The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (14 page)

Yet even if there is truth in all these criticisms, the Council is not necessarily a failure. When people assert that the Council has failed, it is worth enquiring by what standard are they judging it, and what exactly does their judgement mean? If the Council’s performance is judged against a high standard – for example, as a means of replacing force with law, as a presumed alternative to national defence efforts, or as a provider of the ambitious collective security scheme that the UN Charter is widely perceived as representing – then it is obviously a failure. If, alternatively, it is judged according to the benchmark of whether it has contributed to a modest degree of stability and progress in international relations in at least some of the crises with which it has been confronted, then it is at least a partial success.

A large array of claims can be made for the effectiveness of the Security Council. The eight most important are:

• Assisting the reduction in the incidence of international war. While it does not amount to the removal of the scourge of war at which the Charter aimed, the reduction in the number and human cost of interstate wars in the period since 1945 is significant. Many other factors, institutions, and processes have contributed to this outcome, but the role of the Council in it is not negligible.

• Opposing major invasions aimed at taking over states. A classic issue that any international organization in the security field must face is a major attack by one
state upon another. The Council’s prompt responses to certain attacks (Korea 1950, Kuwait 1990) have reinforced the message, which also has other origins, that aggression does not pay. The fact that the Council has failed to respond to certain other major attacks (such as Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980) weakens this message but does not invalidate it.

• Peacekeeping forces. Between 1945 and 2006 the UN, mainly through the Council, set up sixty-one bodies classified as peacekeeping operations. Thirteen of them were established between 1948 and 1978 – the remaining forty-eight in the period from 1988 to 2006. These operations have been used in both international and internal conflicts. In a number of these cases UN peacekeepers have helped to stabilize a volatile situation; and in particular have prevented local conflicts from becoming battlegrounds for great power confrontation.

• Providing a framework for assisting major changes in international relations. Arguably, the two most important changes in the structure of international relations in the UN era have been the process of decolonization, and the end of the Cold War. While both of these developments have multiple causes, the framework provided by the UN in general, and the Security Council in particular, can be seen as having assisted them, and also as having provided a framework within which post-colonial and post-Soviet states could assert their independence and develop relations with other states.

• Adapting to new developments. The Council’s activities in the sphere of international peace and security have expanded to take account of new developments, particularly in international humanitarian law, international criminal law, international efforts to assist the emergence and consolidation of democratic practices in states, and international efforts to combat nuclear weapons proliferation and global terrorism.

• Assisting the diffusion of norms. The Council has played a key role in the articulation and diffusion of norms, both new and existing. One long-standing example is the principle of self-determination, which both Permanent and Nonpermanent Members have pressured the Council to promote in its resolutions. More recently, The Council’s statements and actions have contributed to the development of the ideas of human security, and also the Responsibility to Protect.

• Governance in war-torn and failed states. The Council has gradually developed a capacity for assisting the re-establishment of the functions of government, including democratic processes, in states that have undergone civil war or external domination. Four leading cases are Cambodia (1992–3), Kosovo (1999–), East Timor (1999–), and Afghanistan (2001–). In all these cases large numbers of refugees returned: in Afghanistan there were more than four million returnees in the period 2002–6.

• Great power cooperation. The Council, involving continuous interaction and negotiation, has assisted in maintaining a degree of understanding and cooperation
between great powers both during and after the Cold War, including in securing agreement on basic norms and helping to settle certain regional conflicts. Even when such agreement has been elusive, the Council has provided a forum for major powers to signal their intentions and the ‘red-lines’ beyond which they should not be pressed.

Many other claims have been, or could be, made for the Council.
⁹⁷
Some involve undramatic but important actions, such as sending missions to establish facts on particular conflicts and to work out the basis for peace agreements.
⁹⁸
Arguably, the Council has learned something from the ineffectiveness and shocking side-effects of some past cases of sanctions, and is moving towards using better-targeted measures. As for the future, in an era when it is sometimes argued that there is a need for preventive use of force to ward off future threats to international peace and security, the UN Security Council is the one body in the world that has the explicit and undisputed legal right to take preventive action against such threats.

To examine these issues, the book is divided into four parts.
Part I
(
Chapters 2
to
4
) lays the groundwork by describing the establishment of the Security Council, and exploring the meaning of the UN Charter provisions regarding the Council and the use of force.
Chapter 2
, examining the creation of the Council, argues that the privileges of the five Permanent Members, in particular their veto power, were aimed at creating a great power oligarchy to secure peace after the Second World War rather than a general system of collective security. Furthermore, it highlights the flexibility of the system established at Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco, a theme that also runs through the other two chapters in this section, on the Charter limitations on the use of force (
Chapter 3
), and the proposals for a standing UN force, foreseen in the Charter but never realized in practice (
Chapter 4
).

