scholarly journals Climatizing the UN Security Council

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucile Maertens
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
International Security ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Climate Politics ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Climate Crisis

AbstractSince 2007, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has debated the security implications of climate change on several occasions. This article addresses these debates by exploring two interrelated questions: What drives the continuous efforts to place climate change on the UNSC’s agenda and to what extent do the UNSC’s debates illustrate an ongoing process of climatization? To answer these, the article draws on the concept of climatization, which captures the process through which domains of international politics are framed through a climate lens and transformed as a result of this translation. It suggests that climate change has become a dominant framing and an inescapable topic of international relations and that the UNSC debates follow a logic of expansion of climate politics by securing a steady climate agenda, attributing responsibility to the Council in the climate crisis, involving climate actors and advocating for climate-oriented policies to maintain international security.

The UN Security Council and Ghosts of Iraq

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Poorvi Chitalkar ◽  
David M. Malone
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
International Security ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
The United Nations

This chapter examines the lingering effects of the United Nations Security Council's engagement with Iraq over four decades. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Security Council responded by imposing mandatory sanctions against Iraq and later that year authorized a United States-led military intervention. The Council then mandated weapons inspections and eventually a complex humanitarian program to mitigate the deleterious effects of the sanctions imposed against Iraq. In the next round of events in 2002–2003 it proved an ultimately unsuccessful political broker. Finally, the Council resorted to a marginal peacebuilding role after 2003. This chapter first retraces the Security Council's engagement with Iraq from 1980 onwards before discussing the Bush administration's unilateralism in the Iraq War. It also considers the Council's decision making on Iraq from 2002 to 2014 and how this engagement has both reflected and defined wider patterns of international relations, and how learning from Iraq has changed the Council's approach to promoting international security.

10. Feminism

2020 ◽  
pp. 181-196
Author(s):  
J. Ann Tickner ◽  
Laura Sjoberg
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
International Security ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
World Politics ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Feminist Perspectives

This chapter examines feminist perspectives on international relations. It first provides a historical background on the development of feminist IR, paying attention to different kinds of feminist analyses of gender. It then considers feminist perspectives on international security and global politics, along with developments in feminist reanalyses and reformulations of security theory. It illustrates feminist security theory by analysing the case of the United Nations Security Council sanctions on Iraq following the First Gulf War. The chapter concludes by assessing the contributions that feminist IR can make to the practice of world politics in general and to the discipline of IR in particular.

Legitimacy and the UN Security Council Agenda

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (02) ◽  
pp. 347-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Frederking ◽  
Christopher Patane
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
International Security ◽  
World Politics ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Arms Sales ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
The United Nations

ABSTRACTIs the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) a legitimate organization? Do the veto powers legitimately pursue international security, or do they protect their narrow national interests? One way to evaluate the legitimacy of the UNSC is through its agenda. Does it address the most significant conflicts in world politics? Or is it influenced by the national interests of the veto powers? This article addresses these questions with a dataset that includes the number of UNSC meetings held and resolutions passed on 40 conflicts from 1991 to 2013. This analysis provides evidence for the legitimacy of the UNSC—conflicts with more refugees and more deaths are significantly more likely to be on the agenda. The analysis does not support critics of the UNSC—the national interests of the veto powers, measured as arms sales to and trade with the conflict participants, do not significantly alter the UNSC agenda.

Small States in the UN Security Council: Means of Influence?

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baldur Thorhallsson
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Gross Domestic Product ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
International System ◽  
Leadership Skills ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Small States ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Policy Fields

Summary This article argues that there are two broad categories of qualitative factors that determine the ability of small states to influence the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The first is the internal competence of small states in areas such as knowledge, initiative, and diplomatic, coalition and leadership skills. The second is the image of the state in the international system with specific regard to its perceived neutrality or reputation as a norm entrepreneur in particular policy fields. These qualitative features need to be combined with quantitative variables — such as population, territorial size, gross domestic product (GDP) and military capacity — that are normally used in International Relations (IR) in order to understand small states’ ability to become active participants in the UNSC.

scholarly journals The COVID-19 test of the United Nations Security Council

2021 ◽  
pp. 002070202098689
Author(s):  
Bruno Charbonneau
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Cooperation ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Multilateral Cooperation ◽  
The United Nations

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has failed the COVID-19 test, unable to promote or facilitate multilateral cooperation in dealing with the outbreak. This is worrying given its relevance as a principal organ of the United Nations (UN) that could enable or constrain international cooperation and given the need for such cooperation in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The failure of the UNSC to respond adequately to the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the historical limits of the UNSC as a forum for international cooperation. It also suggests that highlighting and debating UNSC reforms are not sufficient or even productive ways to move forward, especially in the context of the challenges that pandemics and climate change represent for global cooperation. It is far from clear if the UN system can change the global structures on which it was built. What does seem clear is that the UNSC is not where one will find the seeds of change for reimagining global order.

