In a 1966 article, Claude observed that the function of collective
legitimization in global politics is increasingly conferred on
international organizations (IOs), and that the United Nations (UN) has
become the primary custodian of this legitimacy. Claude argued that
“the world organization has come to be regarded, and used, as a
dispenser of politically significant approval and disapproval of the
claims, policies, and actions of states.”1
This
assertion is even more relevant now than it was in 1966. States, including
the United States, have shown the willingness to incur significant cost in
terms of time, policy compromise, and side-payments simply to obtain the
stamp of approval from the UN Security Council (SC) for military actions.
To be sure, if the attempt to achieve a SC compromise proved unsuccessful,
the United States has not shied away from using other means to pursue its
ends. Nevertheless, the failure to acquire SC approval is generally
perceived as costly, giving SC decisions considerable clout in
international politics.
Given its lack of enforcement capabilities, the SC's leverage
resides almost entirely in the perceived legitimacy its decisions grant to
forceful actions.2
Governments across the globe appear
more willing to cooperate voluntarily once the SC has conferred its
blessing on a use of force. Why has the SC become the most impressive
source of international legitimacy for the use of military force? That it
would be so is far from obvious. Claude, for instance, thought of the UN
General Assembly (GA) as the ultimate conferrer of legitimacy.
3 Franck argued in his influential 1990 treatise on legitimacy
that if one were interested in identifying rules in the international
system with a strong compliance pull, the provisions in the UN Charter
that grant the SC military enforcement powers (Chapter VII) should be set
aside.
4 Since then, these provisions have been invoked
with great regularity to legitimize uses of force.
The development is also puzzling from a theoretical perspective. Most
theorists seek the origins of modern institutional legitimacy in legal or
moral principles. However, the SC has been inconsistent at best in
applying legal principles; its decision-making procedures are not
inclusive, transparent, or based on egalitarian principles; its decisions
are frequently clouded by the threat of outside action; and the morality
of its (non-) actions is widely debated. Hence, it is unlikely that the
institution has the ability to appear depoliticized, an argument that
motivates most constructivist accounts of institutional legitimacy in the
international arena.5
On the other hand, scholars who study the strategic aspects of
international politics have largely dismissed the UN from their
analyses.6
This article provides a firmer base for the
role of the SC in strategic interactions. I argue that when governments
and citizens look for an authority to legitimize the use of force, they
generally do not seek an independent judgment on the appropriateness of an
intervention; rather, they want political reassurance about the
consequences of proposed military adventures. The rationale is based on an
analysis of the strategic dilemmas that impede cooperation in a unipolar
world. In the absence of credible limits to power, fears of exploitation
stifle cooperation. Because no single state can credibly check the
superpower, enforcing limits on the superpower's behavior involves
overcoming a complex coordination dilemma. A cooperative equilibrium that
implies self-enforcing limits to the exercise of power exists but is
unlikely to emerge spontaneously given that governments have conflicting
perceptions about what constitute legitimate actions and fundamental
transgressions by the superpower. The SC provides a focal solution that
has the characteristics of an elite pact: an agreement among a select set
of actors that seeks to neutralize threats to stability by
institutionalizing nonmajoritarian mechanisms for conflict resolution. The
elite pact's authority depends on the operation of a social norm in
which SC approval provides a green light for states to cooperate, whereas
its absence triggers a coordinated response that imposes costs on
violators. The observance of this norm allows for more cooperation and
restraint than can be achieved in the absence of coordination on the SC as
the proper institutional device. Hence the extent to which the SC confers
legitimacy on uses of force depends not on the perceived normative
qualities of the institution, but on the extent to which actors in
international politics believe that norm compliance produces favorable
outcomes.
The attractiveness of the elite pact account resides partly in its
ability to explain the emergence of a limited degree of governance in the
international system without assuming the existence of a collective global
identity that generates an ideological consensus over appropriate forms of
global governance. There is little evidence that such a consensus exists.
Thus accounts that require only a limited set of a priori common values
appear more plausible. Furthermore, the elite pact model better fits the
SC's institutional design than alternative accounts and provides a
plausible explanation for the sudden surge in authority following the Gulf
War. Finally, the model stresses that elite pacts need to be
self-enforcing. This opens a more promising avenue for analyzing norm
stability than the constructivist assumption that norms are
internalized.
