It was in a high school gymnasium in Missouri that Winston Churchill first warned of an “iron curtain” descending across Europe. If peace were to prevail, he said, the Western alliance must be strong and the newly-founded United Nations must be “a force for action and not merely a frothing of words.”
Sitting in a well-appointed hotel ballroom in Halifax last weekend, chess grandmaster and Russian dissident Garry Kasparov quoted Churchill’s prescient warning. Russia has prosecuted a nearly three-year-long war against its neighbour, he said, and the U.N. has only frothed words. “So,” Kasparov said. “Forget the United Nations.”
It was then that Canada’s foreign minister, Mélanie Joly, interrupted. “We must never forget the United Nations,” she said. I cringed. “We need the United Nations,” Joly insisted.
