The United Nations and Peace Enforcement

Wars, Terrorism and Democracy

Mohamed Awad Osman, Mohamed Osman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781138734579
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351738163
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This title was first published in 2002.This original text studies the UN system for the maintenance of international peace and security in the face of threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression. It assesses the Security Council attempts to employ enforcement measures under Chapter VII of the UN Charter in response to inter-state and intra-state conflicts, paying attention to the effect of the Council's increasing involvement in internal situations, both on the development of the system and on the outcome of conflicts. Filling a notable lacuna in contemporary literature, Mohamed Osman studies peace enforcement on its own and within an independent theoretical and empirical framework. The book will appeal both to students of the UN and humanitarian intervention, but also to international lawyers and political philosophers concerned with questions of intervention and sovereignty. In addition, its detailed case studies make the volume an excellent reference tool.

1 Introduction

1.1 Rationale

It is almost axiomatic to say that the role of the United Nations in the area of peace enforcement received little attention during the Cold War. Scholarly literature concentrated on the only experience of explicitly authorised UN enforcement military action in Korea (1950), and the only two cases of UN mandatory sanctions in Rhodesia (1967) and South Africa (1977). Therefore, the paucity in practice was the main reason for the limited academic and intellectual interest in the area of peace enforcement. Brian Urquhart observed in 1986 that

we rarely hear much about Chapter VII - Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression - the once famous ‘teeth’ of the United Nations of which everyone was so proud at the Organisation's birth. It seems as if the international body politic is now too weary, too distracted, too divided, too lacking in common purpose ever to decide to use its teeth.¹

Scholars were favourably inclined to study the use of force by states in the form of a unilateral action and military intervention where constitutional justification centred on the right of self-defence. With contrast to the only explicit incident of UN peace enforcement operation in Korea, the use of force in a unilateral manner was mobilised in many conflicts. Sanctions were also imposed in many cases by individual states and through regional organisations and groups, beyond the authority of the Security Council. Consequently, academic writings continued to focus on these uses of force and sanctions outside the UN framework.

This situation was primarily created by the continuing confrontation between the East and West during the Cold War. Power politics and unrelenting disparity among the big powers impeded the Security Council from taking collective measures, but other political and economic factors which predated the Cold War in their origins had also contributed to the stalemate. Within the UN a new consensual and impartial alternative system was established to help warring parties by observing ceasefire agreements and acting as a buffer force to keep the peace in areas of conflict. Between 1947 and 1988, the UN authorised 13 peacekeeping operations. Therefore, the emphasis shifted to the study of peacekeeping. Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye observed in 1987 that ‘Limited peacekeeping is worth considering, not the overly ambitious efforts reflected in Korea and the Congo.’²

Following the debacle of the Eastern bloc at the end of the 1980s, a new atmosphere of co-operation between the East and West has emerged, allowing for an unprecedented reactivation of the UN system for the maintenance of international peace and security. The Security Council was in several conflicts able to impose military and economic measures under Chapter VII. As a result of these actions, peace enforcement re-emerged as an important subject in the study of international relations and international law. However, the majority of contemporary studies treated peace enforcement in the context of peacekeeping.

This study stems from a limitation in the field of international peace and security that the comprehensive and integral study of the important political and constitutional aspects of peace enforcement is still missing. It intends to fill a hiatus in contemporary literature by studying peace enforcement on its own and within an independent theoretical and empirical framework. The many optimistic and euphoric studies in the first years of the post-Cold War period were soon followed by sudden quantum retreat and doubts over the viability of the system. The cognitive effect of such retraction was the hindering of a steady development of new thinking in the field. It is evident that the application of peace enforcement has been a mixture of success and failure; however, there is amble evidence that alternative unilateral strategies have also failed to accomplish the objectives of the international community in many situations. ‘Interventionist’ methods such as ‘humanitarian intervention’ and the ‘new internationalism’ have failed to provide an alternative which is conceptually and structurally unassailable.

The study accepts the assertion that the Cold War hindered the mobilisation of the UN peace enforcement system, but it refers to the blemish of generalisation entailed in this assertion. Generalisation would obscure the role of some political dynamics which are not solely pertinent to the Cold War. For instance, the study argues that European colonialism and its legacy in Africa were responsible for the Security Council's inability to invoke explicitly Chapter VII peace enforcement measures during the Congo crises in the early 1960s, even though ONUC embodied many characteristics of peace enforcement.

It is widely held that the use of the veto by the great powers was the main reason for the Council's inability to undertake enforcement action to resolve conflicts during the Cold War. The study makes a contrary argument that most of the uses of the veto by permanent members were meant to protest against insufficient measures envisaged by Security Council draft resolutions, because it was in the interest of the vetoing permanent member to undertake a tougher action. However, the thesis agrees that the right of veto reduced the chances of the UN to act as a centralised agency capable of taking effective action to enforce the peace. It further accedes to the pleonastic fact that the great powers used the veto in many situations to protect their interests and to prevent the authorisation of enforcement measures against their will.

1.2 The Structure of the Book

Chapter 2 indicates the necessity and importance of theorising on peace enforcement as an independent concept distinguished from other systems of peace maintenance. It undertakes a major task of reconceptualising peace enforcement. It argues that the increasing employment of enforcement measures in civil wars and newly emerging transnational and regional situations has significantly transformed the parameters of peace enforcement and has thereby necessitated its reconceptualisation.

