The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (8 page)

In short, the UN Security Council, like most intergovernmental bodies, has undergone a process of change through practice. The reasons for the emergence of practices different from the main ones laid down in the Charter scheme are deep-seated. They include:

• A multinational body such as the Security Council may not be the most effective wielder of military force. This is because many very different perspectives on the world are represented on it; because the UN’s member states have not paid much regard to the requirement in Article 23 of the Charter that the contribution of states to the maintenance of international peace and security is a criterion for Council membership; and because not all Council members necessarily have the same degree of commitment to action in a particular crisis. It is largely because of such factors that the Council has tended to authorize a lead state to manage military operations at the head of a coalition, not to manage the use of force itself.

• The UN lacks an intelligence system – something that is normally seen as an essential prerequisite for the effective conduct of military operations.

• All states remain cautious about the circumstances in which their armed forces might be used, and are unwilling to write a blank cheque to the UN. In planning the use of armed forces – whether for enforcement or peacekeeping – the Council has never been able to assume that all states were waiting to do its bidding. It has constantly had to adjust its policies to what the member states, and particularly the troop-contributing states, would tolerate.

• Finally, the types of war since 1945 have been different from the classic case of armed aggression by one state against another: most armed conflicts since 1945 have had the character of civil wars, generally in post-colonial or post-communist states whose frontiers, constitutions, and types of political system may not have become accepted as legitimate either internally or externally. Such wars frequently have an international dimension, as outside powers get involved on different sides for a wide variety of reasons. In wars of these types, it may be difficult or impossible to determine which party is the ‘aggressor’, and the response that is needed may be very different from collective military action against a presumed aggressor. Rather, the response of the international community tends to be to assist a negotiated settlement and to provide peacekeeping forces to observe and assist its implementation. This is a principal reason why peacekeeping, rather than the use of force against offending states, has been the main mode of UN action.

The creation, mandate-setting, and winding-up of United Nations forces and missions of various types, including the authorization of action by coalitions of
states, is a major responsibility of the Security Council. The terms ‘UN forces’ and ‘UN missions’ are often used loosely. They can encompass many different types of military forces and missions. In actual practice forces and missions under the Council have been used in three broad types of operation, though there is some overlap between the categories.

This type of operation, listed in
Appendix 1
, consists of forces under UN command and control whose presence is by consent of the territorial state and whose purpose is to observe and facilitate implementation of a ceasefire or peace agreement. Almost all UN peacekeeping operations have been set up and managed by the Security Council: only in a few exceptional cases has the General Assembly taken on this role. The military component of a peacekeeping operation normally consists of a number of national contingents deployed in a force under UN command. Generally such forces are lightly armed. While they do not have combat functions, they have a right to use force in self-defence and, depending on their mandate, for certain other specified purposes.

The distinction between peacekeeping and enforcement, although clear in principle, has sometimes been less clear in practice. There are three main ways in which UN peacekeeping forces may become involved in, or associated with, enforcement:

1. Dual role of certain UN peacekeeping forces. Several peacekeeping operations have had prominent enforcement as well as peacekeeping roles. The mandates of such forces have recognized the need for coercive action in various ways, sometimes by adding new mandates to earlier ones that had been based on more consensual assumptions. Examples of UN peacekeeping forces that had the authorization to engage in extensive coercive activities and did so in at least some phases of their operations include the UN Operation in the Congo (ONUC) in 1960–4, the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in the former Yugoslavia in 1992–5, the UN Operation in Somalia II (UNOSOM II) in 1993–5, and the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) in 1999–2005. On paper all of these peacekeeping forces except ONUC had a strong mandate to use force making explicit mention of
Chapter VII
of the Charter, but all experienced major problems in carrying out the combination of peacekeeping and use of force.

2. Operation of UN peacekeepers in conjunction with UN-authorized forces. In some cases, as in Bosnia from 1992–5, Somalia from 1992–3, and Rwanda in 1994, UN peacekeeping forces have operated in conjunction with other UN-authorized forces which have enforcement functions and are under the command and control of a state or alliance (in these cases, NATO, the US, and France respectively).

3. Operation of UN peacekeepers in conjunction with a national force. In a few cases there has been a degree of cooperation between a UN peacekeeping force
and a national force which, without formal Security Council backing, has assisted the peacekeeping force in carrying out some of the Council’s objectives. Two possible examples are (a) in Namibia in 1989, UN representatives, by tolerating a South African use of force to stop the infiltration of members of the South West Africa People’s Organization into Namibia in violation of ceasefire terms, assisted the work of a peacekeeping force, the UN Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG); and (b) in Sierra Leone in May 2000 there was effective cooperation between UNAMSIL and the UK Joint Task Force.
³⁴

Apart from peacekeeping forces, many other types of UN, and UN-authorized, bodies have operated in the field, tackling a range of issues relating to war. These bodies, which may be authorized by a variety of UN organs including the Security Council, the General Assembly, and the Secretary-General, can assume a wide variety of forms. A full but not exhaustive list of examples is in
Appendix 2
.

