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.

Course Corrections: The Obama Administration at the United Nations

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 335-349
Author(s):  
David Bosco
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Bush Administration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Obama Administration ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
Most Significant Change ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Significant Change

Less has changed in US diplomacy at the United Nations than many observers expected when the Obama administration took office in January 2009. In the UN Security Council, the United States has pursued a generally steady course that in many respects builds on the accomplishments of the Bush administration. Unexpectedly, the Security Council’s pace of work diminished considerably during the first few years of the new administration. The most significant change is the atmospherics of US diplomacy, not its substance: the Obama administration has participated in processes that the Bush administration shunned and has toned down US criticism of the United Nations’ perceived shortcomings.

scholarly journals Overcoming Opposition at the UNSC: Regional Multilateralism as a Form of Collective Pressure

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-281
Author(s):  
Stefano Recchia
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
The United States ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Republic Of The Congo ◽  
The United Nations

Abstract Research suggests that military interveners often seek endorsements from regional international organizations (IOs), in addition to approval from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), to reassure international and domestic audiences. Toward that end, interveners should seek the endorsement of continent-wide regional IOs with the broadest and most diverse membership, which are most likely to be independent. In practice, however, interveners often seek endorsements from subregional IOs with narrow membership and aggregate preferences similar to their own. This should weaken the reassurance/legitimation effect significantly. I argue that such narrower regional endorsements are sought not so much to reassure skeptical audiences, as to pressure reluctant UNSC members to approve the intervention by putting those members’ relations with regional partners at stake. To illustrate this argument and probe its plausibility, I reconstruct France's successful efforts to obtain UNSC approval for its interventions in Côte d'Ivoire (2002–2003) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2003) at a time when the United States was hesitant to support France because of the two countries’ falling-out over the Iraq War. For evidence I rely on original interviews with senior French and US officials.

Saving Darfur

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-113
Author(s):  
Marina E. Henke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
African Union ◽  
Peacekeeping Operations ◽  
Building Process ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
The United Nations

This chapter assesses how the United Nations, in cooperation with the African Union, formed one of the largest and most expensive peacekeeping operations ever deployed to stop the bloodshed in Darfur. The operation took the name United Nations–African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). The United States initiated and orchestrated the most important political aspects that made the deployment of UNAMID possible. At the United Nations, the United States was intimately involved in the drafting and negotiation of UN resolutions pertaining to the Darfur issue and prodded various UN Security Council members to support the respective resolutions. Once UNAMID was approved by the UN Security Council, the United States was deeply involved in recruiting UNAMID participants. Some countries—such as Egypt, China, Canada, and Ethiopia—had a political stake in the Darfur conflict and thus volunteered forces to deploy to Darfur. Nevertheless, the large majority of countries did not join UNAMID on their own initiative. Rather, they were wooed into the coalition by the United States. U.S. officials thereby followed specific practices to recruit these troops. Many of these practices exploited diplomatic embeddedness: U.S. officials used preexisting ties to ascertain the deployment preferences of potential recruits and constructed issue linkages and side payments. The United States was assisted in the UNAMID coalition-building process by UN staff, most notably from the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO).

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.

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.

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