OVERCOMING THE OBSTACLES TO UN MAINTENANCE OF INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND
SECURITY  
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Lawrence Wittner
January 24, 2024
Counterpunch
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_ The hobbling of the Security Council, the UN agency tasked with
enforcing international peace and security, bears the lion’s share
of the responsibility for this weakness. _

, Image by Mathias Reding.

 

Although, according to the UN Charter
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Nations was established to “maintain international peace and
security,” it has often fallen short of this goal. Russia’s
ongoing military invasion of Ukraine and the more recent
Israeli-Palestinian war in Gaza provide the latest examples of the
world organization’s frequent paralysis in the face of violent
international conflict.

The hobbling of the Security Council, the UN agency tasked with
enforcing international peace and security, bears the lion’s share
of the responsibility for this weakness. Under the rules set forth by
the UN Charter, each permanent member of the Security Council has the
power to veto Security Council resolutions. And these members have
used the veto, thereby blocking UN action.

This built-in weakness was inherited from the UN’s predecessor,
the League of Nations
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In that body, a unanimous vote by all member nations was required for
League action. Such unanimity of course, proved nearly impossible to
attain, and this fact largely explains the League’s failure and
eventual collapse.

The creators of the United Nations, aware of this problem when
drafting the new organization’s Charter
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limited the number of nations that could veto Security Council
resolutions to the five major military powers of the era―the United
States, the Soviet Union, Britain, China, and France.

Other nations went along with this arrangement because these “great
powers” insisted
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without this acceptance of their primacy, they would not support the
establishment of the new world organization. The Charter
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restriction on their use of the veto was a provision that it could not
be cast by a party to a dispute―a provision largely ignored
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1952. Fortifying the privileged position of these five permanent
Security Council members, the Charter also provided
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in their status required their approval.

In this fashion, the great powers of the era locked in the ability of
any one of them to block a UN Security Council resolution that it
opposed.

Not surprisingly, they availed themselves of this privilege. By May
2022
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Russia (which took the seat previously held by the Soviet Union), had
cast its veto in the Security Council on 121 occasions. The United
States cast 82 vetoes, Britain 29, China 17, and France 16.

As the Council’s paralysis became apparent, proponents of UN action
gravitated toward the UN General Assembly. This UN entity expanded
substantially after 1945 as newly independent countries joined the
United Nations. Moreover, no veto blocked passage of its resolutions.
Therefore, the General Assembly could serve not only as a voice for
the world’s nations, but as an alternative source of power.

The first sign of a shift in power from the Security Council to the
General Assembly emerged with the General Assembly’s approval
of Resolution 377A: “Uniting for Peace.”
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catalyst was the Soviet Union’s use of its veto to block the
Security Council from authorizing continued military action to end the
Korean War. Uniting for Peace, adopted on November 3, 1950 by an
overwhelming vote in the General Assembly, stated that, “if the
Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent
members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the
maintenance of international peace and security . . . the General
Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with a view to making
appropriate recommendations to members for collective measures.” To
facilitate rapid action, the resolution created the mechanism of the
emergency special session.

Between 1951 and 2022, the United Nations drew upon the Uniting for
Peace resolution on 13 occasions, with 11 cases taking the form of the
emergency special session. In addition to dealing with the Korean War,
Uniting for Peace resolutions addressed the Suez confrontation, as
well as crises in Hungary, Congo, Afghanistan, Palestine, Namibia, and
Ukraine. Although, under the umbrella of Uniting for Peace, the
General Assembly could have recommended “armed force when
necessary” against violators of international peace and
security, the Assembly adopted that approach
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during the Korean War. On the other occasions, it limited itself to
calls for peaceful resolution of international conflict and the
imposition of sanctions against aggressors.

These developments had mixed results
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In 1956, during the Suez crisis, shortly after the General Assembly
held a Uniting for Peace session calling for British and French
withdrawal from the canal zone, both countries complied. By contrast,
in 1980, when a Uniting for Peace session called for an end to the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Moscow ignored the UN demand. It could
do so thanks to the fact that General Assembly resolutions
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mere recommendations and, as such, are not legally binding.

Even so, global crises in recent years have heightened pressure to
provide the United Nations with the ability to take effective action.
In April 2022, shortly after the Russian government vetoed a Security
Council resolution calling for Russia’s unconditional withdrawal
from Ukraine, the General Assembly voted
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Security Council veto would automatically trigger a meeting of the
Assembly within 10 days of the action to cope with the situation.

Meanwhile, numerous nations have been working to restrict the veto in
specific situations. In July 2015, the UN Accountability, Coherence,
and Transparency Group
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a Code of Conduct against “genocide, crimes against humanity, or war
crimes” that called upon all Security Council members to avoid
voting to reject any credible draft resolution intended to prevent or
halt mass atrocities. By 2022, the Code had been signed by 121 member
nations. France and Mexico
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taken the lead in proposing the renunciation of the veto in these
situations.

These reform initiatives are likely to be addressed at the September
2024 UN Summit of the Future
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Clearly, as the history of the United Nations demonstrates, if the
world organization is to maintain international peace and security, it
must be freed from its current constraints.

_DR. LAWRENCE WITTNER is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany
and the author of Confronting the Bomb
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University Press.)_

* United Nations
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* peace
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* structural change
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* Ukraine invasion
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* Israel-Gaza War
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