By John Lee
For those drawing up the UN Charter in 1945, the overwhelming priority was to create an international system which would prevent the recurrence of the carnage of the Second World War. The proposition was that member states would join together in common UN action against any state militarily threatening another member. This idea of collective security and confronting aggression en masse is encapsulated in Chapter VII of the Charter – without explicitly using the term ‘collective security’ – which attempted to give the new organisation the ‘teeth’ missing from the covenant of the UN’s forerunner, the League of Nations. This essay will argue that while the UN does have ‘teeth’, it has used them with only patchy success during its 65-year history. It will proceed by locating the mechanisms of the UN and the options it has available when confronted with crises and examining how their implementation has evolved since 1945 during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. Issues such as the relevance of crises within states to the maintenance of international peace and order will be evaluated as will reform of the Security Council and the setting up of a UN army under the Military Staff Committee.
SOVIET STRIFE
The formative years of the UN were blighted by tensions between the two superpowers. In 1946, the first threat to peace brought before the Security Council involved the reluctance of the Soviet Union to withdraw its forces stationed in Iran. While it eventually agreed to comply (as Britain and the US had), the issue highlighted what would turn out to be the major constraint on UN activity over the next four decades, namely tension between the superpowers. This tension came to another head in 1948, when the USSR withdrew cooperation from the Security Council over US-led opposition to the admission of China to UN membership. As a consequence of its absence, two years later Moscow failed to apply its Security Council veto to prevent the UN – which as Black points out was effectively the US plus allied support – from going to war with North Korea following its invasion of South Korea. It should be noted that this conflict was, until the first Gulf War of 1991, the only UN-sanctioned military campaign to ‘enforce peace’ or rather ‘resist aggression’ (Black).
BLUEPRINT FOR PEACEKEEPING
With the Cold War at its peak, many conflicts which overlapped with the interests of either Washington or Moscow were not even deliberated by the UN. This was the case in the Horn of Africa where Ethiopia and Somalia were the belligerents and in the conflict between Angola and Mozambique. However, principally because of the paralysis imposed on its activities by the Cold War and Security Council vetoes, the UN developed its peacekeeping role so that the superpowers would not themselves have to intervene in conflicts which might then escalate into full-blown war between them. The development of a blueprint for such UN peacekeeping was precipitated by the Suez Crisis of 1956 in which Anglo-French forces (in collusion with Israel) attacked Egypt to recover control of the Suez Canal, which had been recently nationalised by President Nasser. The action was condemned by the US and the matter was taken up by the UN. However, because of the British and French vetoes (as two of the five permanent members of the 15-strong Security Council), the resolution was moved to the General Assembly which authorized the first-ever UN peacekeeping force, interposed between Israeli and Egyptian forces after the withdrawal of the British and French. Deemed a success, this model drawn up by Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold – the only person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously – was used subsequently during Cold War period conflicts in the Congo, Yemen, India-Pakistan, Lebanon and Cyprus. In the latter, UN peacekeepers have been present since 1964.
POST COLD WAR PROGRESS
By the end of the 1980s and the thawing of the Cold War, the UN began to enjoy what is perceived to be its most successful period in respect to peacekeeping and the maintenance of international security. It became involved in monitoring ceasefires, for example in the Iran-Iraq conflict; repelling insurgents in such strife-zones as Nicaragua and El Salvador; supervising the removal of landmines in Cambodia and Angola; monitoring democratic elections in, for example, Namibia and Cambodia; securing and implementing humanitarian aid in Bosnia; and maintaining enclaves such as those in Iraq and Serbia. This UN activity, reflecting the fact that most of the wars being fought were within states rather than between them, must be distinguished from that of maintaining peace between states. It is nevertheless a vital component in the maintenance of international security as – according to democratic peace theory – stable, democratic states are far less likely to take up arms against other similar states.
SUCCESS IN FIRST GULF WAR
This wave of success swept the UN forward to 1991, when the Security Council was again united in its decision to take military action against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. The tyrant’s action was precipitated by his country’s war with Iran which ended in 1988. That conflict virtually bankrupted Iraq with most of its debt owed to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, neither of which would waive that debt. Iraq also accused Kuwait of exceeding its OPEC quotas and driving down the price of oil. After a period of sabre-rattling, Saddam sent his forces over the border. The subsequent military action against him was executed under the UN flag and signalled another tent pole of success for its political machinery.
