A permanent UN force: British thinking after Suez

1991 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Security Council ◽  
International System ◽  
Formal System ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The Body ◽  
Suez Crisis ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Military

IntroductionPrior to the Suez crisis of 1956, the United Nations found itself restricted in its military response to threats to international peace and security. The authors of the UN Charter had originally called for member states to make armed forces available to the UN Security Council under a set of special agreements to be concluded in the post-war period. These would furnish the UN with the military means to take collective action against aggression which was to be the essential precondition of the success of the UN. The body responsible for the conclusion of these special agreements under Article 43 of the UN charter was the Military Staff Committee (MSC), which comprised the Chiefs of Staff of the five permanent members of the Security Council. However, the divisions of the developing Cold War permeated the MSC from 1946 and it became clear that there were major differences amongst the permanent members on the military role that the UN should play in the post-war international system. As a result, the Article 43 special agreements were stillborn and the UN was left without a formal system to provide it with its own armed forces.

scholarly journals WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY ON THE 15TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ADOPTION OF THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1325

2016 ◽  
pp. 11-13
Keyword(s):  
Security Council ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
General Staff ◽  
Gender Perspective ◽  
Women In The Military ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Military

On 31 October 2000, the United Nations (UN) Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. This resolution was followed by others (1820, 1888, 1889, 1960, 2106, 2122 and 2422), which stress the disproportionate impact of wars and conflicts on women and children, and highlight the fact that, historically speaking, women have always been on the margins of peace processes and stabilisation efforts. They underline the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, in peace negotiations, peace building and humanitarian and post-conflict activities. Resolution 1325 calls upon member states to integrate gender perspective into UN plans and programmes, but mainly to protect women and girls in armed conflicts. The Resolution was also adopted by the Republic of Slovenia and the Slovenian Armed Forces has included it into pre-deployment training of Slovenian contingents as required reading. After 1991, when Slovenia became independent, two journals on women in the military have been published. The first one was published in 1995, five years prior to the UN Resolution. It was edited by Zorica Bukinac and published by the Ministry of Defence under the title of Ženske v oboroženih silah (Women in the military). The second journal was produced in 2002. It was edited by Ljubica Jelušič and Mojca Pešec and published by a joint effort of the Defence Research Centre of the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana, the Ministry of Defence and the SAF General Staff. The former journal provides the first account of the experiences of female SAF members, and the views of Slovenian and foreign authors on the role of women in the military. The latter uses traditions, culture and gender-role patterns to present the limiting factors of the integration of women in the military, and provides an analysis of the share of women and the duties they perform in the SAF. Greater integration of women in the military still raises much attention and a number of questions. The experiences vary importantly across countries. A number of them are positive, but there are also the negative ones. 2015 marked 15 years since the adoption of Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, 20 years since the publishing of the first journal, and 13 years since the publishing of the other. With this thematic issue, the Editorial Board wished to learn about the novelties regarding the Resolution in Slovenia and abroad, and publish them. We invited Lieutenant Colonel Suzana Tkavc, PhD, Gender Advisor at SAF General Staff, appointed coordinator of the MoD for Gender Equality and national representative in the NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives to participate. The issue in front of us is the result of our joint efforts. Pablo Castillo Díaz, who works in the United Nations Organisation, wrote the article Military women in peacekeeping missions and the politics of UN Security Council Resolution 1325. He shares with us his expert view and experiences regarding the Resolution on Women, Peace and Security. By focusing on international operations and missions, he draws attention to the advantages and disadvantages of the Resolution. Garry McKeon wrote an article titled Better citizens – humanitarian and gender training, EUTM Somalia. The author has been member of the Irish Defence Forces for over 30 years and has also been deployed in a mission in Somalia. His experiences regarding training in the implementation of Resolution 1325 are very interesting, since they concern a cultural setting, which is substantially different from ours. In her article Some of the best practices in gender perspective and the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in the 25 years of Slovenian armed forces, Suzana Tkavc provides an insight into gender perspective in the 25 years of Slovenia’s independence with a special emphasis on the armed forces and their activities in international operations and missions. How well did Slovenia do compared to female and male representatives of other armed forces? Jovanka Šaranović, Brankica Potkonjak-Lukić and Tatjana Višacki are the authors of the article Achievements and perspectives of the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in the Ministry of Defence and the Serbian Armed Forces. Serbia invested important effort into the implementation of Resolution 1325, since this subject matter is included in the national action plan, which includes a number of different state authorities and other non-governmental institutions. In their article, the authors determine how successful they were in this mission. In the article titled An analysis and critique of the UNSCR 1325 – what are recommendations for future opportunities? Jane Derbyshire acquaints us with the perspective and experiences of the New Zealand Defence Force regarding the resolution. Are they very different from the experiences of other countries? The author believes that time has come for changes. Unlike the majority of the authors, who are members of armed forces or are directly related to them, Nadja Furlan Štante wrote her article Women in military system: between violence and vulnerability from a different perspective. She specialises in religion and women’s studies and as such bases her writing on biological, historical, religious and other aspects, also taking into consideration the findings, practice and works of the authors who write about defence and the military. We believe that with this themed issue we have passed on new experiences and added some views to the mosaic of gender perspective, encouraged you to read or maybe even write.

scholarly journals Responsibility To Protect: What For?

