-
The United Nations Security Council And International Conflict Resolution
[A CASE STUDY OF THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL WEAPON INSPECTION IN IRA]
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 4]
Page 2 of 4
-
-
-
LITERATURE REVIEW
The literature
review focuses on the diverse scholarly perspectives on the vexed issue
of the invasion of Iraq considered fundamental in understanding and
answering the questions posed in this paper. This includes the
theoretical arguments with regards to the legality and justification of
the invasion, the history and dynamics of UNSC’s role in the invasion of
Iraq.
DID THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL SUPPORT FOR THE INVASION OF IRAQ
HELPS ELIMINATE THE PRODUCTION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION IN IRAQ?
In
the decade before the latest Iraq war, were numerous crises giving rise
to demands for military action and particularly for intervention in
States without the consent of those states government. Force has been
used in a wide variety of circumstances and with a wide variety of legal
justifications and authorizing bodies. Some of these actions have
challenged certain aspects of the existing body of international law
relating to the resort of force, in particular, they have been seen as
either violating, moving beyond or reinterpreting the two principal
accepted legal grounds for the use of force or self- defence as
recognized in Article 51 of the UN Charter and authorization by the UN
Security Council.
According to Anjali (2002), the power of Security
Council in dealing with disputes and situations that may disrupt
international peace and security are the logical consequences of the
“primary responsibility†conferred under Article 24, the specific powers
given to the Council under Chapter VI and VII of the Charter can be
conveniently grouped under two headings; those powers that the organ may
excise to maintain or restore international peace and security once
peace has been threatened or breached (1946-1990).
According to
Amechi (2003), it should be noted that the maintenance of international
peace and security is a primary function not of the state but of the U.N
as an international institution with a judicial personality, it is
therefore unacceptable for a member of the UN to develop a foreign
policy incompatible with this provision. He cited Article 33 which
provides that:
Parties to dispute, the continuance of which is likely
to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall
first of all seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation,
conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort. To regional
agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice
(Amechi, 2003:81).
Amechi (2003) further observes that Article 2(3)
and 33 impose a duty on all to settle difference by peaceful means for
either to do otherwise is a breach of the charter and therefore a breach
of international law.
According to him…The United States did not
exhaust the remedies provided in Article 33, Article 2(4) requires All
members not only to use force against other states, but also not to
threaten any other state with use of force: both the threat of force and
the use of force are in conflict with Article 2(4) of the charter.
The
United States and its allies not only threaten Iraq with use of force
if it did not allow the UN inspectors “free access†as understand by the
US, it would be attacked not by the UN but by the US and its allies.
Similarly,
Adam (2003) has expressed that; the greatest problems regarding the
legitimacy of uses of force arise when they are neither authorized by
the Security Council nor a straight forward case of self- defence in
response to an armed attack. To put it appropriately in his words:
It
would be easy to say that, apart from the cases of self-defence, force
should never be used except when explicitly authorized by the Security
Council.
Supporting this position was the views contained in a letter
from sixteen international law teachers, according to them , when it
became apparent that a specific UN Security Council authorization was
unlikely, states and international lawyers criticized the proposed
US-led military action in Iraq as unlawful since this action was not a
case of self-defence against an actual armed attack by Iraq, and did not
have explicit authorization of UN Security Council, could easily be
viewed as having at best a doubtful basis in international law.(Keir,
2003:51).
Some writers in the field of international relations
believe that the inability of UN Security Council to handle the Iraq
crisis has rendered the organization irrelevant. One of such scholar is
Michael (1989) According to him:
The failure of the UN Security
Council to agree on any coherent line on Iraq before the outbreak of war
on 19-20 march 2003 confirmed in spectacular fashion, certain
limitations of the council…with the rapture of the UN Security Council,
it became clear that the grand attempt to subject the use of force to
the rule of law had failed (Michael, 2003: 120).
Mat (2003) partially
supported this stance when he stated that, the failure to overcome
council division followed by the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003
without explicit council authorization for the use force, added further
to the sense of foreboding among those anxious for the council to play
its charter-prescribed role in the field of peace and security.
