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The United Nations Security Council and War: The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945
This is the first major exploration of the United Nations Security Council's part in addressing the problem of war, both civil and international, since 1945. Both during and after the Cold War the Council has acted in a limited and selective manner, and its work has sometimes resulted in
failure. It has not been--and was never equipped to be--the center of a comprehensive system of collective security. However, it remains the body charged with primary responsibility for international peace and security. It offers unique opportunities for international consultation and military
collaboration, and for developing legal and normative frameworks. It has played a part in the reduction in the incidence of international war in the period since 1945.
The United Nations Security Council and War examines the extent to which the work of the UN Security Council, as it has evolved, has or has not replaced older systems of power politics and practices regarding the use of force. Its starting point is the failure to implement the UN Charter scheme of
having combat forces under direct UN command. Instead, the Council has advanced the use of international peacekeeping forces; it has authorized coalitions of states to take military action; and it has developed some unanticipated roles such as the establishment of post-conflict transitional
administrations, international criminal tribunals, and anti-terrorism committees.
The book, bringing together distinguished scholars and practitioners, draws on the methods of the lawyer, the historian, the student of international relations, and the practitioner. It begins with an introductory overview of the Council's evolving roles and responsibilities. It then discusses
specific thematic issues, and through a wide range of case studies examines the scope and limitations of the Council's involvement in war. It offers frank accounts of how belligerents viewed the UN, and how the Council acted and sometimes failed to act. The appendices provide comprehensive
information--much of it not previously brought together in this form--of the extraordinary range of the Council's activities.
This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.
failure. It has not been--and was never equipped to be--the center of a comprehensive system of collective security. However, it remains the body charged with primary responsibility for international peace and security. It offers unique opportunities for international consultation and military
collaboration, and for developing legal and normative frameworks. It has played a part in the reduction in the incidence of international war in the period since 1945.
The United Nations Security Council and War examines the extent to which the work of the UN Security Council, as it has evolved, has or has not replaced older systems of power politics and practices regarding the use of force. Its starting point is the failure to implement the UN Charter scheme of
having combat forces under direct UN command. Instead, the Council has advanced the use of international peacekeeping forces; it has authorized coalitions of states to take military action; and it has developed some unanticipated roles such as the establishment of post-conflict transitional
administrations, international criminal tribunals, and anti-terrorism committees.
The book, bringing together distinguished scholars and practitioners, draws on the methods of the lawyer, the historian, the student of international relations, and the practitioner. It begins with an introductory overview of the Council's evolving roles and responsibilities. It then discusses
specific thematic issues, and through a wide range of case studies examines the scope and limitations of the Council's involvement in war. It offers frank accounts of how belligerents viewed the UN, and how the Council acted and sometimes failed to act. The appendices provide comprehensive
information--much of it not previously brought together in this form--of the extraordinary range of the Council's activities.
This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.
816 pages, Paperback
First published June 5, 2008
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December 8, 2020
This weighty volume is based on a seminar series on the UN Security Council and its relationship with war.
Under the United Nations, the Security Council has an impressive range of duties and powers, but most significant is its main responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. It meets throughout the year, primarily to consider armed conflicts and other disputes where international peace and security are threatened. Unlike the General Assembly, it can in principle take decisions that are binding on all members of the UN. The Council also has a role, with the General Assembly, in admission of new members to the UN, the appointment of the Secretary-General, and the election of judges to the International Supreme Court of Justice (ICJ); in addition, it has assumed other roles, such as the self-conferred role of choosing judges and prosecutors for war crimes tribunals.
The central theme of this work is the UN Security Council's part in addressing – or failing to address – the problems of war, both civil and international. In fact, the Council has never been a complete solution to the problem of war, nor has it been at the center of an all-embracing system of collective security, and it never could have been. The UN's founders, "despite their idealistic language", did not see it in such terms; in practice, both during the Cold War and subsequently, the Council's roles had been limited. Yet, especially during the Cold War, the history of UN operations was richer and more variegated than the traditional notion of peacekeeping suggests.
The Security Council consists of fifteen Members of the United Nations, five of them permanent. Remarkably, the extent to which Great Power privilege is established in the UN Charter is exceptional among international organizations. After the First World War, the need for strong institutions became so great that it made many states compromise on equality; as a result, the Covenant of the League of Nations embodied privileges for the Great Powers.
In the negotiation of the UN Charter, the Great Powers exploited this precedent in their favor: at Dumbarton Oaks, the USA, the UK, Soviet Union, and China reached an agreement on the general shape of the Security Council, and the Great Power privilege in voting in the Council has withstood attacks ever since.
