The United States and the Security Council

Collective Security since the Cold War

Brian Frederking

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781135985547
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Relaciones internacionales

This book describes the rules governing international security decision-making and examines the different understandings of collective security in the post-Cold War world.

The post-Cold War world has largely been a struggle over which rules govern global security. Discussions and decisions following the events of 9/11 have highlighted differences and disputes in the United Nations Security Council. Where Russia, China, and France prefer 'procedural' collective security, in which all enforcement attempts must be explicitly authorized by the Security Council, the US and Britain prefer 'substantive' collective security, in which particular countries can sometimes take it upon themselves to enforce the rules of the global community.

Using a constructivist theory of global security to analyze a series of case studies on Iraq (1990-91); Somalia, Rwanda, and Haiti; Bosnia and Kosovo; Afghanistan and Iraq (2003), the author demonstrates how competing interpretations of collective security recur. Challenging the claim that 9/11 fundamentally changed world politics, Brian Frederking argues that the events exacerbated already existing tensions between the veto powers of the UN Security Council.

The United States and the Security Council will be of interest to students and researchers of American foreign policy, security studies and international organizations.

1 The rules of global security

To understand the security–hierarchy paradox, one needs to analyze world politics like a constructivist. Unfortunately, there is very little agreement about what constructivism means. Instead of reviewing these theoretical debates (Finnemore and Sikkink 2001, Checkel 1998, Hopf 1998, Adler 1997), this chapter discusses one particular constructivist approach: rule-oriented constructivism (Onuf 1989, 1998; Kubalkova 2001, and Kratochwil 2001; Frederking 2003). It then presents a rule-oriented constructivist theory of global security. This theory provides the structure for the argument that contemporary world politics is characterized by the security–hierarchy paradox.

Rule-oriented constructivism

The two main arguments of rule-oriented constructivism are: (1) the structures governing world politics are primarily social rather than material; and (2) communicatively rational agents use speech acts to construct the social rules governing world politics. Most constructivists adhere to the first argument. The second argument distinguishes rule-oriented constructivism.

The first argument is ontological, asserting what is important to understand reality. Constructivism is not a theory of world politics. It is an ontology asserting the primacy of social facts, or facts that exist because all the relevant agents agree they exist (Searle 1995). Rule-oriented constructivists call social facts “rules,” arguing that rules such as sovereignty, property, human rights, deterrence, and collective security govern world politics.

Rules are both constitutive and regulative. Rules are constitutive because they tell us what is possible. Rules are regulative because they tell us what is permissible. Rules enable agents to act; they tell us the nature of the situation that we are in, who we and others are, and what goals are appropriate. The regulative nature of rules is easy to understand: rules tell us what to do. The constitutive nature of rules is less easy to see: rules constitute reality by defining agents and contexts. They make action possible by telling agents how to understand themselves, their situation, and their choices within that situation. Global security rules make security policies possible in the way that the rules of tennis make double faults possible or the rules of chess make castling possible. They constitute reality. We would not be able to understand action without them.

There are three different types of rules: beliefs, norms, and identities. Beliefs are shared understandings of the world. Shared beliefs make truth claims about the world; to criticize a belief is to say that it is untrue. Shared beliefs make action possible because agents agree on the nature of the situation. Shared beliefs about how the world works (markets, security, terrorism, the environment, etc.) are fundamental rules of world politics (Adler and Haas 1992). For example, beliefs about whether security is based on military capability or political relationships tell states what is possible and permissible regarding arms control policies (Frederking 2000).

Norms are shared understandings of appropriate action. Norms make appropriateness claims about relationships; to criticize a norm is to say that it is inappropriate. Norms both guide action and make action possible, enabling agents to criticize assertions and justify actions. Norms about how we should treat others (human rights, democracy, equality, hierarchy, colonialism, etc.) are fundamental rules of world politics (Kratochwil 1989). For example, norms about the appropriateness of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) influence the range of possible war-fighting and deterrence policies (Price and Tannenwald 1996).

Identities are shared understandings of ourselves and others. Identities make sincerity claims about agents; to criticize a conveyed identity is to say that it is insincere. Identities enable us to make sense of our actions and the actions of others. Identities about who we are and who others are (enemies, allies, friends, “rogue” states, etc.) are fundamental rules of world politics (Wendt 1999). For example, identities about racial superiority influence decolonization policies and humanitarian interventions (Crawford 2002).