Elected member influence in the United Nations Security Council

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Farrall ◽  
Marie-Eve Loiselle ◽  
Christopher Michaelsen ◽  
Jochen Prantl ◽  
Jeni Whalan
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Real Power ◽  
Council Decision ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Common Understanding

AbstractThis article reassesses how members of the UN Security Council exercise influence over the Council’s decision-making process, with particular focus on the ten elected members (the E10). A common understanding of Security Council dynamics accords predominance to the five permanent members (the P5), suggesting bleak prospects for the Council as a forum that promotes the voices and representation of the 188 non-permanent members. The assumption is that real power rests with the P5, while the E10 are there to make up the numbers. By articulating a richer account of Council dynamics, this article contests the conventional wisdom that P5 centrality crowds out space for the E10 to influence Council decision-making. It also shows that opportunities for influencing Council decision-making go beyond stints of elected membership. It argues that the assumed centrality of the P5 on the Council thus needs to be qualified and re-evaluated.

scholarly journals How Can We Criticize International Practices?

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 1014-1024 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Schindler ◽  
Tobias Wille
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Practice Theory ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Multilateral Diplomacy

Abstract In this article, we elaborate two distinct ways of criticizing international practices: social critique and pragmatic critique. Our argument is that these two forms of critique are systematically opposed to each other: They are based on opposing epistemic premises, they are motivated by opposing political concerns, and they pursue opposing visions of social progress. Scholars of International Relations (IR) who want to work with the conceptual tools of practice theory are thus confronted with a consequential choice. Understanding the alternatives can help them to be more self-reflexive in their research practices and intervene more forcefully in contemporary political debates. We illustrate these advantages through a discussion of the scholarly debate on the practices of multilateral diplomacy through which the United Nations Security Council authorized a military intervention in Libya in 2011.

In the name of democracy: UNSC reform at the intersection of discourse and governmentality

2020 ◽  
pp. 095792652097038
Author(s):  
Bjarke Zinck Winther ◽  
Laura Bang Lindegaard
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Reform Debate

Both scholars and practitioners are frustrated by the complexity of United Nations Security Council reform. Most research on the reform process is situated within international relations, and almost no attention is granted to the discursive dimensions of the reform. This article approaches democracy promotion as a governmental rationality within the United Nations, and it traces how this governmentality is co-constituted and negotiated discursively in the reform debate. The analysis focuses on argumentation and topoi in statements from debates about reform during 2015 to 2016 by two groups: The Group of Four and The Uniting for Consensus. The analysis demonstrates how the two groups utilise a topos of majority and a topos of equality, respectively, and how the groups thereby in different ways co-constitute and negotiate the governmental rationality of democracy. Through this, the article unravels the subtle ways in which the rigidity of the reform process is co-constituted through discourse.

What Future for the UN Charter System of War Prevention?

2003 ◽  
Vol 97 (3) ◽  
pp. 590-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Falk
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Security Council ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Inspection Process ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Relationship

President George W. Bush historically challenged the United Nations Security Council when he uttered some memorable words in the course of his September 12, 2002, speech to the General Assembly: “Will the UN serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?” In the aftermath of the Iraq war there are at least two answers to this question. The answer of the U.S. government would be to suggest that the United Nations turned out to be irrelevant due to its failure to endorse recourse to war against the Iraq of Saddam Hussein. The answer of those who opposed the war is that the UN Security Council served the purpose of its founding by its refusal to endorse recourse to a war that could not be persuasively reconciled with the UN Charter and international law. This difference of assessment is not just factual, whether Iraq was a threat and whether the inspection process was succeeding at a reasonable pace; it was also conceptual, even jurisprudential. The resolution of this latter debate is likely to shape the future role of the United Nations, as well as influence the attitude of the most powerful sovereign state as to the relationship between international law generally and the use of force as an instrument of foreign policy.

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