UN (United Nations) (see also peacekeeping). The UN was established by charter in San Francisco on 26 June 1945, as a voluntary association of sovereign countries, and came into existence on 24 October 1945, ‘United Nations Day’. According to the preamble of its charter, the UN's principal objective is ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’.
Under Chapter 7, Article 51 of its charter, the UN accepts that countries have a right of individual and collective self-defence if attacked. Chapter 8 of the charter also recognizes the legitimacy of regional security organizations (such as NATO). Otherwise, the UN regards all forms of war as illegal, and asserts its own right to intervene to preserve peace. In this, the UN has a mixed record since 1945. Most countries have wanted the UN to be effective, but not so as to threaten their own interests. One view of the UN, strongly held by many members, is that it is nothing more than the sum of its member countries; another is that it has developed, and will develop, into something more with genuine international authority. But it was neither structured nor intended as a world government.
The term ‘United Nations’ was first used in WW II, in the ‘Declaration by the United Nations’ on 1 January 1942 when 26 countries pledged to oppose the Axis. It was the hope particularly of Franklin D. Roosevelt that the major Allied powers—the USA, USSR, Great Britain, France, and Nationalist China—would continue as the ‘five policemen’ of the world to maintain peace after WW II. To this end the UN (unlike its failed predecessor the League of Nations) was structured to recognize political realities as well as international law.
The UN headquarters in New York has three main components: the Security Council, the General Assembly, and the Secretariat. The Security Council consisted originally of the ‘five policemen’ as permanent members, plus a further six members (increased to ten in 1965) drawn from the General Assembly for two-year terms. A Security Council resolution requires a simple majority of votes to pass, with each of the five permanent members having a power of veto. Nationalist China (Taiwan) kept the Chinese permanent seat on the Security Council until 1972, when the USA recognized communist China. In 1991 Russia succeeded to the defunct USSR's permanent seat. The political effectiveness of the Security Council was greatly restricted by superpower rivalry in the Cold War, and it failed to act over some wars involving the superpowers either directly or indirectly, including the Vietnam war and the Iran-Iraq war.
The General Assembly consists of all sovereign member countries of the UN, each with one vote. The original membership of 51 increased to 185 by 1999. Membership is by election and countries can be expelled or resign, but the UN charter regards its authority as binding even on non-members. For a resolution to pass the General Assembly requires a simple majority in most cases, but a two-thirds majority in important cases. The role of the General Assembly in diplomacy, providing a point of contact for many countries, was very important in the decolonization era.
The UN Secretariat is headed by the Secretary-General, a five-year renewable appointment by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council. The role of the Secretary-General and Secretariat has expanded chiefly because of the Cold War paralysis of the Security Council. As with the UN itself, some Secretary-Generals have been more proactive and ambitious than others, and controversy has resulted when they have pursued UN policies at variance to those of the major powers.
Other than self-defence under Article 51, the UN charter covers two broad areas related to peace and military force. Chapter 6 deals with the peaceful settlement of disputes, in which all sides seek a solution. Chapter 7 deals with ‘Action in respect of threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression’. Under Article 39 of this chapter, the Security Council may determine that a threat to international peace and security exists, and under Article 42 it ‘may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security’. No enforcement operation would be possible against a major power without a major war, and the UN would have failed in its purpose should this happen. But other than this, the Security Council may authorize a very wide range of actions, from unarmed policing to a regional war. This has also helped prevent direct superpower military confrontation, particularly over conflicts in the Middle East.
It was intended under Chapter 7 that the UN would have its own armed forces supplied by member countries, to be agreed by a Military Staff Committee. Cold War rivalry, and the reluctance of countries to place their forces under direct UN control, meant that this never happened. Instead, member countries are invited to contribute forces to UN operations. This has also enhanced the role of the Secretary-General, who is responsible for the administration, organization, and daily operation of such forces. However, member countries have sometimes failed to contribute the forces necessary for UN success.
The first case of the Security Council determining a threat to international peace under Article 39 came in 1947 over the boundaries of the new state of Israel. The result was the deployment in 1948, under the authority of Chapter 6, of a UN monitoring contingent, the UN Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO), which lasted until 1987, and set a precedent for many such contingents. For many years the only UN Chapter 7 operation was the Korean war. In July 1950 the Security Council passed resolutions condemning the North Korean invasion of South Korea and establishing a UN command, so that the war was fought under UN badges and insignia. The USSR, which had temporarily boycotted the Security Council, regarded these resolutions as unconstitutional, and blocked further Security Council action. In response, in November 1950 the General Assembly passed its historic and controversial ‘Uniting for Peace’ resolution, which declared that if the Security Council failed to carry out its function then the General Assembly could act instead. A Cold War criticism of the Security Council was that its resolutions simply legitimized the interests of the USA. Gen MacArthur, the commander in Korea 1950-1, later described his UN command as ‘entirely notional’.
