The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (4 page)

Sir Adam Roberts,
KCMG, was Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford University, and a fellow of Balliol College, from 1986 to 2007. His books include (edited with Benedict Kingsbury),
United Nations, Divided World: The UN’s Roles in International Relations
, 2nd edition (Oxford University Press, 1993) and (edited with Richard Guelff),
Documents on the Laws of War
, 3rd edition (Oxford University Press, 2000). He lives in Oxford.

Rahul Roy-Chaudhury
is Senior Fellow for South Asia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London. He has served in the National Security Council Secretariat in the Prime Minister’s Office in India. He has also been a senior research fellow at the International Policy Institute at King’s College, London. He writes regularly on South Asian security issues for IISS publications.

Dan Sarooshi
is Professor of Public International Law in the University of Oxford, and also practices as a barrister from Essex Court Chambers, London. His books have been awarded the 2006 Myres S. McDougal Prize by the American Society for the Policy Sciences, the 2001 and 2006 American Society of International Law Book Prizes, and the 1999 Guggenheim Prize by the Swiss Guggenheim Foundation.

David Scheffer
is the Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law and Director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University School of Law. He served as US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues (1997–2001) and as Senior Counsel to the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1993–6).

General Sir Rupert Smith,
KCB DSO OBE QGM, retired from the British Army in January 2002 after forty years’ service in East and South Africa, Arabia, the Caribbean, Europe, and Malaysia. His last appointment was Deputy Supreme Commander Allied Powers Europe. Prior to that he was the General Officer Commanding in Northern Ireland; Commander UNPROFOR in Sarajevo; and General Officer Commanding 1 (UK) Armoured Division, in the Gulf War 1990–1.

William Stueck
has written extensively about the Korean War, most notably in
The Korean War: An International History
(Princeton University Press, 1995) and
Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History
(Princeton University Press, 2002). Both emphasize the UN role, the first in greater detail. He is currently a distinguished research professor at the University of Georgia.

Charles Tripp
is Professor of Politics with reference to the Middle East, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His publications
include (with S. Chubin)
Iran and Iraq at War
(Tauris, 1989);
The Iraqi Aggression against Kuwait
(edited with W. Danspeckgruber) (Westview, 1996);
Islam and the Moral Economy: The Challenge of Capitalism
(Cambridge University Press, 2006); and
A History of Iraq
, 3rd edition (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Pat Walsh
has worked with the UN in East Timor since 2000 and is currently Advisor on Transitional Justice to President Jose Ramos-Horta. From 2001 to 2005 he was seconded by the UN as Special Advisor to the Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CVAR). Prior to going to East Timor, he was Director of Human Rights for the Australian Council for Overseas Aid, and represented the Council at many UN sessions and meetings on human rights and the question of East Timor.

Jennifer M. Welsh
is Professor in International Relations at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Somerville College. She is the author, most recently, of
At Home in the World: Canada’s Global Vision for the 21st Century
(HarperCollins, 2004) and editor of
Humanitarian Intervention and International Relations
(Oxford University Press, 2004). She was recently named a Trudeau Fellow, and is currently on a Leverhulme research grant working on a project on ‘sovereignty as responsibility’.

Susan L. Woodward
is Professor of Political Science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution (1990–99) and at King’s College, London (1999–2000); and Head of the Analysis and Assessment Unit for UNPROFOR in 1994. Her writings include
Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War
(Brookings Press, 1995), and
Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945–1990
(Princeton University Press, 1995).

Dominik Zaum
is Reader in International Relations at the University of Reading, and author of
The Sovereignty Paradox: The Norms and Politics of International Statebuilding
(Oxford University Press, 2007). He has previously been a research fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

THE EDITORS

U
NDER
the United Nations (UN) Charter, the Security Council has a theoretically impressive range of powers and duties. Most significant is its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. Unlike the General Assembly it can in principle take decisions that are binding on all members of the UN. The Council meets throughout the year, mainly to consider armed conflicts and other situations or disputes where international peace and security are threatened. It is empowered to order mandatory sanctions, call for ceasefires, and authorize military action on behalf of the UN. The Council also has a role, with the General Assembly, in the admission of new members to the UN, the appointment of the Secretary-General, and the election of judges to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). It has also assumed certain other roles not specifically laid down in the Charter, such as the self-conferred role of choosing judges and prosecutors for ad hoc war crimes tribunals.