If there were a UN enforcement operation that was firmly under UN control and was not classified as a peacekeeping operation, it would come into this category. This type of operation, explicitly envisaged in the Charter, would consist of forces under direct UN command and control which are authorized to engage in enforcement. A variant of this approach is the proposal for a standing UN military force to have certain powers which might go beyond peacekeeping as traditionally conceived.
³⁵

UN institutions, missions, and forces that have been established by Security Council resolutions, and have not been classified as peacekeeping operations, have included the following types:

• Criminal tribunals established for particular conflicts or countries – e.g. the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia, set up in 1993, and for Rwanda, set up in 1994.

• Missions concerned primarily with monitoring disarmament – e.g. the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) in Iraq in 1991–8; and its successor the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) which operated in Iraq in 2002–3 and then operated outside Iraq until 2007.

• Missions to facilitate the implementation of the terms of peace agreements – e.g. the UN Assistance Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), set up in June 1999; and the UN Mission in Côte d’Ivoire (MINUCI), set up in May 2003.

• Missions concerned with humanitarian assistance and post-conflict reconstruction functions following the defeat of an incumbent government – e.g. the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), set up in March 2002; and the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), established by a Security Council resolution of 14 August 2003, but whose activities were curtailed as a result of the Baghdad UN headquarters bombing of 19 August 2003.

• Investigatory panels and missions, such as the one appointed by the Security Council in April 2005 to investigate the assassination of the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rafiq Hariri.

In addition, there have been many UN forces and missions, with significant roles in the security field, that were set up and managed by bodies other than the Security Council. Cases include:

• Good offices missions set up by the Secretary-General, typically by the appointment of a special envoy or Special Representative of the Secretary-General to mediate in a conflict or perform other functions.

• Investigation of allegations of employment of particular weapons whose use is prohibited. In February 1984 the UN Secretary-General established the Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Iran–Iraq Conflict, which operated in 1984–8.

• Election monitoring and civilian support missions in which there was no peacekeeping element. This happened, for example, following civil wars, as in the case of the UN Mission for the Verification of Elections in Nicaragua (ONUVEN) in 1989–90. This was set up by the Secretary-General and merely noted by the Security Council.

• Deployment of UN guards. In May 1991 the Secretary-General set up the UN Guards Contingent in Iraq (UNGCI), following the establishment of ‘safe havens’ in northern Iraq to enable Kurdish refugees to return home.

• Certain missions concerned primarily with human rights and related issues – e.g. United Nations Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA), established by the General Assembly in 1994, in the phases before and after its peacekeeping functions in January–May 1997.
³⁶

This type of operation, cases of which are listed in
Appendix 3
, consists of forces under a specific mandate from the UN involving authority to use force for purposes that may go beyond self-defence, and which are under national or alliance
(as distinct from UN) command and control. They are generally referred to as ‘UN-authorized forces’ rather than ‘UN forces’, and they wear national uniforms and not blue berets/helmets. The functions of such forces may include

• coercion in support of international measures such as sanctions (for example the naval forces in support of sanctions against Iraq in 1990–2003, and against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992–5);

• combat activities against an adversary (for example the US-led actions against North Korea from 1950–3 and against Iraq in 1991, in both of which cases the lawfulness of the military action was largely based on specific Security Council authorization, but also had some of its roots, especially in the immediate aftermath of the adversary’s attack, in the right of individual or collective self-defence under Article 51 of the Charter);

• forceful intervention within a state (for example the US-led Unified Task Force in Somalia from 1992–3, the French-led
Opération Turquoise
in Rwanda in 1994, and the US-led Multinational Force in Haiti from 1994–5);

• implementation, involving enforcement, of a peace settlement (for example, the NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR) and Stabilization Force (SFOR) Bosnia in 1995–2004, EUFOR in Bosnia since 2004, and Kosovo Force (KFOR) in Kosovo from 1999).

Resolutions authorizing enforcement operations make specific reference to
Chapter VII
of the UN Charter. As a result, these are often called ‘
Chapter VII
operations’. However, this term can be misleading because resolutions concerning certain other types of operation, especially sanctions but also sometimes peacekeeping, have also been adopted under
Chapter VII
.

In general, the power to authorize military measures has been interpreted broadly by the Council, and has encompassed the use of force in humanitarian crises, in support of peacekeeping operations of various types, and in action against international terrorism. Because the Council’s role in authorizing force has been so broad, some of its authorizations overlap with other types of UN force and mission.

A particular problem of authorizations to a coalition to use force can arise if differences emerge between members of the Security Council and the state leading the coalition about the continuation and interpretation of an earlier mandate to use force. This problem arose in the Korean War in 1950–3, and was also at the centre of a major controversy in respect of Iraq in the first three months of 2003. The US claimed that earlier Council resolutions provided a basis for a continuing US right to use force to implement the 1991 ceasefire terms against Iraq, while other states viewed it as essential to go to the Council again to seek specific authorization before undertaking the major step of invading Iraq and deposing its government. The UK equivocated between these two positions. The tension between the body doing the authorizing, and the states working at the sharp end, is an unresolved problem at the heart of the now-familiar UN practice of using authorized coalitions to enforce resolutions.