Chapter 3 studies the case of Kuwait as the most systematic and explicit experience of the application of the UN scheme for peace enforcement. The provisions of Articles 39, 40, 41 and 42 were systematically implemented during the period from August 1990 to January 1991. It also discusses the issue of how sanctions end, and the food for oil deal as a model of exceptions to the sanctions regime.

The book attaches special importance to the role of the United States in the processes of authorisation and implementation of enforcement measures and for this reason Chapter 4 is devoted to the role of the US. It attempts to clarify the relation between the US and UN over cases of peace enforcement, addressing the nature of this relation and whether it is built on exploitation or co-operation. The study of the US role in relation to roles of the Security Council will help to explain not only the organisational aspects of the role of the Security Council but also the influence of national interests, the actual actors, and Realpolitik behind the Council resolutions.

Chapter 5 examines four major constitutional problems and their effects on the course of authorisation in the Council and the practice of peace enforcement operations. It further contributes to the field by suggesting a four- point criterion for the measuring of adequacy and inadequacy of sanctions under Article 41 before the Council can move to authorise the undertaking of a military action.

Chapter 6 examines the innovative role of the Security Council in the area of international terrorism during the 1990s and the undertaking of enforcement measures under Chapter VII of the Charter to combat transnational terrorist activities.

Chapter 7 reviews cases of peace enforcement during the Cold War and Chapter 8 reviews cases during the post-Cold War period. Chapter 9 draws conclusions for the study of peace enforcement.

¹ B. Urquhart (1986), ‘The Role of the United Nations in Maintaining and Improving International Security’ (1986 Alastair Bunchan Memorial Lecture), Survival, vol. XXVIII, no. 5, p. 391.

² R.O. Keohane and J.S. Nye (1989), Power and Interdependence, HarperCollins, London, 2nd edn, p. 280.

2 The Theory of Peace Enforcement

2.1 Confusion in Terminology

Peace enforcement has been constitutionally and operationally confused with other terms, such as peacekeeping, peacemaking, preventive deployment, collective self-defence and humanitarian intervention. Each of these terms was, on many occasions, used as a synonym or substitute for peace enforcement. In practice peace enforcement may interact with other kinds of international responses and the United Nations may find itself in a perilous situation by acting in grey areas between two or more of these mandates. N.D. White observed that ‘the divisions between observation, peacekeeping and peace enforcement action are unclear, as there are grey areas in which one function merges into another’.¹

Robert Oakley cited ‘several different definitions of both peacemaking and peacekeeping’, arguing that the ‘United Kingdom, for example, uses the former as the United States uses the term “peace enforcement” - the application of considerable military forces to bring about peace, by imposing it if need be’. Oakley himself preferred to define peacemaking ‘as diplomacy, mediation, conflict prevention, or conflict resolution’.² To understand what Oakley meant by peacemaking requires interpretation of each component of the terms included in his definition.

While it is true that there is no universal agreement on the meaning of these terms, it is difficult to make an accurate distinction between various definitions on geographical or cultural bases, and differences between the UK and the US in defining peace operations are not so clear. Contrary to Oakley's argument, the American Bar Association stated in its Report on Peacekeeping, Peacemaking, and Peace Enforcement that peace enforcement forces may be ‘referred to as “peacemaking” troops’,³ while a British diplomat and UN Under-Secretary-General until 1997, Sir Marrack Goulding, asserted that ‘Peacemaking means attempts to negotiate peace settlements.’⁴ The degree of confusion posed by the overlapping use of these terms makes any attempt to verify them even rudimentarily a precarious task, unless a coherent framework is set up for the comprehension of peace enforcement on its own.

A former Netherlands representative at the Security Council, Hugo Scheltema, used the term peacemaking to refer to peace enforcement measures under Chapter VII. He stated that ‘The essence of peacekeeping is that it is not peace-making. There is no coercion and no enforcement under Chapter VII of the Charter. Any peacekeeping operation is based on consensus of all parties concerned.’⁵

Peace enforcement measures undertaken by the Security Council were divided in relevant literature according to their functions and mandates into different types: decentralised,⁶ limited, selective and subcontracted. However, there is no agreement among scholars on the use of these terms to describe certain enforcement measures. Furthermore, peace enforcement has been used in conjunction with other established methods of conflict resolution, such as humanitarian intervention, preventive deployment and action in self-defence. Examples of this are ‘Humanitarian enforcement’, ‘preventive enforcement’⁷ and ‘self-enforcement’. It is also influenced by the use of the term ‘enforcement’ in customary international law⁸ which embodies a limited forensic concept compared with the scope of UN system for peace enforcement.

Peace enforcement has been equated with terms linked to peacekeeping. Scholars and practitioners have repeatedly referred to peace enforcement as ‘wider peacekeeping’, ‘robust peacekeeping’,⁹ ‘third generation peacekeeping’, ‘enlarged peacekeeping’, ‘peace keeping with muscles’. The terms ‘multifunctional peacekeeping’¹⁰ or ‘multi-dimensional peacekeeping’¹¹ were also used to describe comprehensive operational responses with peace enforcement mandates.

The prevalence of peacekeeping has had a vehement impact on the perception of peace enforcement. Writers tended to use the term ‘operations’ - originally applied to peacekeeping - analogously to describe peace enforcement measures, but this understanding blurs the differences in function and mandate between the two methods an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Theory of Peace Enforcement
• 3 The Role of the Security Council in the Kuwait Crisis
• 4 The Role of the USA in Peace Enforcement Operations
• 5 Constitutional Problems
• 6 Peace Enforcement and International Terrorism
• 7 The Cold War
• 8 The Post-Cold War Period
• 9 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index