propose as a fight against terrorism are no tanks, no infantry, no artillery. We need to seek for new forms of the fight and because unilateral actions are heavily criticized, and more than that they were completely unsuccessful like in the case of Iraq, I do not recommend any massive occupation of any territory. What I recommend is a coordinated action under the umbrella of the Security Council of the United Nations.
Well, all the five permanent members of the Security Council have different interests but one common enemy, and nothing unites more than just the common enemy – the terrorism. Just here in New York we remember the 11th September 2001, in Russia we remember Beslan or Volgograd, and in China we remember Xinjiang, in Europe we remember Madrid, London, Paris, Copenhagen. In India we remember Bombay, and so on.
So, there is one good precedent and it is a unanimously accepted resolution of the Security Council concerning the pirates in Somalia, including the military action against the pirates. Do you really think that the pirates are more dangerous than the terrorists? So in the Charter of the United Nations there are many, many articles concerning the possibility of a military action and some of them were never activated. They are called “the sleeping structures”. What we need is to activate them. And what we need are small military units equipped with drones, with helicopters, with cooperation of secret services, with commandos, if you wish, rangers; the small blue helmets of some sort which would eliminate the leaders of the terroristic organizations, the nerve centers of those organizations and not the occupation of the territory.
So, I firmly hope that some of the permanent members might propose such a resolution, and if not, as a historical optimist, I may add as a way of conclusion that any idea comes through three phases.
In the first phase it is understood as a full nonsense, in the second phase it is disputable, and in the third phase it is evident like the Earth moving around the Sun. So I’ll come next year, and deep in my heart I do believe my proposal will be disputable. And I’ll come in 2017 and I am sure that this proposal will be evident.
Thank you for your attention.