4 - Assessing the High-Level Panel Report: rethinking the causes and consequences of threats to collective security

Summary

Introduction

“First do no harm” is a creed now embraced well outside the medical profession. It is certainly an apt motto to adhere to when thinking about how to confront the complex and multifariously intertwined interests and institutions that constitute our contemporary international system. Harm is not simply the product of forces external to us, but can arise as readily from our own actions; specifically, as much from the misdiagnosis of a situation as from providing a wrong prescription, and the combination of both is likely to be lethal. The value in the proper diagnosis of a condition lies not only in the fact that it is more likely to yield the appropriate prescription, but just as crucially in that it affords an opportunity for the proper balancing of the cost of continued illness against the cost of the side effects that invariably inhere in the administering of any prescribed medication.

In reflecting on the Report of the High-Level Panel that forms the anchor for the collection of essays in this volume, one should pay attention to at least three sets of issues: (1) the diagnosis of the ailment; (2) the prescribed cures; and (3) the fit of diagnosis and prescription. The third is particularly important because of the possibility that even the most well-intentioned of prescriptions may themselves generate side effects that may constitute threats to the international order. My inquiry into the Report of the High-Level Panel therefore proceeds along the following lines.