Part II
(
Chapters 5
to
10
) is thematic, examining the Council’s different roles.
Chapters 5
and
6
assess the relationship between the Council and key member states and with the General Assembly, and discuss its decision-making processes, in particular with regard to war.
Chapter 5
, analysing the relationship between the great powers and the Council, describes this relationship as Janus-faced: while
the Council is a tool of the great powers, it also constrains them, as great powers have to accept its rules to maintain the legitimacy of the institution.
Chapters 7
to
9
discuss some of the key instruments available to the Council to address the challenges of war: peacekeeping (
Chapter 7
), economic sanctions (
Chapter 8
), and the authorization of regional organizations to use force to implement its resolutions (
Chapter 9
). They show how the practice of the Council has evolved in particular since the end of the Cold War in response to the changing nature of conflict; with peacekeeping missions growing in complexity, including developmental and reconstruction tasks in addition to the traditional separation and monitoring of conflict parties; and a move to ‘smarter’ and more targeted sanctions, aiming to limit their detrimental humanitarian impact.
Chapter 10
, examining the Council’s position in the post-Cold War world, highlights how the Council is constrained by the national interests of the most powerful states, and its reliance on their willingness to implement its decisions. In general, the chapters in this thematic part show that despite the many changes since the end of the Cold War, the success of measures enacted by the Council is still largely subject to the political and structural constraints that have characterized the UN since 1945.

Part III
(
Chapters 11
to
22
) contains case studies, in roughly chronological order, examining the nature and scope of the Council’s role in conflicts during and after the Cold War. The case studies are not a complete record of the Council’s efforts to address the challenges of war since 1945, but highlight different kinds of Council involvement – political, military, and economic – in wars; the different degrees of Council involvement, ranging from virtual absence to deep commitment; and the varying degrees of success. The case studies underline the political character of the Council’s role, with the nature and the degree of involvement more often than not determined by the political and strategic priorities of the five Permanent Members, rather than the local requirements for peace. This assessment also strongly emerges from the analysis in
Chapter 22
, where the reasons for non-involvement of the Council are examined. The case studies in this part seek to address such questions as:

• Did the existence and actions of the Council significantly affect events in the conflict?

• What were the main views and theories with regard to the role of the Council in the conflict?

• How did the role of the Council change over the time of the conflict?

• What were the attitudes of the main actors towards the Council?

• How should the Council’s role be evaluated?

• What might the Council usefully have done that it did not do?

Part IV
(
Chapters 23
to
28
) discusses some of the Council’s responses to the changing character of war, looking mainly at developments in warfare in the post-Cold War period, and the ways in which the Council has both shaped them and responded to them. Three main themes are explored – all of them reflecting
extraordinary changes in the tasks faced by the Council since it was formed in 1945. The first theme is the role of the Council in promoting and responding to an emerging ‘solidarist consensus’, with a greater role for humanitarian concerns. While
Chapter 23
discusses the Council’s involvement in the application and development of humanitarian law,
Chapter 24
examines how the Council has responded to humanitarian crises within states by widening its definition of what constitutes a threat to international peace and security. Both chapters show how humanitarian issues have played a significant and frequently problematic part in the Council’s activities. The second theme explored in
Part IV
is the Council’s role in post-conflict governance, either through international transitional administrations (
Chapter 25
), or in providing a framework for a military occupation as in Iraq after 2003 (
Chapter 26
). Finally, this part addresses the Council’s response to the emergence of new, non-state actors involved in conflicts: international terrorist networks (
Chapter 27
), and private security companies (
Chapter 28
). The Council’s responses to these challenges are noteworthy for their flexibility – as reflected in the Council’s expanded understanding of ‘threats to international peace and security’, which now encompasses not only humanitarian emergencies inside countries, but also the problems of state failure and terrorism. This expansion of its framework of action has led the Council to concern itself with the development of new institutions such as transitional administrations with comprehensive governance mandates, and the establishment of Security Council committees to monitor and support states’ counterterrorism efforts.

In addition to these four parts, the book has seven appendices. They provide a comprehensive overview of the major areas of Security Council action: UN peacekeeping operations, UN forces and missions not classified as peacekeeping operations, UN-authorized military operations, UN-authorized sanctions, vetoed Council resolutions, and the uses of the ‘Uniting for Peace’ resolution. The final appendix lists major wars and conflicts since 1945.

While this book explores the different roles the Council has played in addressing the challenges of war since 1945, and its effectiveness or otherwise in them, it cannot be a complete record. Certain prominent peacekeeping operations, such as UNFICYP in Cyprus, UNTAC in Cambodia, or UNTAG in Namibia, are not examined on their own as specific case studies, but they are considered elsewhere in the book, mainly in the thematic chapters. Similarly, the Council’s role in application of major force (whether by certain peacekeeping forces, or by authorized forces) does not have a separate chapter, but is raised in the context of UN standing forces (
Chapter 4
), peacekeeping (
Chapter 7
), the role of regional organizations (
Chapter 9
), and several of the conflicts examined, in particular the Korean War (
Chapter 11
) and the 1991 Gulf War (
Chapter 17
). The Council’s many failures, including over Rwanda and Darfur, are not discussed separately, but are mentioned in several places, including
Chapter 4
, on UN forces,
Chapter 22
, on the non-involvement of the Council in certain wars, and
Chapter 24
, on humanitarian intervention. Certain regions are
under-represented here, particularly Latin America. We take full responsibility for these omissions. All we can say in mitigation is that, like the Security Council itself, this book has been at constant risk of being over-extended by the range of problems with which it might be expected to cope.