The UN Security Council in the Post-Cold War World: 1987-97

1 UN Document SG/SM/3956 of 13 January 1987.

2 See Cameron Hume, The United Nations, Iran and Iraq: How Peacemaking Changed (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1994), pp. 81-82 and 88-102.

3 Mikhail S. Gorbachev, `Reality and the Guarantees of a Secure World', in FBIS Daily Report: Soviet Union, 17 September 1987, pp. 23 - 28.

4 Security Council Resolution (SCR) 678 of 29 November 1990.

5 Some measures adopted by France, the UK, and the USA, particularly in northern Iraq (to protect and provide assistance to the Kurds), were initiated without explicit UNSC authorization. These measures were, however, never seriously challenged within the Council. Some of the humanitarian activities of Operation Provide Comfort were eventually taken over by the UN.

6 In addition, the Council authorized the US-led Unified Task Force in Somalia (UNITAF - 1992); and an UNPROFOR presence, in effect a preventive deployment, in Macedonia (1992).

7 S/PV.3046 of 31 January 1992.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 A/47/277 of 17 June 1992.

11 Ibid, paragraph 42. Boutros-Ghali advocated the activation of the UN Charter's Article 43, under which member-states make armed forces, assistance and facilities available to the UNSC for enforcement purposes, the offering state relinquishing control over these assets to the Council. No such offers have ever, to date, been made to the UN.

12 For an account of follow-up within the UN to the report, see David Cox, Exploring an Agenda for Peace: Issues Arising from the Report of the Secretary-General (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Global Security, 1993).

13 A/50/60 of 3 January 1995, p. 18.

14 By June 1997, only USD 400,000 of the USD 2 million needed to launch this headquarters had been collected on a voluntary basis from governments.

15 As well, the Russians complained of `double standards' under which the USA got pretty much what it wanted, e.g. on Haiti and the Dayton Accords, while Western support for a small UN Mission to observe the CIS peace-keeping operation in Abkhazia was grudging.

16 There were two vetoes by Russia (in May 1993 over the financing of UNFICYP in Cyprus and in December 1994 over sanctions against Serbia), three by the USA (in May 1995 over Israeli expropriation of land in East Jerusalem, and two in March 1997 over Israeli settlement practices in occupied territories) and one by China (in January 1997 over a proposed UN peace-keeping operation in Guatemala). One of the Russian vetoes and the Chinese one were soon reversed. Decreasing use of the veto was not yet evident in the late 1980s: from January 1987 to May 1990 15 vetoes were invoked, mostly by the USA, sometimes acting jointly with the UK (and once also with France). Vetoes against the selection of certain candidates for the position of Secretary-General are not included here, following the practice of the Table of Vetoed Draft Resolutions in the United Nations Security Council, 1946-93 (London: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Research and Analysis Department, 1994).

17 Confidential interview.

18 For a sophisticated discussion of factors contributing to the weight within the Council of the P-5, see David Caron, `The Legitimacy of the Collective Authority of the Security Council', The American Journal of International Law, 1993, vol. 87, pp. 562-566.

19 S/25997 for draft resolution and S/PV.3247 for the bitter Council debate on it.

20 See Sally Morphet, `The Influence of States and Groups of States on and in the Security Council and General Assembly, 1980-94', Review of International Studies, vol. 21, no. 4, October 1995, pp. 435-462.

21 Restrictive views on Article 2 (7) had already evolved to some extent in the 1960s with respect to the issue of apartheid in South Africa, both an essentially `internal' problem in South Africa, but one with which the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council were to grapple, the latter as early as 1 April 1960 with the adoption of Resolution 134.

22 A debate, spearheaded by French Humanitarian Affairs Minister Bernard Kouchner, arose, particularly in 1992-94, on the UN's `right to intervene' in civil conflicts in pursuit of humanitarian objectives. Some also spoke of the `duty to intervene' when civilian populations were threatened. This debate largely subsided in 1995, with the complexities of civil conflict, and the risks posed by outside intervention in them, becoming more clearly understood.