Rule-oriented constructivists ask: What are the rules? What are shared beliefs about how the world works? What are shared norms about how to treat each other? What are shared identities about who the agents are? Of course, agents often contest the rules; much of world politics is disputes about beliefs, norms, and identities. Rule-oriented constructivists explain conflict by stating the competing rules preferred by different agents. For rule-oriented constructivists the essence of world politics is the construction of politically contested rules.

Constructivism challenges theories of world politics with a material ontology asserting that what is most important to understand reality is the material world. Students of world politics are familiar with the differences between neorealism and neoliberalism. But what they have in common is a material ontology. Neorealism emphasizes military power, focusing on the material distribution of capabilities among states in an anarchical system and the policies necessary for states to be secure in that system. Neoliberalism emphasizes money, focusing on the influence of markets and the institutional arrangements necessary for states to maximize wealth.

Using a material or a social ontology greatly influences how one understands world politics. For example, assume that a country has acquired nuclear weapons. For realists, what matters is that this state’s acquisition of weapons alters the balance of power. The state automatically becomes a potential threat to others. Such a changing distribution of capabilities within an anarchical system will cause states to try to restore equilibrium. A realist would expect others to respond by increasing their own military capability, altering alliance patterns, or enhancing deterrence policies. The state’s acquisition of nuclear weapons changes the material structure, thus altering states’ interests and policy preferences.

Within a social ontology, however, the distribution of capabilities alone does little to help us understand this situation. Material structures have meaning only within the context of social rules. What a state acquiring nuclear weapons means depends on existing norms, beliefs, and identities. So a constructivist asks: What are the rules? Do states believe that nuclear weapons increase stability because they deter the aggression of others? Or do states believe that nuclear weapons decrease stability? Is the state an enemy or a friend? Is it North Korea or the Netherlands, Iran or Ukraine? Do prevailing norms encourage or discourage the possession of these weapons? Does the acquisition of nuclear weapons “break the rules”? Constructivists ask these kinds of questions to illustrate the importance of social structures in world politics.

The second rule-oriented constructivist argument is that communicatively rational agents use speech acts to construct social rules. This argument begins with speech act theory, which asserts that language constitutes social action by invoking mutually recognized social rules (Austin 1962; Searle 1969). For example, saying “I do” in a marriage ceremony is a meaningful act because it invokes the rules of marriage. A touchdown creates six points and a promise creates an obligation because those acts invoke rules of football and promising. In the same way, states’ security policies invoke rules of global security.

Four major types of speech acts are assertions, directives, commitments, and expressions. Assertions convey knowledge about the world; examples include “democratic governments do not go to war with each other” and “free trade maximizes economic efficiency.” Directives tell us what we must or should do and often include consequences for disregarding them; examples include domestic laws, Security Council resolutions, and uses of force. Commitments are promises to act in a particular way; examples include treaties, contracts, and international trade. Expressions convey a psychological state; examples include apologizing, boasting, criticizing, or welcoming.

For rule-oriented constructivists “rules derive from, work like, and depend on speech acts, and language and rules together (they can never be separated) are the medium through which agents and structures may be said to constitute each other . . . To study international relations, or any other aspect of human existence, is to study language and rules (Kubalkova 2001: 64, my emphasis).” Language connects agents (speech acts) and structure (rules). When we perform speech acts, we invoke social rules because those rules have the form of speech acts. When we speak, we (re)create the world.

Rules – shared beliefs, norms, and identities – have the form of speech acts. Shared beliefs take the form of assertions that make truth claims about the world. Norms take the form of directives and commitments that make appropriateness claims about how we should treat each other. And identities take the form of expressions that make sincerity claims about who we and others are. These connections show that when agents perform speech acts, they necessarily invoke social rules. Speech acts have meaning only within an already existing structure of social rules.

For rule-oriented constructivists, agents perform speech acts, convey claims, interpret and evaluate the claims of others, and act on the basis of shared claims. Agents are communicatively rational. Communicative rationality defines a rational act as one that effectively conveys claims and invokes rules so that others correctly interpret it (Habermas 1984, 1987; Risse 2000). Communicatively rational speech acts convey implicit claims of truth (beliefs), appropriateness (norms), and sincerity (identity). This dialogic process of agents conveying and evaluating the claims of each other’s speech acts constructs and reconstructs social rules.

