The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (46 page)

In Sierra Leone, as the political situation gradually deteriorated in the late 1990s, the Council tried a number of avenues, eventually instituting a peacekeeping operation (UNAMSIL) when a Nigerian-led ECOWAS intervention failed to calm the crisis.
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Then, in the course of 1999 and 2000, the peacekeeping operation found itself too weak to deal with the violence directed at it and it looked as if a few hundred rebels, supplied from Liberia, were going to defeat the efforts of the recognized government and the UN combined. It took an external decision by a friend of Sierra Leone, the UK, acting at the request of the legitimate government in Freetown and intervening with a swift commando action, to knock the rebels back and restore the morale of the UN force. The UK had not sought or received specific authorization from the Security Council, but the basis for the intervention was the need of the (internationally recognized) Freetown government to take measures in collective self-defence and the Council approved the action retrospectively, albeit in indirect terms.
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There was a moment when France might perhaps have queried the right of the UK to take such forceful action, but the UK and France were working well together on other African issues at that time, a factor which added useful momentum to the Council’s efforts on conflict in that continent, and the moment passed.

Neither Angola nor the DRC found an external guardian of this kind. Their troubles were too deep-rooted and the circumstances too complex and dangerous to attract the immediate interest of a capable power. The different factions involved had in any case garnered their own international sympathies and the politics in the Security Council were thus more complicated. Angola never did stimulate effective international action and the largely innocent population suffered two decades of misery and deprivation before the Angolan government finally succeeded in trapping and killing Jonas Savimbi, which cut the strength and motivation of the rebels. A further factor was the doubt in UN circles that the Angolan crisis could be classified as a threat to international peace and security. The exact placing of the dividing line between a domestic and an international issue has remained a constant source of division and controversy since the birth of the UN. Article 2(7) of the Charter expressly prohibits the UN from intervening in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state, unless the Security Council requires the application of enforcement measures under
Chapter VII
. A large proportion of UN member states retain an acute interest in seeing that this article is strictly adhered to, as they want to ensure that their internal business is protected and that the powers with the greatest inclination to interfere are kept at bay.

Thus, on the one hand, we see the impulsion for a large number of UN member states to work for collective approaches to international problems, especially in the areas of politics and security, to diminish the scope for the most powerful states to take unilateral action in their own national interest. On the other hand, the same member states demand that the richest and most capable UN members should contribute a very high proportion of the resources to fund that collective action. They also insist that the circumstances for UN-authorized intervention be confined to instances in which national sovereignty is unlikely to be infringed, a category that is becoming increasingly rare in the modern age. At the same time, we see the world’s most powerful countries, who hold a long-term and global interest in the strength and effectiveness of the UN but less often a short-term and domestic one, becoming frustrated with the workings of the General Assembly structure and the UN Secretariat, and reluctant to subordinate their national decision-making to an uncertain and sometimes an unsympathetic global community. It seems that the filter for effective UN action is developing an ever-finer mesh as all these interests come into play, and as the issues which catch the attention of world public opinion broaden and deepen.

At the turn of the millennium, the Security Council decided to address certain conflict areas more directly by sending out Council missions to the countries concerned. This was a good move, helping to sharpen the understanding by Council members of the particular issue and to dilute the impression of UN remoteness from the Weld of action. The DRC conflict, made more complex by its relationship to other problems within the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, was the subject of three such missions between 2000 and 2002. The objective each time was to put pressure on the governments involved in the ethnic and factional fighting in the DRC to reduce their differences and meet the requirements of the numerous UN resolutions and implementation agreements which they were bound to fulfil. A UN peacekeeping operation, eventually reaching a maximum of around 15,000 troops, was put in place during this period, although it faced huge difficulties controlling the outbreaks of violence over such a vast area.
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Gradually, with the addition of measures to deter the trade in minerals stolen from DRC territory, UN efforts began to bear fruit and the scale of the conflict was narrowed down. But the international community has never been able to substitute for ineffective state structures: gangs of tribal fighters and murderous rebels have been able to operate with relative impunity in the more remote corners.

The reintroduction of Council missions, an instrument abandoned for some years after the disasters of Rwanda and Srebrenica in 1994 and 1995 respectively, happened suddenly following the collapse of the East Timor peace process in September of 1999. The case will be discussed more fully in
Chapter 15
. Although Indonesia had appeared to agree to a fair procedure for self-determination for East Timor, the Indonesian military failed to contain the violence which greeted the outcome of a popular referendum on 30 August 1999. The Security Council initially hesitated to become directly involved, then realized that for the UN to stay on the sidelines when its authority was being blatantly contested would be a severe setback. A mission of five members of the Council visited Djakarta and Dili in the second week of September and, coinciding fortuitously with other international pressures on the Indonesian government, helped to persuade it to respect the results of the referendum. Within twenty-four hours of their return to New York, the Security Council had adopted a resolution authorizing an enforcement operation with Indonesian consent.
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Eight days later, an ad hoc multinational force, led vigorously by Australia, arrived in the territory. This remarkably rapid turnaround did much to restore the morale of the UN in that period.