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 73-80
Author(s):  
Adelaida Rivera
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
The State ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Resolution 1973 ◽  
The Military

On March 17th 2011, the United Nations Security Council approved the Resolution 1973 which authorized the use of force in Libya in order to protect civilians from the attacks performed by the state armed forces. The military action by NATO in Libya has resulted in diverse and divided opinions. The recourse of Responsibility to protect appeared later as a measure intended to be implemented in the ongoing conflict in Syria, but after two failed resolutions, it became clear that some UN Security Council members are not willing to repeat the Libyan scenario. This text aims to examine some basic notions of the R2P concept, its application in Libya and the implications of the results after the Libyan case on its possible application in Syria. Should the discussed objectives behind the application of Responsibility to Protect in the Libyan case and its results be determinant on the decision whether this doctrine can be applied in Syria? Is it possible that the mistakes committed in Libya, the atrocities now experienced in Syria and the non-response by the international community could mark the end of the whole concept of Responsibility to Protect? These questions are intended to be discussed in this paper.

un Security Council vs. Weapons of Mass Destruction

2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-161
Author(s):  
Hans Blix
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Security Council ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Mass Destruction ◽  
Nuclear Program ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
The Cold War

International institutions given the task to maintain collective security and to seek disarmament need to build on cooperation between major powers. The authors of the un Charter vested great powers in the Security Council but a consensus between the five permanent great powers was required for use of the powers. This inevitably paralyzed the Council during the Cold War. After the end of the Cold War, the permanent members have remained unable jointly to pursue disarmament, but they have succeeded in several remarkable cases to reach consensus, notably on measures to prevent the further spread of weapons of mass destruction. The quick action to eliminate chemical weapons in Syria was a win-win case led by us-Russian diplomacy, while the comprehensive deal settling the controversy over Iran’s nuclear program was a victory for patient diplomacy involving all permanent members and the eu. These actions show the potentials of the Council.

The Soviet Factor in the US-China Military-Technical Cooperation during the Cold War

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 12-47
Author(s):  
Yinan Li
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Active Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Technical Cooperation ◽  
Arms Sales ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The development of the PRC’s armed forces included three phases when their modernization was carried out through an active introduction of foreign weapons and technologies. The first and the last of these phases (from 1949 to 1961, and from 1992 till present) received wide attention in both Chinese and Western academic literature, whereas the second one — from 1978 to 1989 —when the PRC actively purchased weapons and technologies from the Western countries remains somewhat understudied. This paper is intended to partially fill this gap. The author examines the logic of the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States in the context of complex interactions within the United States — the USSR — China strategic triangle in the last years of the Cold War. The first section covers early contacts between the PRC and the United States in the security field — from the visit of R. Nixon to China till the inauguration of R. Reagan. The author shows that during this period Washington clearly subordinated the US-Chinese cooperation to the development of the US-Soviet relations out of fear to damage the fragile process of detente. The second section focuses on the evolution of the R. Reagan administration’s approaches regarding arms sales to China in the context of a new round of the Cold War. The Soviet factor significantly influenced the development of the US-Chinese military-technical cooperation during that period, which for both parties acquired not only practical, but, most importantly, political importance. It was their mutual desire to undermine strategic positions of the USSR that allowed these two countries to overcome successfully tensions over the US arms sales to Taiwan. However, this dependence of the US-China military-technical cooperation on the Soviet factor had its downside. As the third section shows, with the Soviet threat fading away, the main incentives for the military-technical cooperation between the PRC and the United States also disappeared. As a result, after the Tiananmen Square protests, this cooperation completely ceased. Thus, the author concludes that the US arms sales to China from the very beginning were conditioned by the dynamics of the Soviet-American relations and Beijing’s willingness to play an active role in the policy of containment. In that regard, the very fact of the US arms sales to China was more important than its practical effect, i.e. this cooperation was of political nature, rather than military one.

scholarly journals “The British Soldier is no Bolshevik”: The British Army, Discipline, and the Demobilization Strikes of 1919

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Butler
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
British Army ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Civilian Life ◽  
Daily Mail ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Military