Herbert
(2003) reasoned differently when he asserted that, the UN perfectly
embodies in institutional form the strategic paradox of our age; it has
become indispensable before it has become effective. As Adam Roberts
puts it. The Security Council, while having no monopoly on international
security issues, did not become entirely irrelevant to the Iraq crisis,
in which its existing resolutions were of crucial important; and
international law, while in a state of contestation has developed
significantly in response to events since the end of the cold war and
continues to provide useful criteria for consideration of particular
uses of force. Adam (2003) maintained further that:
The council is
quite simply, the only forum of its kind; that is , a forum able to
address, if not resolve security challenges of international concern and
crucially to confer near-universal legitimacy on the actions of states
or groups in a way that no alternative candidate or agency, real or
proposed has been able to do (Adam, 2003: 45).
According to Martin
(1999) As the council’s recent handling of Iraq weapons inspection
Crisis made abundantly clear, power politics within and outside the
organization is alive and well, and the entirely predictable persistence
of conflicts of interest and value among members states means that the
council is at one level, inescapably doomed to “ineffectiveness’, this
is true above all, when the core or vital interests of states are seen
to be at stake and when, as in the case of Iraq, issues of coercion are
involved (Martin, 1999: 78).
An underlying issue informing the
present article is whether the UN Security Council has become irrelevant
in its handling of the weapons inspection crisis in Iraq considering
the fact that majority of countries and people of the world were opposed
to the US-British disregard of international law and bypassing of the
UN Security Council. According to Mats (2003),
The intense diplomatic
effort by Britain and the United States to secure an explicit
authorization for the use of force, however unsuccessful and flawed the
diplomacy, is itself testimony to the importance attached to the
council’s legitimizing role. Not only that, but both the US and the UK,
in justifying the resort to force and explaining the need for military
action have continued to rely heavily on UN Security Council
Resolutions, a fact that only reinforces the sense that neither country
felt they could dispense with some kind of UN sanction for its chosen
curse of action (Mats, 2003: 55).
Supporting this view was the
speeches and statements made by delegates to the XIII summit meeting of
the Non-Aligned movement in Kuala Lumpur. According to them, “This
esteem in which the Council continues to be held derives in large part
from its custodial role as protector of principles and rules seen by the
vast majority of member States as foundational to international
order-above all, the principle of sovereign equality of states and its
corollary, the rule of non-intervention by states in the affairs of
other states. (Ari, 2003: 23).
To the extent that military action in
Iraq has been viewed in many parts of the world as a challenge to these
principles, one may expect to see a renewed commitment to the UN by the
membership at large. This, in turn, is unlikely to diminish the need for
major powers to work through the UN to secure legitimacy for its
actions.â€
According to Toby and Steven (2002),
…the US has
repeatedly been drawn back to the UN, finding that the legitimacy it
confers on its actions, if not indispensable to taking action, is
extremely costly to ignore…The very decision by Bush to confront the
issue of Iraq’s non-compliance through the UN is testimony to this
fact(Toby and Steven, 2002: 451).
As Steven (2002) puts it, “the
US-led war has come to be regarded-right or wrong as an unwarranted,
illegal and unjustified assault on sovereignty of an independent nation.
To the majority of the UN’s Member States, the perception of
operational Iraqi freedom as a test case of the Bush doctrine on
pre-emption…has only reinforced the importance of the UN’s custodial
role as protector of key character principles.
According, a
nationwide poll (2003) conducted after the start of hostilities on the
United Nations showed that the importance of the UN had not been
diminished as a result of its failure to approve action over Iraq.
Confirming this stance was Colin Powell’s assertion that a “UN role
might help lend legitimacy to a post-war Iraq occupation and reduce
hostility toward the US and its allies in the region and around the
world. While Gareth (2002) holds that: “Threats to international peace
are what the Security Council says they are†Fighting against.
Weapons
of mass destruction were a major pretext by the Bush administration for
waging war on Iraq. According to Paul (2002), The issue of weapons of
mass destruction was the point of greatest agreement among Bush’s team
among the reasons to remove Saddam from power, the truth is that for
reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we
settled on the issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of
mass destruction as the core reason.
Mike (2002) asserted that, as
early as January 2002, President Bush had declared that; states like
Iraq and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to
threaten the peace of the world by seeking weapons of mass destruction;
these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these
arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They
could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 4]
Page 2 of 4
-
-
ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]This research effort grew out of concern for the increasing use of force in settlement of disputes by the United States which has the tendency to reduce the moral stature of the UN (above all, the security council) an organization committed to the maintenance of international peace and security. It seeks to analyse the role of the United Nations security council in international conflict resolution, using tonal conflict resolution, using the UN Weapons inspection in Iraq as a case study. This re ... Continue reading---