The article proceeds with a broad overview of temporal fluctuations in
the extent to which states have historically put weight on SC decisions.
The next section explains why SC authority stems from its ability to
legitimize uses of force and provides an operational definition. While
there is a large literature that asserts that SC decisions confer
legitimacy on uses of force, explanations for this phenomenon are rarely
made explicit. One of the contributions of this article is to more
precisely identify the various plausible roles of the SC in the
international system. After discussing the four most common (though often
implicit) explanations, the elite pact argument is introduced more
elaborately. The conclusion discusses the implications for theories of
international legitimacy and the future of SC legitimacy.
The Security Council and Its Authority over
Uses of Force
When states sign the UN Charter, they pledge not to use or threaten
force “against the territorial integrity or political independence
of any state, or in any manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the
United Nations.”7
UN Charter, Article
2(4).
The Charter delegates significant authority to the SC to
decide whether particular uses of force meet these purposes. This
delegation is necessitated by the incompleteness of any contract that
seeks to regulate the use of force but falls short of forbidding it
outright. The Charter provides some guidance by explicitly specifying two
general circumstances in which force may be exercised.
First, Article 51 of the Charter affirms the inherent right of states
to use force in individual or collective self-defense against armed
attacks. In principle, states are not obliged to obtain the approval of
the SC for invoking this right.8
However, states routinely resort to expanded conceptions of
self-defense in attempts to justify unilateral uses of force. SC
resolutions conceivably provide judgments on the merit of self-defense
claims. An example is Resolution 1373, which reaffirms the right of the
United States to act forcefully in its self-defense against terrorist
activities and de facto legitimized the U.S. military action in
Afghanistan.
9 SC Resolution 1373, 28
September 2001.
This resolution, however, was quite exceptional.
In nearly all other controversial claims to self-defense the SC has been
unable or unwilling to rule on the legitimacy of self-defense claims;
instead allowing the GA to adopt highly politicized and mostly ignored
resolutions about the legitimacy of uses of force.
10 Second, Chapter VII of the Charter defines a more active role for the
SC in the management of international security. This chapter lays out a
set of procedures through which the SC can authorize uses of force in
response to the “existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the
peace, or act of aggression.”11
Before 1990, the SC adopted only twenty-two
resolutions under Chapter VII, most of which authorized sanctions rather
than uses of force.
12 The two most
important exceptions were the Congo peacekeeping force and the Korean War
(1950). In the latter case, authorization was possible only because of the
temporary absence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) to
protest the exclusion of the People's Republic of China from the
Council. In anticipation of deadlock when the USSR would retake its seat,
the SC adopted the 1950 “Uniting for Peace Resolution,” which
allowed the GA to take responsibility in security affairs if the SC were
unable to act. It has been invoked ten times, most notably in 1956 to
order the French and British to stop their military intervention in the
Suez Canal and to create the UN Emergency Force to provide a buffer
between Egyptian and Israeli forces.
Although the UN's effectiveness and decisiveness were often
limited, the UN was actively involved in the management of many
international conflicts in the first twenty-five years of its existence.
Decisions by the UN's political organs carried some weight, even to
realists such as Hans Morgenthau, who argued that the United States should
be willing to compromise to “to keep the United Nations in existence
and make it an effective instrument of international
government.”13
Between the late-1960s
and 1989, however, neither the GA nor the SC exercised much influence over
when or whether states resorted to force, a development characterized by
Haas as evidence for “regime decay.”
14 States,
including the great powers, repeatedly intervened militarily without
considering UN authorization and routinely ignored resolutions condemning
their actions. Most obviously, this holds for major Cold War
interventions, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S.
military action in Vietnam. But it also pertains to smaller conflicts.
U.S. President Ronald Reagan famously claimed that the 1983 GA resolution
condemning the United States for its intervention in Grenada
“didn't upset his breakfast at all.”
15
This disregard for the authority of the UN over uses of force continued at
least until December 1989, when the United States invaded Panama without
considering asking approval from any IO. A GA resolution deploring the
intervention had no discernable impact on domestic public or elite support
for the intervention, and neither did a SC resolution that the United
States vetoed.