FROM 'AGENDA FOR PEACE' TO BLACK HAWKS DOWN IN SOMALIA
In 1992, the Security Council met at heads of state level for the first time. With the Cold War now over, a new dawn was envisaged and Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was given the task of drawing up an ‘Agenda For Peace’. However this dawn would prove to be false one and in the very same year, the tide began to turn against the UN. With the approval of the Security Council, American forces helped save victims of a famine in Somalia caused by the devastation resulting from the internal belligerence of factional warlords. This was the first time a humanitarian disaster was defined as a threat to international peace and handled under Chapter VII of the Charter. However, the second phase of the operation in which a smaller peacekeeping force was sent in to maintain order, ended in disaster. The UN troops became involved in fighting the notorious Somali warlord General Mohamad Aideed. Their efforts to capture him failed and culminated in the downing of two of its own Black Hawk helicopters and the deaths of 17 US soldiers. In March 1994, President Clinton took the unilateral decision to withdraw his country’s forces and a bitter blame game between his administration and the UN ensued.
GENOCIDE IN RWANDA
After the debacle of Somalia came the lowest point in UN history – the powerlessness of its peacekeeping forces to prevent the Hutu genocide of Tutsis in the benighted African state of Rwanda. This abject failure – which saw the deaths of 800,000 citizens in just 100 days – can be seen as a direct result of America’s decision to not get involved having been badly burned in Somalia. Indeed, Washington declared itself unwilling to contribute to UN peacekeeping operations which were not in its national interest. Relations between the UN and US were in tatters.
IRAQ 2003 AND THE RIFT WITH AMERICA
But by 2002, America under the George W Bush administration would be seeking the approval of the UN for its invasion of Iraq. Under the pretext of Resolution 1441 that found Saddam Hussein in breach of ceasefire terms demanding disarmament from the first Gulf War, the US was intent on embarking on another round of democratic regime change. However, the Security Council stumbled when it came to endorsing the action with France threatening to use its veto. By March 2003, with diplomatic efforts exhausted, the US invaded without the backing of a UN resolution. Debate continues over the legitimacy of the war: some say the breaching of 1441 made it legal; others that it was illegal but legitimate in that all diplomatic avenues had been gone down; while those such as Anne-Marie Slaughter say it was both illegitimate and illegal. The final nail in the coffin of relations between the US and UN came in 2004 when Kofi Annan was asked whether the war was a legitimate act of ‘peace enforcement’. The Secretary-General replied that it was not.
SECURITY COUNCIL REFORM AND A PERMANENT UN ARMY
It can be seen, therefore, that all is not well with the UN and its arrangements for maintaining international peace and security. But what should it do to remodel the landscape? Among the issues up for discussion is a change to membership of the Security Council. In 1995, Annan proposed an increase in sitting members from 15 to 25 and the creation of a new humanitarian council. He also called for the number of permanent members (the only ones with the power of veto) to be increased from the five of the US, Russia, China, Britain and France to seven. And the case can be argued that places should be available for states of the economic, cultural and military status of Germany, Japan and India. Further, commentators also posit the case for the Military Staff Committee – which comes under the umbrella of the Security Council in the UN’s structural hierarchy – to have at at its command a permanent UN force which does not rely on member states making forces available. This would arguably have allowed the UN to head off the tragedy of Rwanda where the commander there had pleaded for 5,000 troops to stifle the aggression but did not receive them.
CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, the UN’s arrangements for peacekeeping have changed markedly since 1945 when its goal was to ensure no repeat of the human catastrophe that was the Second World War. From that date until 1989, its actions were heavily constrained by the Cold War and its inability to act in areas regarded as legitimate spheres of the then-two superpowers. There were successes however, notably in the establishment of a peacekeeping blueprint by Dag Hammarskjold which was effectively interposed between Israeli and Egyptian forces after the Suez Crisis of 1956. After the end of the Cold War, too, the Security Council was united in its resolution to repel Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait in 1991. But clearly there have been problems as the mode of armed aggression has changed from conventional inter-state wars to internal conflicts in failed and failing states of the Global South such as Somalia. The nadir was reached with the genocide of Rwanda in which the UN signally failed to act. With the fluctuating state of its relations with the sole superpower, lack of its own permanent army and the outdated structure of the Security Council, this essay concludes that the UN must embrace even more radical change if it is to be a relevant peacekeeper in the rapidly evolving international system of the 21st century
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