International Security: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (6 page)

If member states of the EU have set aside the security dilemma in their relations with each other, then a similar claim has been made suggesting that liberal democracies have done likewise. Thus, while liberal democracies have fought many wars, they almost never seem to fight each other. Explanations vary. One suggestion is that liberal democracies recognize political disagreements with each other as reflecting the legitimate expressions of their respective citizens. Just as disagreements within liberal democracies are resolved through dialogue and
recourse to laws and general principles, then this is also how disagreements between liberal democracies should be resolved. In contrast, the same respect is not automatically accorded to more autocratic or despotic regimes. Alternatively, it is suggested that the very emergence of the idea of the democratic peace has become self-fulfilling. Thus, insofar as the idea has taken hold then self-respecting democracies, or those states seeking recognition as democracies, are unlikely to take military action against any state with an established democratic identity for fear of damaging their own claim to democratic status.

Since the end of the Cold War the idea that liberal democracies constitute a club of peaceful relations has become highly influential in directing the policies of various Western states. Indeed, the idea has become central to strategies of democracy promotion. As President Bill Clinton put it in his 1994 State of the Union Address, ‘Ultimately the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don’t attack each other.’ The fact that such strategies have sometimes relied on using military force to instigate regime change is perhaps ironic. Historically, though, and as post-colonial and Marxist critics point out, the use of force is hardly new to liberal regimes, which previously sought to impose liberal ideas on large parts of the world through earlier processes of Western colonization and empire building.

Chapter 3
discussed different approaches to the security dilemma and the possibilities of avoiding war. Missing from that chapter, however, was any mention of the United Nations (UN), the world’s primary organization of collective security. Partly this was because different perspectives exist as to the UN’s nature and its ability to contribute to international peace and security. Many, for example, view it as an organization best suited to mitigating the security dilemma, not least through its provision of a setting where differences can be aired and dialogue fostered. Indeed, the organization is often seen as an entrepreneur promoting norms of good governance, upholding commitments to human rights, and establishing standards around trade, and environmental and health issues, etc. More particularly, at times it has also played important roles in promoting the development of security regimes, for example through attempts to regulate the arms trade. Others, however, suggest that through such efforts the UN also enhances the overall sense of international community amongst states, which ultimately might enable them to transcend the security dilemma altogether. Seen in idealized terms the UN occasionally has even been viewed as a global government in waiting.

When the UN was established in 1945 it was certainly saddled with high expectations. The Preamble to the UN Charter, the
organization’s guiding document and constitution, expressed the determination ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’, while Article 1.1 of the Charter identified the maintenance of international peace and security as the organization’s primary purpose. Following two devastating world wars, such goals were understandable. However, the UN’s ability to live up to such aims has been mixed. In part this is related to contextual factors, institutional limitations embedded in the Charter, and emergent tensions in how the UN and its member states variously understand what comprises international peace and security and what needs to be done to achieve or maintain it.

As stated the UN is an organization of collective security, although in reality it falls short of an ideal-type collective security arrangement. Collective security organizations are defined by their member states’ commitment to view the security of each as of common concern. Thus, aggression against one, or against the community’s broader values, should result in a collective response to defend them. Although alliances entail similar commitments, collective security organizations differ by not being constituted against pre-identified enemies or threats and are therefore inherently more ambitious. The reason the UN falls short of the ideal is because some of its commitments to collective security remain voluntary. For example, while the UN is empowered to deploy various peaceful approaches to conflict resolution, and while under Chapter VII of the Charter the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) can authorize member states to use force in collective self-defence and to uphold international peace and security, member states are not obligated to carry out such resolutions.

Similarly, while one of the UN’s strengths is that its membership of 193 states is almost universal, with this enhancing its legitimacy, it is also clear that the security concerns of the
permanent members of the UNSC (China, France, Russia, the UK, and the USA—the P5 who comprised the victorious powers after the Second World War) take precedence over those of others. The UNSC also needs to be distinguished from the UN General Assembly (where all countries are represented and where the principle of sovereign equality, of one member one vote, holds sway) and the Secretariat (the bureaucratic arm of the UN headed by the Secretary-General—currently Ban Ki-moon). Under the UN Charter the Security Council was accorded primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. To do this it can establish various types of peace operations, invoke sanctions, and even authorize military action. Alongside the P5 the UNSC includes a rotating group of ten non-permanent members. However, the P5’s permanent status and their unique right to unilaterally veto resolutions made in the Security Council ultimately provides them with a privileged role in identifying, framing, and responding to key international security concerns.

In 1945, the granting of this privileged status to what were then the world’s most powerful states was necessary to secure their commitment to the new organization and to avoid one of the failings of the UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations. One consequence, however, has been that in the context of the emergence of revived and new powers like Germany, Japan, and India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, and Nigeria, and the declining power of the UK and France, the composition of the P5 seems increasingly anachronistic. More particularly, however, throughout the Cold War the P5’s privileged status also undermined the UN’s ability to play a significant role in many key issues of international peace and security, due to the difficulty the P5 often had in reaching agreements across the Cold War divide. As such, both the USA and Soviet Union deployed their veto power to prevent the UN taking action in various conflicts with an East–West dimension to them. Indicative of the situation was the UNSC resolution in June 1950 sanctioning military action against North Korea following its invasion of South Korea, an action that
was only possible because the Soviet Union was at that time boycotting the UNSC in protest at the continued occupation of the Chinese seat on the Council by the nationalist government based in Taiwan. The Soviet Union argued that the rightful occupant of this seat was the newly created People’s Republic of China. Moscow would not make this mistake again.