23 See Michael Ignatieff, `Unarmed Warriors', The New Yorker, 24 March 1997, pp. 54-71.

24 See The Blue Helmets (New York: United Nations, 1990), pp. 361-367 and Nation Building: The U.N. and Namibia (Washington, DC: National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, 1990), pp. 23-25.

25 In spite of disturbing domestic developments in Cambodia in mid-1997, undermining the outcome of the UN-supervised elections there of 1993, the international community is unlikely to turn its back on that country, simply writing off its USD 2 billion investment in national reconstruction, 1991-93. Rather, regional governments, acting under the ASEAN umbrella and with tacit support from the P-5, may well invite the UN to help supervise and monitor elections there in 1998 in an attempt to get peace-building back on track.

26 The Secretariat had opposed these decisions without a quantum leap in the numbers of personnel and the types of equipment hitherto provided to UNPROFOR. France and the UK did increase their military commitments to UNPROFOR, but others did not.

27 For an account of the improvised nature of much Security Council decision-making on Bosnia, including on the `safe areas', see David Hannay, `The UN's Role in Bosnia', Oxford International Review, Spring 1996, pp. 4-11.

28 SCR 1031 (1995).

29 S/25500 of 1 April 1993. See also Alvaro de Soto & Graciana del Castillo, `Implementation of Comprehensive Peace Agreements: Staying the Course in El Salvador', Global Governance, No.1 (1995), pp. 189-203; and Ian Johnstone, Rights and Reconciliation: UN Strategies in El Salvador, (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995), pp. 34-40.

30 There is a tension between the liberal democratic paradigm, reflected in Security Council-backed accords that centre on majoritarian democratic elections, and the power-sharing arrangements that the Council sometimes promotes as a solution to identity-based conflict. The conventional interpretation of self-determination may be moving away from a perceived right of independence to greater focus on how to achieve increasing political participation within a given state.

31 See Mohammed Bedjaoui, The New World Order and the Security Council: Testing the Legality of its Acts (Dordrecht: M. Nijhoff, 1994), particularly pp. 159-164.

32 See the conference report of the 1994 meeting of the French Society for International Law at Rennes: Société française pour le droit international, Le Chapitre VII de la Charte des Nations unies (Paris: A. Pédone, 1995).

33 A/50/47 of 13 September 1996 and A/50/47/Add.1 of 9 September 1996.

34 For a discussion of national desiderata on Security Council reform, see Jerzy Ciechanski, `Restructuring of the UN Security Council', International Peacekeeping, vol. 1, no. 4, Winter 1994, pp. 413-39. For a cogent and concise discussion of the principal issues involved, see Sam Daws, `The Reform of the UN Security Council: Introduction' in Paul Taylor, Sam Daws & Ute Adamczick-Gerteis, Documents on Reform of the United Nation, (Dartmouth Publ of Aldershot [UK] Dartmouth, 1997), pp. 415-418.

35 See Michael Wood, `Security Council Working Methods and Procedure: Recent Developments', The International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Volume 45, January 1996, pp. 150-161. To gauge how much had changed in the Council's working methods, see Sydney D. Bailey, The Procedure of the Security Council, 2nd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

36 For an account of how the `Group of Friends' on Haiti operated, see Diego Arria, `Diplomacy and the Four Friends of Haiti', in Geroges Fauriol, ed., Haitian Frustrations, Dilemmas for U.S. Policy (Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC, 1995), pp. 96-97.

37 Public support for multilateral rather than unilateral military action was strong mid-decade, despite UN setbacks, even in the USA, where 69% of the population preferred multilateral to unilateral action, compared to 17% for the reverse proposition. (See UNA-USA Press Release `US public support for the UN unexpectedly grows, new poll shows', 7 December 1995.) Gwyn Prins writes, in The Applicability of the `Nato Model' to United Nations Peace Support Operations Under the Security Council (New York: UNA-USA, 1996), p. 9: `Clearly the blessing of the UN is thought to be worth having; and the ability to dispense or to withhold blessing is a source of power. So the UN has scope for action...'