This book describes and evaluates the UN Security Council’s part in addressing – and sometimes failing to address – the problem of war, both civil and international, in the years since 1945. The central theme is obvious, simple, and sobering.
¹
While the Council is a pivotal body which has played a key part in many wars and crises, it
is not in practice a complete solution to the problem of war, nor has it been at the centre of a comprehensive system of collective security. It never could have been. The UN’s founders, despite their idealistic language, did not see it in such terms; and in practice, both during the Cold War and subsequently, the Council’s roles have been limited and selective.

This central theme is not so much a conclusion as a starting point. It puts into focus a series of key questions, addressed in each of the sections: What have been the actual roles of the Security Council, and have they changed over time? Has the Council, despite the many blemishes on its record, contributed overall to the maintenance of international order through its response to particular threats and crises? Why has the Council fallen short of some of the expectations held out for it? Are particular countries to blame for such failures? Has it reacted constructively to the changes in the character of war – including the prevalence of non-international armed conflicts and the rise of terrorism – and to broader transformations in international society, such as the rise of post-colonial states and the increase in the number of powers with nuclear weapons? Is the Council simply a meeting place of sovereign states, or does it put in place certain limits on the unfettered sovereignty of at least some states?

In this book we have sought the services of historians, lawyers, diplomats, and international relations specialists to explore the Security Council’s actual and potential roles. The book seeks to present an accurate picture of what the Council has achieved, and not achieved, in regard to the continuing phenomenon of war. It analyses the extent to which the UN Charter system, as it has evolved, replaces older systems of power politics and justifications for the use of force. It also considers how the functions and responsibilities of the Council have shifted since the creation of the UN in the concluding months of the Second World War. Among the many conclusions reached on the basis of this study, three stand out: that the Council was not created to be and has not in practice been a pure collective security system; that the constant interplay between the Charter’s provisions and the actual practice of states (both within and outside the Council) has produced not only some disasters, but also some creative variations on the Council’s roles and responsibilities; and that when compared with other international institutions, the Council has a unique status both in terms of its authoritativeness and accountability vis-à-vis member states.

This book is based on the proposition that the actual practice of the Security Council is richer, more complex, and more paradoxical than can be captured by any single prescriptive document or theory. Yet an assessment of the Council’s roles necessarily
involves reference to the basic rules by which it operates. The United Nations Charter, concluded at San Francisco in June 1945, is a remarkable amalgam of realism and idealism. It appears, at least at first sight, to be the harbinger of a radical transformation of the international system – especially in its handling of the problem of war. The first lines of the preamble set the target high:

The Preamble goes on to outline the UN’s purposes, and in so doing proclaims what appears to be a highly collective approach to the use of armed force:

The Charter establishes six ‘principal organs of the United Nations’. These are: ‘a General Assembly, a Security Council, an Economic and Social Council, a Trusteeship Council, an International Court of Justice, and a Secretariat’.
²
The Security Council is thus just one part of this architecture for international order, but it has always been seen as having a central role in the Charter scheme.

The general principles of the UN and the detailed provisions governing the structure of the Security Council (SC) and its management of international security are laid down in five chapters (
Chapters I
and
V
–
VIII
) of the Charter.

Chapter I
, which consists of just two articles, sets the framework for the later provisions, including those for the Security Council. Article 1 is a ringing statement of purposes:

Article 2, on Principles, is mainly concerned with questions of international peace and security. Its provisions have been cited frequently in debates about the powers of the Security Council.