Communicatively rational agents evaluate whether claims of truth, appropriateness, and sincerity are warranted. Agents can either challenge or accept an implicit claim of a speech act. For example, suppose a teacher asserts the following to her class: “The United States Civil War occurred in the 1900s.” The class may not challenge the speech act and add it to their notes (!). Or the class could challenge the sincerity claim: the teacher wanted to see if they were paying attention. Or the class could challenge the truth claim: the Civil War was not fought in the 1900s. Or the class could challenge the appropriateness claim: teachers should not give false information to their students. In each case the students invoke – and reinforce – rules about the student–teacher relationship.

The same possibilities structure political interaction. Suppose one country directs another to destroy its WMD within six months. The other country could accept the claims and comply with the directive; it could challenge the sincerity claim (you really want a pretext to invade); it could challenge the normative rightness claim (you should not determine our military capabilities); or it could challenge the truth claim (we cannot possibly disarm within six months). This way of analyzing interaction puts language, rules, and argumentation at the heart of agency. It enables us to generate the rules governing a particular interaction by studying the implicit contents of speech acts (Frederking 2003; Duffy et al. 1998).

We can also treat non-verbal acts as if they were speech acts. Of course, something unspoken is not literally a speech act. However, non-verbal acts often make claims and invoke rules. The use of force is an extremely important example of a communicatively rational non-verbal act. For example, during the cold war the superpowers understood each other’s missile deployments to invoke deterrence rules (Frederking 2000). But missile deployments do not necessarily invoke deterrence rules. They could alter the strategic balance or expand a sphere of influence. A missile deployment is understood as a deterrent only when all agree that certain rules govern the interaction. In this way speech acts, both verbal and non-verbal, construct social reality. How agents justify and interpret the use of force helps constitute reality.

Rule-oriented constructivists take rules and language seriously. Rules make agents and agents make rules through language: “Constructivism challenges the positivist view that language serves only to represent the world as it is. Language also serves a constitutive function. By speaking, we make the world what it is” (Onuf 2002: 126). Language is not a neutral medium; language is itself action. Rule-oriented constructivists thus have an interpretive view of social science (Alker 1996). To understand an act, one must know an agent’s contextual understanding of the situation. One must know the reason for the action; which social rule is the agent invoking with this act? To explain an action, one refers to the rule the agent is following.

When rule-oriented constructivists see world politics, they see communicatively rational agents operating within the context of already constructed, and contested, social rules. These agents perform speech acts to (re)construct the rules that govern world politics. These rules are politically contested because they are inevitably hierarchical; all rules privilege some agents over others. Most other analysts of world politics see strategically rational actors operating within a material structure. These actors adapt to changes within that material structure and choose actions that attempt to maximize power or wealth. Those who emphasize a material ontology argue that constructivists mistake effect for cause: material structures are the “real” causes of the social rules that constructivists emphasize.

Constructivists do not dismiss the reality of the material world. Power and money are real. But a particular set of material circumstances can never determine the social rules that govern interaction. We always interpret the material world. We always have choices about how to act. We use our judgment. The material world only has meaning for us within the context of social rules. We cannot avoid being embedded in our social context. Our social context influences how we interpret the material world more than the material world influences our social context. In this way the social world is more “real.”

Understanding world politics requires taking beliefs, norms, and identities into account. Yet we do not have a language to express that understanding of world politics in a systematic way. This book is an attempt to move toward that goal. To appropriately understand global security, we need to ask: What are the rules?

What rules do states use to justify their security policies? Do states agree about how to organize themselves and solve their security problems? Or is there conflict about which rules should govern us? For rule-oriented constructivists, answering these questions leads to a greater understanding of world politics.

A rule-oriented constructivist theory of global security

Constructivism asserts that social rules govern world politics, but it does not tell us what those rules are. What follows is a rule-oriented constructivist theory of global security. It articulates rules that guide security policies and make security policies possible. These rules help us understand our own security policies and the security policies of others. They enable us to justify and criticize security policies. And they help us understand the debates about global security since the end of the cold war.

During the cold war everyone understood the rules. The United States and the Soviet Union were rivals. Both had a sphere of influence in Europe. Both relied on nuclear deterrence. Both vied for greater influence in the Third World. Both championed their domestic economic system. Both perpetuated the conflict by supporting proxy wars. We have not had a consensus about what the rules of global security are since the cold war ended. (Indeed, we continue to use “postcold war world” because we do not agree on what to call the contemporary era.)