Interestingly, the peacekeeping part of the Council's responsibilities emerged during the Cold War as a device to reduce the likelihood of war between Council members that were locked in a global struggle for political and ideological influence but nonetheless sought to avoid direct confrontation. Thus, the peacekeeping forces served as a great power tool for managing relations and preventing war of a catastrophic kind. When, in the later half of the 1980s and early 1990s, superpower tensions eased and the fear of major war receded, the Council made use of the accumulated experience and established practices of UN peacekeeping to help end long-running wars to an end: in the Middle East (Iraq-Iran), Central America (Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador), and parts of Asia (Cambodia and Afghanistan).
Curious is also relationship between the UN and NATO, which is particularly noteworthy because it involves the UN interacting with the "most sophisticated military regional arrangement in existence", and led to NATO deciding to act for the first time outside its geographical area of operation – in Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999. While in Bosnia the Security Council authorized military enforcement action, NATO decided to take military action without Security Action authorization in the case of Kosovo.
NATO carried out extensive military air strikes against Yugoslavia in order to stop "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo, then a Yugoslav province. This action was undertaken without prior delegation by the Security Council to NATO, and as such it may seem, points out the author, to be clearly contrary to the general prohibition on the use of force by states. However, when two days after the NATO bombing Russia failed in its attempt to get the Security Council to adopt a resolution to adopt a resolution condemning NATO actions. As the author explains, the Council had determined that a humanitarian catastrophe was occurring and that the situation constituted a threat to international peace. Both requirements were fulfilled in this case, so the NATO actions in Kosovo were justified.
The aforementioned and similar episodes are analyzed in detailed through the perspective of the UN Security Council decision-making. The authors draw upon a great number of studies by historians, lawyers, diplomats, and international relations specialists to explore the Security Council's actual and potential roles in the Korean War, the Arab-Israeli Wars, the India-Pakistan Wars, and many other conflicts. Their conclusions, if summed up, is that despite the blemishes on its record, the Council had contributed to the maintenance of international order, reacting constructively to the changes, such as the rise of terrorism, in the character of war and to broader changes in international society, such as the rise of post-colonial states.
To better understand the strengths of the UN arrangements for international security, one can compare them with those of the League of Nations, established at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The League proved itself incapable of handling any cases that required serious military action. For example, the first crisis it faced that might have necessitated armed response was when, in 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria; the League did nothing. China called for immediate help from the League, but Japan, a permanent member of the Executive Council, vetoed a resolution for a League policy role, demonstrating how easily a single nation could smother the League's minimal enforcement powers. Then, in 1932, a League Commission of Inquiry named Japan the aggressor in Manchuria and demanded that it withdrew its forces; in expression of contempt, Japan quit the League in 1933 and kept its troops in China.
Having learned from the problems of the years 1919-39, the authors of the UN Charter devised a scheme that deferred from that of the League in many aspects. The provisions for the UN Security Council were different from those for the League Council: the Security Council was empowered to address a broader range of security problems than the case of "aggression" that was supposed to be the focus of the League Council's concerns; it was entitled to use force without in every case attempting economic sanctions first, and was envisaged as having armed forces of continually available to it, so that it would be in a position to use force to maintain international peace and security. Disarmament was also addressed more cautiously in the UN Charter than it had been in the League Covenant. In all of these respects, whatever its defects, the Charter represented a major advance on the flawed terms of the Covenant.
THE UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL AND WAR is a very hard book to plough through. It is extremely dry, fact-filled, and long. Yet, it is also extremely important – in my opinion, it is our duty as citizens to be aware of the the functions and responsibilities of the UN and the UN Security Council.
Under the United Nations, the Security Council has an impressive range of duties and powers, but most significant is its main responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. It meets throughout the year, primarily to consider armed conflicts and other disputes where international peace and security are threatened. Unlike the General Assembly, it can in principle take decisions that are binding on all members of the UN. The Council also has a role, with the General Assembly, in admission of new members to the UN, the appointment of the Secretary-General, and the election of judges to the International Supreme Court of Justice (ICJ); in addition, it has assumed other roles, such as the self-conferred role of choosing judges and prosecutors for war crimes tribunals.