16 The successful cooperation between states in the first Persian Gulf
War abruptly turned the SC into the natural first stop for coalition
building.17
It is important to appreciate the magnitude of
the sudden the shift in SC activity immediately after operation Desert
Storm. Between 1977 and the start of the Gulf War, the SC had adopted only
two resolutions under Chapter VII.
18 See SC
Resolution 502, 3 April 1982; SC Resolution 598, 20 July 1987; and Bailey and Daws 1998, 272.
Between 1990 and
1998, the Council approved 145 Chapter VII resolutions.
19
The number of UN commanded missions that used force beyond traditional
peacekeeping principles went from one (Congo) before 1990 to five
thereafter.
20 The number of missions where the authority to
exercise force was delegated to interested parties went from one (Korea)
to twelve.
21 Since 1990, the
SC has authorized uses of force by coalitions of able and willing states
in Europe (for example, the former Yugoslavia), Africa (for example,
Sierra Leone, Somalia, the Great Lakes Region), Latin America (for
example, Haiti), Oceania (for example, East-Timor), and Asia (For example,
Afghanistan).
This spurt in activity does not simply reflect a newfound harmony in
the preferences of the five veto powers. China and Russia frequently
abstained from SC votes and often accompanied their abstentions with
statements of discontent.22
Reaching agreement often
involved difficult compromises that had a noticeable impact on the
implementation of operations, as exemplified most prolifically by the
Bosnia case.
23 On several occasions, the
United States made significant side-payments to obtain SC blessing for
operations it could easily, and de facto did, execute alone or with a few
allies. For instance, in exchange for consent for the U.S. intervention in
Haiti, China and Russia obtained sizeable concessions, including a
favorable World Bank loan and U.S. support for peacekeeping in
Georgia.
24 Thus, attaining SC approval for a use of force is no
easy task.
Governments outside the United States have also placed considerable
weight on SC decisions. SC authorization was crucial to Australia's
willingness to intervene in East-Timor.25
India has
since 1992 committed to a “pro-active” approach toward UN
peacekeeping missions, providing generous troop contributions across the
globe to UN-approved missions while refusing to supply to troops for
non-UN approved missions.
26 New interpretations of
Basic Law provisions that restrict German military activity abroad have
made exceptions for German participation in UN peacekeeping and
peacemaking missions, as well as North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
and West European Union (WEU) operations directed at implementing SC
resolutions.
27 Bundesverfassungsgericht
[Federal Constitutional Court] 90, 286, 12 July 1994.
Japan has adopted a law that makes military contributions of most kinds
conditional on SC authorization.
28 Law
Concerning Cooperation for United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and
Other Operations (the International Peace Cooperation Law) originally
passed in June 1992. For other examples, see Hurd
1999.
Thus even for these powerful states that lack
permanent membership, SC approval has become almost imperative for
participation in cooperative military endeavors.
The increased significance of SC authorization is also apparent in
public opinion, both in the United States and elsewhere. There is a wealth
of evidence that Americans consistently prefer UN actions to other types
of multilateral interventions and even more so to unilateral initiatives.
For example, in a January 2003 poll, the Program on International Policy
Attitudes (PIPA) asked respondents whether they “think the UN
Security Council has the right to authorize the use of military force to
prevent a country that does not have nuclear weapons from acquiring
them.” Of all respondents, 76 percent answered affirmatively to this
question, whereas only 48 percent believes the United States without UN
approval has this right.29
PIPA 2003a. Poll conducted among 1,063 American
adults, margin of error +/−3 percent. The order of the questions
was randomized.
What is impressive about these findings is their
consistency across interventions, question formats, and time.
30
Public opinion outside the United States tends to insist even more
strongly on UN authorization.
31 This suggests that
SC authorization may facilitate foreign leaders to participate in military
actions.
The observation that, since the Persian Gulf War, it has become costly
to circumvent the authority of the SC is not completely undermined by the
two main cases where this authority has been ignored: the Kosovo
intervention and the 2003 Iraq intervention. The absence of SC
authorization for the Kosovo intervention was generally (and explicitly)
perceived as unfortunate by the U.S. administration and even more so by
its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).32
NATO motivated its actions by
referring to previous SC resolutions and obtained SC authorization for the
peacekeeping mission and transitional authority that were set up in the
immediate aftermath of the military campaign. Similarly, the United States
went to considerable length to persuade the SC to authorize the Iraq
intervention, argued repeatedly that it was implementing past SC
resolutions, and returned to the SC in the immediate aftermath of the
intervention.
