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Shared responsibility: The United Nations in the age of globalization, by Carsten Staur

Carsten Staur Shared responsibility: The United Nations in the age of globalization Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2013. 336 pp., $100.00 (cloth) ISBN 9780773542945Does the United Nations (UN) have the strength and drive necessary to make the decisions and implement the solutions to "problems that do not respect national boundaries" (260)? This is the question Carsten Staur, Denmark's permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, tries to answer in Shared Responsibility. The diplomat paints a comprehensive picture of our world and the threats weighing on it-for example, global warming, terrorism, and armed conflicts. He asks whether the UN is still relevant to these existential challenges in the twenty-first century. His answer is subtle.Through well-documented, informed, and supported argumentation, Staur explains why the UN system remains the best platform for dealing with four global mega-trends: (1) a fundamental change in the global power structure, with some emerging economies developing into new key players; (2) an increasingly pronounced struggle between different global value systems; (3) new non-state actors wanting a greater say in decision-making processes; and (4) climate change mitigation strategies leading to dramatic changes in the global economy. Concerning the last point, he offers some hope for the future, reminding the reader of the success of the 1987 Montreal Protocol on the use of ozone-depleting products. Through international goal-setting and a framework approach, Staur argues, "the depletion of the ozone layer has now been stopped, and... the ozone layer will most probably be fully restored by about 2050" (237). The Montreal Protocol thus constitutes "a model solution to a global environmental issue that has increasingly been seen as applicable in other fields, including climate change" (237).In the chapter about sustainable development, as in the eleven others, Staur takes time to provide the history of each of the four challenges. He explains the structure and evolution of the UN system going as far back as the League of Nations. In the chapter dedicated to peacekeeping, he returns to the UN's first operation in Palestine (the UN Truce Supervision Organization, established in 1948). One appreciates this historical depth as well as the fluidity and simplicity of Staur's writing, which make it possible for non-specialists to learn a great deal about the United Nations. The author does an excellent job, for instance, of explaining why it is so difficult to reform the Security Council and why condemning genocide and war crimes is not as simple as we might expect.Valuable as it is to non-specialists, Shared Responsibility is less useful to experts. There is nothing really new in this study for those who know and study the UN system. For this reason, it is regrettable that Staur does not elaborate on "the informal rules of play in the United Nations" (39). As an insider with many years' experience working within the UN system, the diplomat is ideally situated to reflect on the nature, prevalence, and resonance of these "unwritten rules" (51), which remain inaccessible to outside researchers. Indeed, Staur frequently refers to these rules without making them explicit. Where do they come from? Who applies them? What happens if a member state or a UN official does not follow them? Have they changed over time?If these questions remain underdeveloped, so too does the question of recruitment and staffing within the UN system. …