This June, San Francisco will play host to a worldwide birthday party. It was here, just 60 years ago, that the United Nations was founded.

As a prequel to the celebration, The United Nations Association of San Francisco and the Masters of International Relations of San Francisco State have been co-sponsoring a series focusing on reforming the U.N. The final program, “Coping With Terrorism,” will be presented May 19, in Room 362 of the HSS building.

Gail Karpinski-Cornell, advocacy chair for the U.N. association said it is “an advocacy group that attempts to educate and encourage Americans to support the vital work of the U.N.”

According to their constitution, the SF State group is an organization open to all graduate students in the international relations program. Their purpose is to provide guidance and support to these students while enrolled at SF State, as well as establishing a support network for members after graduation.

Last night’s program featured two guests, Paul Lutomski, Ph.D., a professor in Stanford University’s international relations department and Sophie Clavier, Ph.D., an assistant professor of international relations at SF State. The question was, “Should the U.N. allow member states to exercise the preemptive strike option?”

Karpinski-Cornell began the discussion by quoting a section of a U.N. report from the High-level Panel on Threats that addressed possible U.N. reforms and was released in December 2004.

“The framers of the Charter of the United Nations recognize that force may be necessary for the prevention and removal of threats to peace and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace," the report states. "Military force, legally and properly applied is a vital component of any workable system of collective security, whether defined in the traditional narrower sense or more broadly, as we would prefer. But few contemporary policy issues cause more difficulty or involve higher stakes than the principles concerning the use of military force.”

Clavier told the audience of about 35 that she believed the question about preemptive strike needed some rephrasing within the current international political context.

“This question does not emerge by accident or by sheer intellectual curiosity," Clavier said. "I think this question is a direct result of the Bush Administration’s policy since Sept. 11 and consequently, I think what we are addressing first is whether or not the Bush practice of the preemptive strike on Iraq was legal under international law, and whether or not the Bush doctrine of preemptive strike and the broader war on terror will reshape what has long been established by the U.N. Charter."

Clavier said the ultimate question was whether the U.N. Security Council has the ability to stop unilateral preemptive action.

She said the administration has tried to legitimize the use of force in its war on terror by giving it the same legality as the war in Afghanistan. In the case of Afghanistan, the United States invoked the right of self-defense, which was triggered by the Sept. 11 attacks.

Clavier said there is a substantial difference between the use of self-defense in matters of attack versus the use of force as a preemptive action and suggested that the administration’s war on terror doesn’t meet the self-defense criteria.

“Self-defense is circumscribed by time and space and is more or less instantaneous,” said Clavier. “In my opinion, the war on terror completely eradicates the time and spatial limits placed on the exercise self-defense.”

“Terror is an elusive concept ... a constant threat,” said Clavier.

She said using the war on terror is simply a way to legitimize the use of force at any time regardless of the time of attack; past, imminent or potential and for an indefinite time period.

Lutomski concurred with Clavier on most of the issues she raised, but noted that the real question was not one whether preemptive use of force is right or wrong.

“Rather, it is the use of unilateral preemption and the answer is absolutely no," he said. "No unilateral right of preemption.”

He said this was not only his opinion, but also that of the U.N. report, which gave great emphasis to this point.

The last program of the series, "Coping With Terrorism," will be presented on May 19.

For more information about Masters of International Relations of San Francisco State, visit the Web site at http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~mir/leftIndex.html

Information about the United Nations Association is available at www.una-sf.org