33 Moreover, the absence of SC
authorization is often used domestically in the argument that the lack of
allies makes the war unnecessarily expensive. That NATO and the United
States eventually went ahead without SC authorization does demonstrate,
however, that the SC may raise the costs of unilateral action but cannot
prevent it altogether.
34 As former U.S. Secretary of
Defense William Cohen said about SC authorization for the Kosovo
intervention: “It's desirable, not imperative.”
35 See New York Times, 12 June 1998,
A1.
Legitimacy
The previous section illustrates that since the Persian Gulf War, the
main states in world politics have behaved “as if” it is
costly to circumvent the authority of the SC when deciding on uses of
force. How can one explain this observation given that the SC lacks
independent capabilities to enforce its decisions? Several commonplace
explanations for IO authority apply poorly to the SC. There are few, if
any, institutional mechanisms that allow states to create credible
long-term commitments to the institution, making it an unlikely candidate
for locking in policies, along the lines suggested by Ikenberry.36
The
tasks that the SC performs are not routine and do not require high levels
of specific expertise or knowledge. Thus, delegation of decision-making
authority to the SC does not result in similar gains from specialization
that plausibly explain why states are willing to delegate authority to IOs
such as the World Bank
37 and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF).
38 In the absence of obvious alternative sources, the origins of the SC
authority are usually assumed to lie in the legitimacy it confers on
forceful actions.39
Actions that are perceived as legitimate are obeyed
voluntarily rather than challenged. Hence, obtaining legitimacy for
proposed interventions is valuable. This clearly implies that legitimacy
resides entirely in the subjective beliefs of actors.
40 This contrasts
with the conception that legitimacy properly signifies an evaluation on
normative grounds, usually derived from democratic theory. In this view,
if an institution fails to meet a set of specified standards it is
illegitimate, regardless of how individual actors perceive the
institution. While it is important to evaluate how democratic principles
ought to be extended to a global arena,
41
such a normative approach is unlikely to generate much insight into the
question why SC decisions confer the legitimacy they do.
I define legitimacy perceptions as the beliefs of actors that the
convention or social norm that the SC authorizes and forbids discretionary
uses of force by states against states should be upheld. Discretionary
uses of force are those that do not involve direct and undisputed
self-defense against an attack. Thus the authority of the SC resides in
the beliefs of actors that violating this social norm is costly,
undesirable, or inappropriate. This focus on perceptions and on the social
aspect of legitimacy is consistent with constructivist approaches.42
It also fits rationalist accounts of self-enforcing
conventions and social norms.
43 The primary actors are governments, who decide on uses of force and
are the members of the UN. However, because governments, especially
democratically elected ones, rely on the support of citizens, the
perceptions of individuals also matter in an indirect way. In addition, it
may well be that actors in the state with the intent to use force, most
often the United States in our examples, and actors in other states may
have different motivations for insisting on SC authorization.44
Explanations
Why do state actors believe that a failure to achieve SC authorization
is undesirable? What sustains these beliefs? To find convincing answers to
these questions one needs to appreciate not only why states demand some
form of multilateralism, but also the reasons that would lead actors to
rely on the SC rather than alternatives, such as the GA, regional
institutions (for example, NATO), or multilateral coalitions that are not
embedded in formal IOs. Thus, pointing to a general inclination toward
multilateralism does not form a satisfactory explanation of the empirical
pattern.45
Besides institutional form, a persuasive account
must provide useful insights about the sources for temporal variation in
the authority of the SC, including its sudden surge following the Gulf
War. Moreover, it should give a plausible explanation for how these
beliefs can be sustained given the behavior of the SC.
Most theoretical accounts argue that the legitimacy of international
institutions resides in their ability to appear depoliticized by
faithfully applying a set of rules, procedures, and norms that are deemed
desirable by the international community.46
I discuss three variants of this general argument that each
stresses a different role for institutions: consistently applying legal
rules, facilitating deliberation, and increasing accountability and
fairness. Alternatively, the origins of the SC's legitimacy may lie
in beliefs that granting the SC the authority to legitimize force
generally lead to more desirable outcomes. The public goods explanation
discussed below fits this mold, as does the elite pact account.