The Council had less success in addressing one of the rare bilateral conflicts of the modern era, the border dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia. The first Council mission to the Great Lakes in May 2000, led by Ambassador Richard Holbrooke of the United States, was flying home from Central Africa via Cairo and passed directly over the area when the two countries were coming to the boil. A quick decision was taken on the aeroplane that the Security Council, even though not in proper session, could not ignore the imminent outbreak of war. We diverted immediately to Addis Ababa. Two days of express shuttle diplomacy was tried, but the two capitals – and in particular the two political leaders, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and President Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea – were too far gone in their fury at each other to listen to passing diplomats. Nonetheless the fact that the Council mission had taken the trouble to intervene might have shortened the resulting war and probably made it less problematic to establish a peacekeeping operation, the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), thereafter.
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No issue has created a more severe division among the five Permanent Members of the Council since the end of the Cold War than the saga of Iraq.
Chapter 17
goes into details. In the present chapter, it should serve as the prime contemporary
example of the paralysing effect on the Council when the P5 cannot bridge their differences. Iraq reminds us that the UN is, on matters of high politics and security, a reflection of its member states and cannot be expected independently to remedy situations when the protagonists themselves are beyond persuasion. Saddam Hussein counted on the splits visible within the Council to ward of any effective action against his defiance of UN resolutions. When, in early 2003, several years of argument about how to deal with the Iraqi regime came to a climax, the question that exercised the majority of UN members was more how to restrain one member state from action without specific authorization than how to uphold the authority of the UN itself against the ultimate refusal of Iraq to respect it. The application of power and its implications for national interests took precedence for capitals over the health and authority of the only global institution.

Opinions will remain divided on the legality of the armed action in March 2003 and even more on the political legitimacy – a different question – of the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. In the international arena there is no final arbiter of these things beyond the moral and political effect of international – and sometimes domestic – opinion. But the Iraq story demonstrates the clear truth that the UN cannot be expected to deal with every international security issue, particularly the most divisive ones. A certain basic unity of purpose amongst its most influential members is essential, especially in an organization where leadership, of the kind societies have come to demand in a national context, is sadly lacking. There is effectively no level of political decision-making in international affairs above the national level, no supranational structure of authority which can outrank the national level, and no independent body to judge and punish departures from the ideals of the UN’s founding fathers. If a state with the power to take unilateral action decides to do so, whether or not the UN approves, the only instrument for resisting it is the opposition of other states. In the case of Iraq, the US had a number of allies willing to take action with it when the Security Council was paralysed, and was able to deflect a charge of unilateralism. Its opponents did not judge the situation as one which they would wish to counter by the use of force: Saddam did not have friends of that kind and the US was, in any case, too powerful. The disapproval of a large number of governments was manifested instead by their reluctance to assist with the aftermath of the conflict and their refusal to characterize the efforts of the Coalition in Iraq as fully legitimate. The UN did try to help the Coalition at the edges through the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq,
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but the bomb attack on the UN’s Headquarters in Baghdad on 19 August 2003, which tragically killed Sergio Vieira de Mello and many members of his team, cut away the capacity and enthusiasm of the UN to play a role on the ground and made the international atmosphere that much more bitter. The task of the Coalition leaders in Iraq since April 2003 was made more difficult as a result.

The consequences of the Iraq intervention are still evolving. The damage done to the reputation of the UN by its failure to find a collective way to bring Saddam Hussein to order may prove to have been mitigated by perceptions of the travails suffered by the coalition countries because of the absence of UN and broad international support. UN agents were shown to have had a more accurate and professional view of the threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction than the US and the UK. The final effect of the invasion, if it transpires that Iraq eventually achieves a better condition than it might have done undisturbed, may turn out to have been, in net terms, beneficial. But there is no doubt that the issue has been an explosive one and the limits of the UN’s effectiveness, however subjectively perceived, clearly exposed.

There are other issues which the UN has not been able to handle successfully because of the strength of national interests involved. The dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, for instance, looks like a classic case for international diplomacy. India, however, the majority of whose population would regard UN intervention as an unacceptable indication that there was a case to arbitrate, has steadfastly refused to allow the Security Council to place Kashmir on its agenda. While not a Permanent Member of the Council, India carries enough weight, and can find enough support from within the P5, to wield an effective veto on this issue. It demonstrates how important it is for the UN to have the main protagonists in a conflict agreeing to UN action, even if they are not members of the Security Council. Indonesia succeeded in the same way over East Timor for over two decades. The internal divisions in Colombia and Sri Lanka, despite having international implications, have also avoided Security Council attention. China, Russia, and the UK have shown similar sensitivities over Taiwan and Tibet, Chechnya, and Northern Ireland respectively. There are many other examples.

It is the question of Palestine, however, which has most often and most controversially slipped away from the UN’s grasp. One of the great tasks of the United Nations at its inception was to bring freedom and independence to territories where the native population had a justified claim to nationhood but had not been able to determine their own future. Palestine, though the circumstances were exceptional, clearly came into this category. Yet throughout the life of the UN, the organization has never succeeded, despite the manifestly expressed wish of the vast majority of its members, in settling this most poisonous of international disputes, nor even in establishing a principal role in addressing it. Israel has
declined to accept such a role for the UN and has retained the backing of the most powerful member state, the United States, in doing so.