The central theme of this work is the UN Security Council's part in addressing – or failing to address – the problems of war, both civil and international. In fact, the Council has never been a complete solution to the problem of war, nor has it been at the center of an all-embracing system of collective security, and it never could have been. The UN's founders, "despite their idealistic language", did not see it in such terms; in practice, both during the Cold War and subsequently, the Council's roles had been limited. Yet, especially during the Cold War, the history of UN operations was richer and more variegated than the traditional notion of peacekeeping suggests.
The Security Council consists of fifteen Members of the United Nations, five of them permanent. Remarkably, the extent to which Great Power privilege is established in the UN Charter is exceptional among international organizations. After the First World War, the need for strong institutions became so great that it made many states compromise on equality; as a result, the Covenant of the League of Nations embodied privileges for the Great Powers.
In the negotiation of the UN Charter, the Great Powers exploited this precedent in their favor: at Dumbarton Oaks, the USA, the UK, Soviet Union, and China reached an agreement on the general shape of the Security Council, and the Great Power privilege in voting in the Council has withstood attacks ever since.
Interestingly, the peacekeeping part of the Council's responsibilities emerged during the Cold War as a device to reduce the likelihood of war between Council members that were locked in a global struggle for political and ideological influence but nonetheless sought to avoid direct confrontation. Thus, the peacekeeping forces served as a great power tool for managing relations and preventing war of a catastrophic kind. When, in the later half of the 1980s and early 1990s, superpower tensions eased and the fear of major war receded, the Council made use of the accumulated experience and established practices of UN peacekeeping to help end long-running wars to an end: in the Middle East (Iraq-Iran), Central America (Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador), and parts of Asia (Cambodia and Afghanistan).
Curious is also relationship between the UN and NATO, which is particularly noteworthy because it involves the UN interacting with the "most sophisticated military regional arrangement in existence", and led to NATO deciding to act for the first time outside its geographical area of operation – in Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999. While in Bosnia the Security Council authorized military enforcement action, NATO decided to take military action without Security Action authorization in the case of Kosovo.
NATO carried out extensive military air strikes against Yugoslavia in order to stop "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo, then a Yugoslav province. This action was undertaken without prior delegation by the Security Council to NATO, and as such it may seem, points out the author, to be clearly contrary to the general prohibition on the use of force by states. However, when two days after the NATO bombing Russia failed in its attempt to get the Security Council to adopt a resolution to adopt a resolution condemning NATO actions. As the author explains, the Council had determined that a humanitarian catastrophe was occurring and that the situation constituted a threat to international peace. Both requirements were fulfilled in this case, so the NATO actions in Kosovo were justified.
The aforementioned and similar episodes are analyzed in detailed through the perspective of the UN Security Council decision-making. The authors draw upon a great number of studies by historians, lawyers, diplomats, and international relations specialists to explore the Security Council's actual and potential roles in the Korean War, the Arab-Israeli Wars, the India-Pakistan Wars, and many other conflicts. Their conclusions, if summed up, is that despite the blemishes on its record, the Council had contributed to the maintenance of international order, reacting constructively to the changes, such as the rise of terrorism, in the character of war and to broader changes in international society, such as the rise of post-colonial states.
To better understand the strengths of the UN arrangements for international security, one can compare them with those of the League of Nations, established at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The League proved itself incapable of handling any cases that required serious military action. For example, the first crisis it faced that might have necessitated armed response was when, in 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria; the League did nothing. China called for immediate help from the League, but Japan, a permanent member of the Executive Council, vetoed a resolution for a League policy role, demonstrating how easily a single nation could smother the League's minimal enforcement powers. Then, in 1932, a League Commission of Inquiry named Japan the aggressor in Manchuria and demanded that it withdrew its forces; in expression of contempt, Japan quit the League in 1933 and kept its troops in China.
Having learned from the problems of the years 1919-39, the authors of the UN Charter devised a scheme that deferred from that of the League in many aspects. The provisions for the UN Security Council were different from those for the League Council: the Security Council was empowered to address a broader range of security problems than the case of "aggression" that was supposed to be the focus of the League Council's concerns; it was entitled to use force without in every case attempting economic sanctions first, and was envisaged as having armed forces of continually available to it, so that it would be in a position to use force to maintain international peace and security. Disarmament was also addressed more cautiously in the UN Charter than it had been in the League Covenant. In all of these respects, whatever its defects, the Charter represented a major advance on the flawed terms of the Covenant.
THE UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL AND WAR is a very hard book to plough through. It is extremely dry, fact-filled, and long. Yet, it is also extremely important – in my opinion, it is our duty as citizens to be aware of the the functions and responsibilities of the UN and the UN Security Council.
Displaying 1 of 1 review