Legal Consistency
Much legal scholarship assumes that the SC derives its ability to
legitimize and delegitimize the use of force from its capacity to form
judgments about the extent to which proposed actions fit a legal framework
that defines a system of collective security. Although the SC is
explicitly a political institution rather than a court, there is a body of
customary and written international law that provides a basis for
determinations about the legality of self-defense actions and other uses
of force.47
The indiscriminatory nature of legal
norms potentially makes legal uses of force more acceptable to governments
and citizens than actions that do not meet legal standards. To maintain
its standing as a legitimate conferrer of legal judgments, an institution
must thus strive for consistency in its rulings and motivate deviations
from past practice with (developing) legal principles. This standard has
usefully been applied to other bodies, such as dispute resolution
mechanisms in trade organizations
48 and the European Court of
Justice (ECJ).
49 That legal consistency is the
institutional behavior that reinforces legitimacy beliefs also motivates
concerns by legal scholars that the SC squanders its legitimacy when it
behaves in ways that are inconsistent with general principles of
international law.
50 There is, however, no empirical evidence that legal consistency has
been a driving force behind SC decisions. During the Cold War, the
judgments by UN bodies on the legality of self-defense actions were widely
perceived as politically motivated and not persuasive on the issue of
lawfulness.51
The SC has not developed a consistent doctrine on
this matter since the end of the Cold War. The most noteworthy decision is
the previously noted Resolution 1373, which affirms the right of the
United States to act forcefully in its self-defense against terrorist
activities. The extensive scope of the resolution has led some to question
its legal foundations. As Farer puts it: “At this point, there is
simply no cosmopolitan body of respectable legal opinion that could be
invoked to support so broad a conception of self-defense.”
52 With regard to Chapter VII authorizations, the most basic
determination is whether a situation presents a threat to international
peace and security. Such “Article 39 determinations” have been
stretched on multiple occasions to accommodate immediate political
objectives. For example, Iraqi actions in Kurdish areas in 1991, the
humanitarian tragedy in Somalia in 1992, the civil war in Angola in 1993,
the failure to implement election results in Haiti in 1994, and
Libya's unwillingness to surrender its citizens accused of terrorism
have all been deemed threats to international peace.53
See SC Resolution 688, 5 April 1991; SC Resolution 794, 3
December 1992; and SC Resolution 940, 31 July 1994.
Most
importantly, there has been no serious effort at motivating the Article 39
determination on these resolutions. As Kirgis points out:
“[I]f we are concerned about the responsible use of power
by a marginally representative international organ that at present is not
subject to recall or judicial review, we should expect the Security
Council to be conscious of how and why it is expanding the definition. It
should also contemplate the limits to be applied to the broader
definition. It should, in other words, make principled Article 39
determinations, publicly explicated, that do not set unlimited or
unintended precedents.”
54 Legal scholars have noted a variety of other difficulties considering
SC decisions, including the common practice to delegate the use of force
to individual states or groupings of states, the failure to define a
greater role for judicial review through the International Court of
Justice, and the extent to which the Charter obliges states to seek
peaceful resolutions before authorizing force.55
Glennon has concluded that coherent international
law concerning intervention by states no longer exists.
56 Others counter that the Charter does
not impose meaningful restrictions on the set of cases in which the SC can
legally authorize forceful means.
57 Clearly, either view precludes
that legal consistency is the driving force behind the SC's
legitimizing ability. This does not mean that legal norms do not affect
the use of force. The norm to ask for approval from the SC for the use of
force can itself be understood as a legal norm. The observation that this
norm is mostly obeyed even though the SC itself has shown little regard
for legal principles warrants an explanation.
Forum for Deliberation
A second set of scholars claim that while legal arguments are not
decisive in the SC, law plays a broader role in the process of
justificatory discourse.58
This view relies on the notion that
governments generally feel compelled to justify their actions on something
other than self-interest. This may be so because governments seek to
acquire the support of other governments, domestic political actors, or
public opinion. Or, it may be that governments have internalized standards
for appropriate behavior that are embedded in international legal norms.
The importance of law in persuasion resides in its ability to put limits
on the set of arguments that can acceptably be invoked.
59 Moreover,
professional experts (international lawyers) help distinguish good
arguments from poor ones in the evaluation of truth claims. Of course, the
extent to which legal specialists can perform this function depends on the
presence of a relatively coherent body of international law that regulates
uses of force.
