Cabinet minister gives Erickson lecture

Lord Malloch-Brown addresses the audience in Edinburgh

Image: Neil Bennet

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A cabinet minister for Africa, Asia and the UN gave this year's John Erickson lecture at the University of Edinburgh last week.

Lord Malloch-Brown spoke on "multilateralism, humanitarianism and interventionism" to an audience of students, academics and members of the public.

The lecture is held annually to commemorate John Erickson, historian and former Professor Emeritus and Honorary Fellow in Defence Studies at the University of Edinburgh, who died in 2002. The event, which took place in the prestigious Playfair Library in the Old College, was jointly sponsored by the Politics and International Relations department and the Europa Institute at the university.

Lord Malloch-Brown told the assembled audience that “the bilateral system of foreign policy… is going before our eyes.”

He discussed some of the difficulties caused by globalisation, and their impact on national governments and nation-states.

“Capital is highly mobile… [and this] puts huge constraints on what governments can do, even on something as important as taxation,” he told listeners.

In response to global problems such as terrorism and climate change, Lord Malloch-Brown argued that multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank should be reformed and strengthened. He suggested that the World Bank should take responsibility for ensuring sustainable development in the southern hemisphere.

A former Deputy Secretary-General of the UN, Malloch-Brown spoke of his professional experience with the UN, as well as the organisation’s history and the current pressures for reform, particularly of the Security Council. He said however that “military intervention must be seen as the last resort.”

As an alternative he suggested the use of international banking and finance to craft specific sanctions “that target the rich and the guilty rather than the poor and the vulnerable, as country-wide sanctions can often do.”

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