So what are the rules of global security? The rule-oriented constructivist theory of global security presented here asserts that four different security arrangements constitute global security: wars, rivalries, collective security, and security communities (Frederking 2003). A security arrangement is a coherent set of rules that regulate and constitute security policies. The fundamental rules of each security arrangement are in Table 1.1.

The first security arrangement is war. Wars can be conventional conflicts between states, civil wars, hegemonic wars, anti-colonial wars, preemptive wars, or wars between states and transnational groups. The use of force does not necessarily invoke war rules; the use of force can also invoke rivalry or collective security rules. It depends which security arrangement is operative. Did the United States invasion of Iraq invoke war or collective security rules? Whether the world interprets United States uses of force to primarily protect its own narrow interests or the broader concerns of global security is central to many post-cold war security debates.

Table 1.1 Global security arrangements

The second security arrangement is rivalry. Rivalry includes arrangements like power balancing, alliance systems, security dilemmas, arms races, and spheres of influence. Realists expect rivalry rules to dominate global security in a world of sovereign nation states trying to protect their security in an anarchical system. The cold war was a rivalry, but now there are no formal, antagonistic alliances of states targeting their military capability at each other. There are no arms races dominating world politics. Of course, a rivalry between the United States, Russia and China may again dominate global security. Whether United States policies in the post-cold war world have made this more likely is a central theme in this book.

The third security arrangement is collective security. Collective security systems encourage states to generate rules of peaceful behavior, comply with those rules, and punish those who break the rules. States have slowly replaced the cold war rivalry rules with a post-cold war collective security arrangement. This has been a highly contested process. States agree on neither the scope of the rules nor how to enforce those rules. Yet most states – even the five veto powers – tend to invoke collective security rather than rivalry rules to justify their security policies. Disputes over how to most appropriately implement collective security rules are central to post-cold war world politics.

The fourth security arrangement is a security community. Security communities resolve conflict without any threat of the use of force. States in security communities have shared values, common institutions, and a common identity. The United States, Western Europe and Japan see each other as friends and do not consider the use of force a way to resolve disputes between them. Given the history of world politics, this is a staggering accomplishment. Whether Russia and perhaps even China will someday join the Western security community is an important challenge for the future of world politics.

As Table 1.1 shows, security arrangements have five fundamental rules: identity, autonomy, security, deterrence, and the use of force. I make no claim to originality. The contents of the rules are culled from major scholars of international politics, including Alker (1996) on security systems, Onuf (1989) on mutual insecurity systems, Schelling (1960) on deterrence theory, Claude (1962) on collective security, Deutsch (1957) and Adler and Barnett (1998) on security communities, and Wendt (1999) on cultures of world politics.

The identity rule tells us who we are and who others are. If agents identify each other as enemies, then war rules apply. If agents identify each other as rivals, then rivalry rules apply. If agents identify each other as fellow citizens, then collective security rules apply. If agents identify each other as friends, then security community rules apply. Agents often contest the sincerity of conveyed identities and dispute which social arrangement is operative. For example, while the United States claimed to be a citizen upholding human rights norms when the North American Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies intervened in Kosovo, Russia interpreted it as a rival expanding its influence into the former Soviet empire. This kind of debate is central to contemporary world politics.

Sometimes opposed identities are built into the security arrangement. For example, while most states in a collective security arrangement are part of “the civilized world,” others are “rogue states” that cannot be trusted to follow the rules. But “rogue states” are essential to a collective security arrangement. If there are no rogue states, and everyone is trusted to resolve disputes peacefully, then a security community exists. Another example is the mirrored identities often found in rivalries. Each side interprets itself as a defensive, peaceful society besieged by an aggressive, ideologically hostile rival.

The autonomy rule is the fundamental norm of security arrangements. I use “autonomy” rather than “sovereignty” so that the rule can apply to non-state actors. Like all norms, it tells us the appropriate way to treat each other. This particular rule establishes the extent to which it is appropriate to threaten or limit the autonomy of others. When should we leave others alone? And when should we intervene? The autonomy rule is intrinsically connected to the identity rule: what action is appropriate depends on the identity of the agents.

In war it is appropriate to attack if the enemy is threatening you. Agents thus do not recognize the autonomy of others, and perhaps do not recognize the right of others to exist....

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The rules of global security
• 2 Visions of collective security
• 3 Peacekeeping
• 4 Economic sanctions
• 5 The use of force
• 6 International tribunals
• 7 The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
• 8 Human rights
• 9 Terrorism
• Conclusion
• Bibliography