Alternatively, discourse in the SC may be guided by rules that the
international community collectively understands to guide the process of
acquiring approval for uses of force, even if not codified by law.60
This thesis relies on the presence of easily
recognizable common values that facilitate the evaluation of
arguments.
The above view provides a promising account for why states frequently
appeal to legal arguments, precedents, and collective security rules, even
if final decisions often violate those rules. However, this view does not
provide a plausible explanation for the role of the SC in this discursive
process. It is widely recognized that the SC falls far short of
Habermasian conditions for effective communicative action.61
There is only a shallow
set of common values, participants are unequal, and the SC relies
extensively on unrecorded and informal consultations between subsets of
the permanent members.
62 U.S.
Secretary of State Colin Powell's public exposition of evidence for
the case against Iraq was highly unusual and of questionable efficacy as a
persuasive effort.
63 Colin Powell,
“Remarks to the United Nations Security Council,” New York
City, 5 February 2003.
More frequently, the most visible efforts
at persuasion occur outside of the institutional context of the SC. SC
debates are usually recitations by representatives of statements prepared
by their state departments. Strategic incentives further impede
deliberation. There are clear and obvious incentives for states to
misrepresent their positions, as the stakes are clear and the relevant
actors few. In short, it is hard to see how the institutional setting of
the SC contributes to the process of justificatory discourse and why, if
deliberation were so important, institutional reforms have not been
undertaken or alternative venues such as the GA have not grown more
relevant.
Appropriate Procedures
An institution's decisions may be seen as legitimate because the
institution's decision-making process corresponds to practice deemed
desirable by members of the community. Beliefs about the appropriateness
of a decision-making process constitute an important source of authority
for domestic political institutions, particularly in democracies. Citizens
may attach inherent value to procedures that conform to principles widely
shared in a society. As a consequence, decisions of an institution may be
perceived as legitimate even if these produce outcomes deemed
undesirable.64
In a similar vein, accountability, procedural
fairness, and broad participation are often seen as inherent elements of
the legitimacy of IOs.
65 This assumption underlies the
common argument that the main threat to SC legitimacy is that the
institution is dominated by a few countries and that its procedures are
opaque and unfair.
66 The assertion is that the
SC's decisions would carry greater legitimacy if its procedures more
closely matched liberal norms, which allegedly have become increasingly
important in international society.
67 The many attempts to reform the SC indicate that the legitimacy of the
SC may be enhanced from the perspective of some if its decision-making
procedures more closely corresponded to liberal principles. But one cannot
plausibly explain the legitimacy the SC does confer on uses of force from
the assumption that governments and citizens demand appropriate process.
As outlined earlier, SC practice sets a low standard if measured against
any reasonable set of liberal principles. One may object that a use of
force authorized by the SC more closely approximates standards of
appropriate procedure than unilateral actions. But if demands for
appropriate procedure were strong, one would surely expect a greater use
of more inclusive IOs, such as a return to the “uniting for
peace” procedure popular in the 1950s and 1960s, perhaps under a
weighted voting system. Instead, the GA has grown increasingly irrelevant
for legitimizing uses of force. Alternatively, one might have expected
reforms that increase transparency and accountability, which have been
moderately successful in international financial institutions. Some argue
that accountability has worsened in the 1990s, as the GA can no longer
hold the SC accountable through the budget by qualified majority rule,68
and because of the increasingly common practice of delegating the
authority to use force to states and regional organizations.
69 It is equally implausible that the general public appreciates the SC
for its procedures. The public knows little about how the SC makes its
decisions. Even in the midst of the Iraq controversy, 32 percent of the
U.S. public claimed that the United States does not have the right to veto
SC decisions,70
According to PIPA 2003b, 55 percent thought that the United States
does have that right.
and only 16 percent could name the five
members with veto power.
71 Knowledge is not much better elsewhere, with correct
identification of permanent members varying in a nine-country study from 5
percent in Portugal to 24 percent in Germany.
72 Finally and most fundamentally, there is no set of common values that
generate consensus about what constitutes appropriate global governance.