The next major UN development came in October 1956, at the end of the Suez campaign. When Britain and France vetoed resolutions in the Security Council, the ‘Uniting for Peace’ mechanism was invoked to transfer the issue to the General Assembly. This accepted a Canadian proposal for a multinational UN Emergency Force (UNEF I) to deploy with mutual consent on the border between Egypt and Israel, and in the Canal Zone. This enabled the British and French to withdraw, and avoided superpower involvement. UNEF I became the prototype for Chapter 6 peacekeeping forces established by the Security Council.
Between 1948 and 1998 there were 49 UN peacekeeping operations including observer missions, 36 of them created in the last decade. The terms of peacekeeping operations are defined by Security Council resolutions, and UN command of troops is negotiated with their country of origin. Most troops wear their national uniforms with UN badges and insignia, most particularly the distinctive UN light blue headgear, and vehicles are painted white. UN peacekeeping forces are lightly armed, and depend on consent for their presence. Since 1948, altogether 118 countries have contributed more than 500, 000 troops to peacekeeping operations, and some countries such as Canada and Fiji have taken part in almost every one. Until 1991 it was almost unknown for the permanent five members of the Security Council to contribute troops to a peacekeeping operation (the exception being British participation in UNFICYP on Cyprus since 1964). Being drawn from many countries, peacekeeping forces are not structured or equipped to cope with major military operations or high levels of fighting. The UN priority is peace rather than a settlement acceptable to all sides, and many peacekeeping deployments have lasted for decades. The UN pays countries $1, 000 per soldier per month, plus equipment charges, for peacekeeping forces, and is reimbursed by member countries. Costs of peacekeeping peaked in 1993 at almost $4 billion, while member countries owe the UN $1.75 billion in unpaid peacekeeping dues. In 1988 the UN peacekeeping forces were collectively awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Under Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary-General 1953-61, the UN Secretariat argued for a notional ‘Chapter 6½’ of the charter: military action that was more than peace but less than a war. The closest to this was ONUC (1960-4), the UN involvement in the civil war in the newly independent Congo, which saw in June 1960 the first use of Article 99 of the charter (allowing the Secretary-General to warn the Security Council of a threat to peace), and a further use of the ‘Uniting for Peace’ mechanism in September. From this experience Hammarskjold (who was killed in an air crash in the Congo in September 1961, being posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) developed principles for UN peacekeeping that are still in existence. The view emerged that the UN could mount peacekeeping, but that ‘peace enforcement’ should be left to national forces with UN authorization.
Chapter 1 Article 2(7) of the charter forbids the UN to intervene in matters ‘within the domestic jurisdiction’ of any country. However, UN internationalism, peacekeeping, and the problem of civil wars have increasingly reduced the definition of ‘domestic jurisdiction’, together with the argument that some countries' behaviour is so outrageous as to constitute a threat to international peace. This was invoked for the first time in 1966 by the British over the unilateral declaration of independence by Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) the previous year (see Rhodesia war), leading to the first case of the Security Council imposing mandatory trade sanctions.
A major change in the effectiveness of the UN came with the end of the Cold War. In November 1990 the Security Council authorized, for the first time since Korea, a full-scale Chapter 7 operation, which became the 1991 Gulf war against Iraq. This time there was no overall UN command structure, and contingents fought on a national basis. With the Security Council no longer deadlocked, Chapter 7 resolutions have been passed since 1991 in support of several smaller operations, such as the American use of force to restore the government of Haiti in 1995.
Following the Gulf war, in 1991 the Security Council passed a historic series of resolutions stipulating Iraqi conduct, rejecting the argument that these fell within Iraqi domestic jurisdiction. In 1992 Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghalli (1992-7) argued that a new era of ‘collective sovereignty’ was emerging, giving the UN a new mandate. A UN doctrine of international legal authority—or even obligation—for intervention in countries in crisis or civil war rapidly emerged. This was followed by a number of controversial UN operations that—as with ONUC in the Congo—exposed the problems of ‘Chapter 6½’ and the gap between UN ambition and political reality, These included UN involvement in the disintegrating former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda (1994), and in Somalia. The civil war in Yugoslavia also saw increasing co-operation between the UN and NATO, in a new role as a force for regional peacekeeping. This led in 1995 to a NATO peace enforcement contingent replacing the UN peacekeeping force in Bosnia.
Bibliography
- Bellamy, Christopher, Knights in White Armour (London, 1996).
- Hillen, John, Blue Helmets (Washington, 1998).
- Parsons, Anthony, From Cold War to Hot Peace (London, 1995).
- The Yearbook of the United Nations (New York, 1947- )
— Stephen Badsey