Abstract This article considers the breakdown in discipline in the British Army which occurred in Britain and on the Western Front during the process of demobilization at the end of the First World War. Many soldiers, retained in the army immediately after the Armistice, went on strike, and some formed elected committees, demanding their swifter return to civilian life. Their perception was that the existing demobilization system was unjust, and men were soon organized by those more politically conscious members of the armed forces who had enlisted for the duration of the war. At one stage in January 1919, over 50,000 soldiers were out on strike, a fact that was of great concern to the British civilian and military authorities who miscalculated the risk posed by soldiers. Spurred on by many elements of the press, especially the Daily Mail and Daily Herald, who both fanned and dampened the flames of discontent, soldiers’ discipline broke down, demonstrating that the patriotism which had for so long kept them in line could only extend so far. Though senior members of the government, principally Winston Churchill, and the military, especially Douglas Haig and Henry Wilson, were genuinely concerned that Bolshevism had ‘infected’ the army, or, at the very least, the army had been unionized, their fears were not realized. The article examines the government’s strategy regarding demobilization, its efforts to assess the risk of politicization and manage the press, and its responses to these waves of strikes, arguing that, essentially, these soldiers were civilians first and simply wanted to return home, though, in the post-war political climate, government fears were very real.

The Anglo-American Worldview and the Question of World Order

2019 ◽  
pp. 175-190
Author(s):  
Andrew Gamble
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

One of the distinctive features of the idea of an Anglosphere has been a particular view of world order, based on liberal principles of free movement of goods, capital and people, representative government, and the rule of law, which requires a powerful state or coalition of states to uphold and enforce them. This chapter charts the roots as well as the limits of this conception in the period of British ascendancy in the nineteenth century, and how significant elements of the political class in both Britain and the United States in the twentieth century came to see the desirability of cooperation between the English-speaking nations to preserve that order against challengers. This cooperation was most clearly realised in the Second World War. The post-war construction of a new liberal world order was achieved under the leadership of the United States, with Britain playing a largely supportive but secondary role. Cooperation between Britain and the US flourished during the Cold War, particularly in the military and intelligence fields, and this became the institutional core of the ‘special relationship’. The period since the end of the Cold War has seen new challenges emerge both externally and internally to the Anglo-American worldview.

Turkey: The Rise and Fall of the Influence of the Military in Politics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Acar Kutay
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

The continued influence of the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) on politics characterized the political history of the Turkish Republic, until such influence was first bridled and then ultimately broken by the Justice and Development Party governments during the 2000s. When the new regime was established in 1923, the military identified itself with its founding ideology, namely Kemalism, which was built on the ideas of modernism, secularism, and nationalism. Because the TAF assumed the roles of guardian of the regime and vanguard of modernization, any threat to the foundational values and norms of the republican regime was considered by the military as a threat to the constitutional order and national security. As a self-authorized guardian of the regime and its values, the TAF characterized itself as a non-partisan institution. The military appealed to such identity to justify the superiority of the moral and epistemological foundations of their understanding of politics compared with that of the elected politicians. The military invoked such superiority not only to intervene in politics and take power (1960, 1971, 1980, 1997, and 2007). They also used such identity to monitor and control political processes by means of the National Security Council (established after the 1960 military intervention) and by more informal means such as mobilizing the public against the elected government’s policy choices. In the context of the Cold War, domestic turmoil and lasting political polarization helped legitimate the military’s control over security issues until the 1980s. After the end of the Cold War, two threats to national security drew the TAF into politics: the rising power of Islamic movements and the separatist terrorism of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which posed threats to the constitutional order. Turkey’s EU membership bid is one of the most important aspects that bridled the influence of the TAF on politics. Whereas the democratic oversight of the military and security sector constituted a significant dimension of the EU reforms, events that took place around the nomination of the Justice and Development Party’s candidate, Abdullah Gül, for the presidency created a rupture in the role and influence of the military on politics. Two juristic cases against members of the TAF in 2008 and 2010 made a massive impact on the power of the military, before the ultimate supremacy of the political sphere was established after the coup attempt organized by the Gülenist officers who infiltrated the TAF during the 2000s.

The UN Security Council: From the Cold War to the 21st Century

2005 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 581
Author(s):  
Frederick D. Barton ◽  
David M. Malone ◽  
Linda Fasulo ◽  
James Dobbins
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
The Cold War

scholarly journals Sudan, Resolution 1593, and International Criminal Justice

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 195-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT CRYER
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Security Council ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International System ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal Justice ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Incomplete Reaction

The UN Security Council has recently referred the situation in Darfur, Sudan, to the International Criminal Court. This has been hailed as a breakthrough in international criminal justice. However, aspects of the referral resolution can be criticized from the point of view of their consistency with both the Rome Statute and the UN Charter. The limitations of the referral with respect to whom the Court may investigate also raise issues with respect to the rule of law. In addition, Sudan has accused the Security Council of acting in a neo-colonial fashion by referring the situation in Darfur to the Court. This article investigates these criticisms against the background of the international system in which international criminal law operates, and concludes that although the referral cannot be considered neo-colonial in nature, the referral can be criticized as selective and as an incomplete reaction to the crisis in Darfur. The referral remains, however, a positive step.

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