In Conversation with David Chikvaidze

By H.D. Wright

David Chikvaidze is former Chef-de-Cabinet to five Directors-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG), and the first Georgian to serve in the United Nations Secretariat. As senior political adviser to the Director-General and then Chef-de-Cabinet, he provided early warning radar and conducted back-channel diplomacy on behalf of the UNOG. He is vice president of the Swiss Forum for International Affairs, associate fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy and associate director at Strategia Worldwide. 

Henry Davidkhanian Wright: In the wake of the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution, American President Woodrow Wilson proposed a League of Nations, “for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.” Despite his promise of self-determination, Wilson allowed the Allies to divide the Middle East into mandates in the founding Covenant of the League. Is President Wilson a false messiah and, by extension, is the Covenant a selectively fulfilled promise? 

David Chikvaidze: There was no inference of “promising self-determination.” The League concerned the nations that existed at the time, the colonial system that nobody anticipated would fall apart. The British empire was alive and well. The German pretensions to getting a piece of empire were beaten back. President Wilson was an idealist, but he was also president of a major country, and heads of state usually act in the interests of their own country. In that sense, I don’t think Wilson’s fourteenth point was a cry for decolonization or self-determination. It was to stop the contemporary world from going through another major cataclysm. 

HDW: In 1922, the Blackshirts swarmed the streets of Rome and forced Victor Emmanuel III to appoint Benito Mussolini Prime Minister, who subsequently invaded Abyssinia. Anxious to appease Mussolini, British Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare and French Prime Minister Pierre Laval held secret discussions in which they agreed to concede two thirds of Abyssinia to Mussolini, despite the appeals of Emperor Selassie of Ethiopia to the League in Geneva. Why did the League, formed to end secret agreements and constrain European militarism, struggle to fulfill its founding promise? 

DC: I would ask, how did the Japanese invasion of China happen? How did Germany become the military giant that it was before it started World War Two? For that matter, why were the communities of the South Caucasus never allowed to join the League? Japan and Germany left the League. Russia was kicked out of the League. And the United States never joined. The two main actors in the League were the United Kingdom and France, and they pursued their own interests. 

HDW: Is internal reform necessary to ensure that the United Nations evolves to meet the aspirations of a more peaceful modernity? 

DC: As much as I agree that international organizations must engage in ongoing reforms, the manner in which UNESCO, for example, or any other other UN agency, conducts its business, is not the main problem. You don’t see the world media saying, “Ugh, this terrible UNESCO is not effectively identifying educational needs.” What you do hear all the time, however, is that the UN is unable to stop the killing in Syria. Similarly, why can’t the UN stop the war in Ukraine? And why doesn’t the UN do something about Gaza? Does this go back to the UNESCOs of this world? No. The buck always winds up on that horseshoe-shaped table of the Security Council. That is where the blockage is. 

HDW: What, in your estimation, is the immediate solution? 

DC: The solution is more diplomacy. The biggest obstacle to engaging in diplomatic negotiations is the veto power. The P5 possess this power because they won the Second World War. The veto rights are like tonsils. They possess a function when the child is born, but after a while the tonsils can become a problem, and they need to be taken out. The elimination of the veto power would compel the most powerful countries on the Security Council to engage in more diplomacy and hard negotiation, improving the international scene. 

HDW: In 2025, the United States, the largest financial contributor to the United Nations, withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and the Paris Agreement; imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court; and halted funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Faced with a growing shortfall in contributions, the Deputy Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the United Nations informed the Fifth Committee that “Each delay in payment, each hiring freeze, each cancelled service chips away at trust in our ability to deliver.” Is the United Nations in danger of collapse? 

DC: Winston Churchill emphasized the responsibility of states to reinforce multilateralism, arguing in a speech at the University of Zurich that “The League did not fail because of its principles or conceptions. It failed because those principles were deserted by those states which brought it into being.” While not in danger of imminent collapse, the United Nations Organisation needs serious review and adjustment by the member states themselves. If the actions of the United States in 2025 that you are referring to serve notice on the rest of the membership that they need to focus on this, their key responsibility as the ‘owners’ of the Organisation, it may well be a positive development for the future of the United Nations, despite the short-term painful consequences that this approach may entail. 

HDW: How can the United Nations system accommodate reforms?

DC: It is not a question of the UN “accommodating reforms.” Regular institutional, 'maintenance reforms,' if you will, are an ongoing process led by every UN Secretary-General; but that process is not a substitute for leadership on the part of the member states. The United Nations Charter contains provisions to host a special session of the General Assembly or call a General Conference. The membership should set out what and how it wishes its Organization to deliver, exercising the obligation to redefine the 'purpose' of the Organization at a crucial moment in history. In order for the membership to undertake reforms, member states must embrace a multilateral rather than a national mindset. The United Nations is the institutional manifestation of the multilateral mindset that existed over eighty years ago. That mindset is missing today.

HDW: How can United Nations agencies provide platforms for young people to participate, engage in intergenerational dialogue, and support institutional renewal?  

DC: This has been my personal frustration for thirty years: leaders pay lip service to youth, but young people are included at the United Nations in a perfunctory manner, and they struggle to find roles in the Organization. During conferences, youth panels usually occur at the tail end, and, most of the time, young panelists are unnamed. I ask “Could somebody indicate the age at which young people receive a name?” Young people ought to be named, and they ought to be heard, alongside ministers and heads of state.