Importantly, the UN’s founding in the wake of the Second World War and the subsequent Cold War context also impacted on its understanding of the content of international peace and security, which in the Charter is primarily connected to limiting the use of force between states. The Charter therefore endorsed state sovereignty—the right of states to organize their internal affairs as they wish—as a core principle of the international system. As such, the Charter also endorses the principle of non-intervention in other states’ affairs, and restricts the use of force to prerogatives of self-defence and instances directly authorized by the UNSC. This had two effects for the UN. First, the emphasis on state sovereignty and non-intervention created a tension with commitments also expressed in the Charter regarding rights of self-determination for colonized peoples, an issue which became more polarizing as newly independent former colonies gained UN membership. Second, the emphasis on state sovereignty and non-intervention also meant that, in general, the UN had little interest in civil wars or the gross violations of human rights perpetrated by oppressive regimes against their own populations. International security, therefore, was primarily reduced to a concern with inter-state conflict.

It was only with the end of the Cold War that the UN began to play a more prominent role. No longer hamstrung by the conflict, and with prospects for agreement within the UNSC improved, the UN became increasingly active—with the P5’s use of their veto powers declining significantly. For example, whereas between 1948 and 1988 the UN established 15 peacekeeping operations, since then (until mid 2012) a further 52 have been deployed.
Most notable was the UNSC’s authorization of the use of force in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, with this significantly raising expectations that a new dawn for the UN was under way.

One of the primary mechanisms through which the UN contributes to international peace and security is through its engagement in various types of peace operations. In this respect the UN distinguishes between five types of activity:
conflict prevention
(which concerns attempts to stop disagreements turning violent),
peacemaking
(which concerns diplomatic actions designed to bring warring parties to a negotiated settlement),
peacekeeping
(in which military, law enforcement, and civilian personnel are inserted to help implement agreements reached by peacemakers),
peace enforcement
(which entails using coercive measures to enforce the will of the UNSC), and
peacebuilding
(which concerns the post-conflict situation and attempts to foster peace and reconciliation through the rebuilding of societies). Although much could be said about each of these areas of activity peacekeeping and peace enforcement can be used to highlight some of the challenges the UN faces in its peace operations and the types of debates they provoke.

Peacekeeping is the activity the UN is most renowned for and is most visibly related to the deployment of blue helmeted UN soldiers to monitor and supervise agreements between hostile parties. These might relate to monitoring ceasefires and elections, supervising the disarmament and demobilization of forces, or establishing buffer zones between belligerents—as with the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) deployed to the Sinai Desert in 1956 to separate Egyptian and Israeli forces. Fundamentally, peacekeeping concerns creating a space within which confidence and trust between hostile parties might be built, thereby fostering a more
enduring peace. Peacekeeping is therefore premised on the assumption that the belligerents have reached an agreement and are genuine in their desire for peace. More specifically, peacekeepers are only permitted to use force in self-defence, with this explaining why UN peacekeepers have at times been helpless to protect civilians and prevent atrocities when one side has reneged on their commitments. The futility of the United Nations Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMS), initially deployed in April 2012 to monitor the cessation of armed violence, is a case in point, with UN observers frequently prevented from reaching sites of conflict or intervening on the ground, and with their function reduced to collecting evidence documenting the latest massacre.

Although such instances are often shocking, the reason for such inaction is that peacekeeping mandates are founded on three core principles. First, peacekeeping missions are dependent upon preserving the consent of the relevant parties for their continued presence. If consent is withdrawn peacekeepers are required to leave. Second, to preserve consent UN peacekeepers must therefore remain impartial and neutral with respect to all parties. Third, this means that in peacekeeping missions the UN refrains from directly intervening in conflicts by enforcing agreements as this could be construed as breaching impartiality. For critics, peacekeeping missions can therefore result in morally uncomfortable outcomes, while in other cases they may only serve to freeze, rather than resolve, conflicts. The ongoing UN mission to supervise ceasefire lines and maintain a buffer zone between Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities in Cyprus, which was originally deployed in 1964, is one example (
Figure 3
). As of June 2012 there were a total of 118,100 personnel deployed on 16 ongoing UN peacekeeping operations.

In contrast, peace enforcement entails the UN undertaking actions to force an end to a conflict by imposing the will of the UNSC in situations where it has identified a threat to or a breach of the peace, or an act of aggression. Enforcement, however, can take several forms. At its weakest it may entail the condemnation of one or more sides to a conflict in the hope of shaming them into compliance. More significant are the imposition of sanctions, typically targeted at a belligerent’s economy. Economic sanctions, however, are controversial since they often impact most on the poorest and most vulnerable and therefore raise both questions of utility and morality. For example, economic sanctions imposed on Iraq throughout the 1990s are widely believed to have contributed to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, without having a discernible impact on the specified goal of ending Iraq’s programme of developing weapons of mass destruction. Consequently sanctions have become increasingly targeted, often focusing on individual officials through the freezing of bank accounts and imposing travel restrictions.