Disagreements have become especially apparent in debates about voting
rules and membership questions, but they have also surfaced in virtually
any other area where meaningful reforms have been proposed.73
Even liberal democracies generally disagree on if and how liberal
principles ought to be extended to global governance.
74 Explanations that
emphasize strong common values are less likely to be successful for a
diverse global organization than for an institution with more homogenous
membership.
Global Public Goods
An alternative view is that the SC helps solve collective action
problems that arise in the production of global public goods.75
Successful peacekeeping operations
reduce suffering and save lives. Globalization and the end of the Cold War
may have increased demands for international actions that produce such
effects.
76 In addition, UN-authorized interventions may provide
a measure of stability and security that benefits virtually all nations.
For example, the first Gulf War reinforced the norm that state borders not
be changed forcibly and secured the stability of the global oil
supply.
77 These benefits accrue to all
status quo powers and are not easily excludable.
Models of public good provision predict that poor nations will be able
to free ride off the contributions of wealthier nations and that the
public good will be underprovided because contributors do not take into
account the spillover benefits that their support confers to others. The
SC may help alleviate underprovision and free riding in three ways. First,
the fixed burden-sharing mechanism for peacekeeping operations provides an
institutional solution that helps reduce risks of bargaining failures and
lessens transaction costs.78
This system was
put in place in 1973 by General Assembly Resolution 310.
Second,
the delegation of decision-making authority to a small number of states
may facilitate compromise on the amount of public good that ought to be
produced.
79 Third, the SC helps states pool resources.
80 The existence of selective incentives induces some
states to incur more than their required share of the peacekeeping burden.
For example, Kuwait paid two-thirds of the bill for the UN Iraq-Kuwait
Observation Mission through voluntary contributions. Australia proved
willing to shoulder a disproportionate share of the peacekeeping burden in
East-Timor. States are more likely to make such contributions when these
add to the efforts of others in a predictable manner.
The absence of enforcement mechanisms implies that the survival of
this cooperative solution depends on a social norm. This norm first and
foremost requires states to pay their share of the burden. The more states
believe that this norm is followed, the fewer incentives they have to free
ride in any particular case. In individual instances, states must be
willing to shoulder a larger share of the burden than they would with a
voluntary mechanism, because they believe that the benefits from upholding
the social norm (greater public good production in the long run) exceed
the short-term benefits of shirking. Hence, interventions authorized by
the SC could be perceived as more legitimate in the sense that they signal
a longer-term commitment to global public good production.
Although this argument is plausible theoretically, it fails to account
for some noticeable empirical patterns. First, the belief among rational
actors that the SC plays this role should and probably has weakened
considerably since the early 1990s. The much-publicized failures in
Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia should have reduced beliefs that the SC is the
appropriate mechanism for coordination that helps solve problems of public
good production. Moreover, several wealthy states, most notably the United
States, have failed repeatedly to meet their peacekeeping assessments. As
of 31 January 2003, the United States had $789 million in peacekeeping
arrears.81
See
〈http://www.globalpolicy.org/finance/tables/core/un-us-03.htm〉.
Accessed 10 March 2005.
Other states owe the UN $1.4 billion in
payments for peacekeeping. These arrears constitute a sizeable portion of
the total peacekeeping budget.
82 In the
2000–2002 period, yearly peacekeeping budgets were around $2.6
billion.
Under the collective action model, the failure of states
to meet their assessments gives other states clear incentives to
shirk.
Second, the public goods rationale does not explain why states value
SC authorization even when they do not use its fixed burden-sharing
mechanism. Between 1996 and 2000, estimated expenditures on
non–UN-financed peacekeeping missions have exceeded spending on
UN-financed operations by $11.5 billion.83
Interestingly, many of these non–UN-financed
operations have taken place with the explicit authorization of the SC. For
example, the mandates of the various peacekeeping and peacemaking forces
in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan were all authorized at some point by SC
resolutions,
84 Initial SC resolutions for
respective missions were SC Resolution 1031, 15 December 1995; SC
Resolution 1088, 12 December 1996; SC Resolution 1244, 10 June 1999; and
SC Resolution 1386, 20 December 2001.
but none of them are
financed primarily through the UN system or executed by the UN.
