Lecture 6UN responses to conflict

The UN and the Cold War

• With the rapid break-up of the wartime alliance after 1945, the UN was rarely able to act as its founders had intended

• Proposals for a standing military force for the UN were never realised

The UN and the Cold War (2)• Superpower rivalry

often paralysed the UN, as the Soviet Union used its veto frequently

• The UN was therefore unable to intervene in most major conflicts, especially those in which the superpowers had direct interests

Korea, the Cold War exception

• The Korean War, which followed the communist invasion of South Korean in 1950, was the great exception

• The SC approved military action under Chapter VII while the Soviet Union was boycotting its sessions

Uniting for Peace

• Where the Security Council could not agree, the General Assembly can take limited initiative under the terms of its “Uniting for Peace” resolution, passed in 1950

• The GA can, in such cases, convene emergency sessions – one such session led to the peacekeeping initiative in 1956

UN peacekeeping• Unable to function as

intended, the UN looked for other ways to promote peace

• Dag Hammarskjöld (the UN Secretary General) and Lester Pearson, the Canadian Foreign Minister, invented the concept of peacekeeping

The principles of peacekeeping

• Consent – the UN could become involved only after both sides gave them permission

• Impartiality – the UN could not take sides in the conflict or its aftermath

• Minimal use of force – the UN could use force only in self-defence

Peacekeeping

• The first peacekeepers were employed successfully along the border between Egypt and Israel after the 1956 Arab-Israeli War

Peacekeeping today

• Peacekeeping remains the most common form of UN intervention – over 100 peacekeeping missions have been carried out

• 16 peacekeeping operations are still continuing

A “new world order”:the Gulf War of 1991

• Coming as Cold War tensions were passing, the Gulf War was a classic Chapter VII action in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990

• Security Council Resolution 678 authorised military action against Iraq if it refused to withdraw

• Forces from 34 countries liberated Kuwait in February 1991

• Seen by many as an example of new levels of cooperation possible with the end of the Cold War

After the Cold War• The end of the Cold War allowed the UN to

attempt a more active policy, with Russia and China rarely using their veto

• The UN tried to carry out wider forms of intervention beyond peacekeeping: peace operations, peace support operations and humanitarian intervention

• These are controversial, as the UN is still bound to recognise the sovereignty of its members and has a clear mandate to act only when one state threatens another (Chapter VII)

An Agenda for Peace, 1992

• The new ideas were described in An Agenda for Peace, written by Secretary General Boutros-Ghali in 1992

• He noted that the end of the Cold War gave the UN the best opportunity to fulfil its intended role

• This suggested “post-conflict peacebuilding” as a valid strategy for the UN to complement its peacemaking and peacekeeing strategies

Failure in Somalia, 1992

• In December 1992, SC Resolution 794 authorised a Unified Task Force to provide security and humanitarian intervention in Somalia, which had disintegrated into civil war

• Between 1993 and 1994, the UN force (UNOSOM II) operated in the country

• In 1993, 18 US troops were killed in clashes with forces loyal to a local warlord, General Aidid (the Battle of Mogadishu)

• The incident led to the withdrawal of the UN force and destroyed US enthusiasm for foreign intervention

Failure in Rwanda, 1994• In Rwanda in 1994, ethnic

tensions led to the systematic murder of 800,000 minority Tutsis (and moderate Hutus) by militant Hutus over three months

• A small UN protection force in Rwanda failed to secure a wider mandate to protect civilians

• The UN Security Council failed to agree on how to intervene

Failure in Bosnia, 1992-95• A UN force was authorised to

protect civilians after the break-up of Yugoslavia led to civil war, and entered the country in 1992

• Despite the presence of UN forces and the creation of UN safe zones for civilians, Bosnian Serbs were able to capture 8,000 Bosnian civilians at Srebrenica in July 1995; these were all murdered

• NATO then took the initiative in deterring further Bosnian Serb moves

Failure in Kosovo, 1999• After several failures to

intervene to protect civilians, NATO took the initiative in the Kosovo crisis of 1999, when ethnic Albanians forming the majority in the province sought independence from Yugoslavia (Serbia)

• The Serbs withdrew from the province after weeks of NATO bombing

The Blair Doctrine, 1999

• Shortly after the NATO intervention in Kosovo, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair defended the action and called for new guidelines for UN intervention

• He claimed humanitarian intervention – overriding sovereignty – to protect civilians is justified, as “Acts of genocide can never be a purely internal matter”

Kofi Annan on UN intervention

• In 1999 Kofi Annan, then the UN Secretary General, addressed the same themes in an article Two Concepts of Sovereignty

• He called for a new guidelines on how, when and who could intervene in cases where human rights were being violated

The Responsibility to Protect

• A 2001 document written partly in response to the failures in Rwanda and elsewhere

• The report seeks to establish a clearer code for humanitarian intervention

• The ‘responsibility to protect’ is seen as less problematic than the ‘right to intervene’, but is still controversial

The USA and Iraq, 2002-03• The United Nations was ineffective in the

bipolar world of the Cold War, but was also undermined when the United States took unilateral action against Saddam Hussein in 2003

• "If we need to act, we will act, and we really don't need United Nations approval to do so. We really don't need anybody's permission." George W Bush, March 2003

Libya, 2011• The Libyan civil war was one episode of

the “Arab Spring” sweeping the region

• UN intervention followed a broader interpretation of Chapter VII, responding to “threats to regional security”

• Security Council Resolution 1973 authorised a no-fly zone over Libya, to prevent government air strikes against civilians

Syria, 2013?

• Events in Syria have followed the same pattern in Libya, but Syria’s relations with Iran and Russia have complicated the international response

• In February 2012, Russia and China vetoed a SC Resolution calling for a peaceful transition of power in Syria

• What next?

The UN dilemma

“At its best and at its worst, the UN is a mirror of our world: it reflects our differences and our convergences, our hopes and aspirations, and our limitations and failures.”

Shashi Tharoor, UN Under-Secretary, 2005