Writing in 1968 on the “relevance of international law,” Richard Falk described his efforts as part of the larger endeavor of “liberating the discipline of international law from a sense of its own futility.” In 1992 that task appears to have been accomplished. International legal rules, procedures and organizations are more visible and arguably more effective than at any time since 1945. If the United Nations cannot accomplish everything, it once again represents a significant repository of hopes for a better world. And even as its current failures are tabulated, from Yugoslavia to the early weeks and then months of the Somali famine, the almost-universal response is to find ways to strengthen it. The resurgence of rules and procedures in the service of an organized international order is the legacy of all wars, hot or cold.

On January 15, 1993, President George Bush transmitted to the Senate for advice and consent to ratification the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (the START II Treaty), signed at Moscow on January 3, 1993. In his letter of transmittal, President Bush discussed the importance of the Treaty, in major part as follows:

At the forty-seventh session of the General Assembly, the Sixth Committee1reviewed the annual reports of the International Law Commission (ILC), the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), the Special Committee on the Charter of the United Nations and on the Strengthening of the Role of the Organization (Charter Committee), and the Committee on Relations with the Host Country. The Sixth Committee also considered proposals for new legal instruments relating to some aspects of sovereign immunity, consular functions, the diplomatic courier and bag, and environmental protection in wartime; a proposal to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on questions relating to extraterritorial jurisdiction; and aspects of such other topics as national liberation movements, humanitarian law, protection of diplomats, and the United Nations Decade of International Law.

On October 26 and 27, 1992, a meeting was held of the heads of the offices responsible for international legal services of the foreign ministries of the member states of the United Nations—the Legal Advisers. The meeting—the third of its kind—was organized at the invitation of the Legal Advisers of Canada, India, Mexico, Poland and Sweden, and with the assistance of the Legal Counsel of the United Nations, Under-Secretary-General Carl-August Fleischhauer. Thirty Legal Advisers and sixteen of their deputies attended, together with nearly fifty other interested participants. All five colleagues representing the permanent members of the Security Council were present.

The Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) will hold its next annual meeting in May 1993, and, among other matters, will consider the report of a group of government experts (the report or Nairobi report) on the review, and continuation for another decade, of its Montevideo Programme of environmental law. This program was adopted by the Governing Council of UNEP in 1982 and has been instrumental in the development of domestic and international environmental law during the last decade.