Third, the decision-making procedures grant veto power to states that
contribute little to UN operations and exclude some of the most
significant contributors. Japan and Germany are the second and third
largest contributors but have no permanent seat at the table. China
contributes less than small European states such as Belgium, Sweden, and
the Netherlands, but has the right to veto any resolution.85
If public good provision were the prime
concern, reform of these decision-making mechanisms would be in every
state's best interest. It would prevent large contributors from
abandoning the institution or refusing to pay their dues. International
financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF, have adopted
weighted voting rules that better fit these objectives.
The value states attach to SC authorization rests not entirely in the
extent to which it forms an institutional solution to free-rider problems
that lead to underproduction of public goods. However, the public good
argument is not completely without merit. Several SC-authorized
peacekeeping missions have helped resolve conflicts and have contributed
to the implementation of peace agreements.86
Moreover, a global alternative is not readily available. The elite pact
rationale suggests that the main function of the SC in this may be that it
addresses a distributional issue that frequently impedes successful
collective action.
The Security Council as an Elite Pact
An alternative perspective is that the SC is an institutional
manifestation of a central coalition of great powers.87
This view
does not proclaim that the SC enforces a broad system of collective
security, but rather that it may serve as a useful mechanism that
facilitates cooperative efforts in an anarchic world characterized by the
security dilemma.
88 Concerts were historically designed to deal with
situations of multipolarity that followed the defeat of hegemony. However,
similar incentives for cooperation exist in a unipolar world characterized
by interdependence. There are substantial potential gains from cooperation
between the superpower and other states on economic issues such as trade
and financial stability. Moreover, many governments face common security
threats such as terrorism and states with the capacity and intention to
challenge status quo boundaries or produce nuclear weapons. The main
impediment to cooperation under the security dilemma is fear of
exploitation.
89 Such fears are also relevant in a unipolar world
where the superpower can use its preponderant capabilities to extract
concessions, set the terms for cooperation, and act against the interests
of individual states without being checked by a single credible power.
In such asymmetrical situations, credible limits to the use of force
potentially benefit both the superpower and the rest of the world.90
In the absence of credible guarantees, one observes
suboptimal levels of cooperation as states pay a risk premium, captured
for instance by increased military expenditure or other actions targeted
at limiting the superpower's relative primacy. Institutions, such as
NATO, help increase the credibility of security guarantees by raising the
cost of reneging from a commitment. However, the absence of an outside
threat and strong collective identity make such arrangements much more
difficult to achieve at the global level.
Game-theoretic analyses that treat institutions as self-enforcing
equilibria suggest an alternative route by which institutions help achieve
better outcomes: they aid in solving the coordination dilemma among those
actors that fear exploitation. Potential individual challenges are
unlikely to deter a superpower from engaging in transgressions. However,
the prospect of a coordinated challenge may well persuade the superpower
to follow restraint. For this to succeed, states would have to agree on a
mechanism that credibly triggers a coordinated response. For example,
Greif, Milgrom, and Weingast argue that merchant guilds during the late
medieval period provided a credible threat of costly boycotts if trade
centers violated merchants' property rights.91
Without these guilds, trade centers were unable to
credibly commit to not exploit individual merchants and consequentially,
merchants traded less than desired by the trade centers. As such,
cooperation with the guilds became self-enforcing: it was in the
self-interest of all actors to abide by the cooperative norm and defend
against violations of the norm. Therefore, breaches of the norm came to be
seen as illegitimate actions.
There is, however, a complicating factor in applying this analogy to
the international arena. One can reasonably assume that merchants agreed
on a common definition of what constituted a fundamental transgression by
a trade center. Such consensus surely does not exist in the global arena.
As the recent conflict over Iraq illustrates, what some states perceive as
a proper use of force, others see as an encroachment. This introduces a
political component to the problem. The strategic dilemma in the
international system therefore more closely resembles that of achieving
limited governance and rule of law in the context of ethnically,
linguistically, and religiously heterogeneous societies, as analyzed by
Weingast.92
The informal discussion here
relies on the formal analysis provided by Weingast
1997.
In heterogeneous societies, actors usually have conflicting interests
about many aspects of governance. Weingast's model assumes that each
actor can classify each move by the superpower93
Sovereign in Weingast's case.
as either a
transgression or a legitimate action. However, actors do not necessarily
agree on these classifications. A superpower can exploit this by rewarding
a subset of actors and infringing on the interests of the others. Although
there are many such uncooperative equilibria, in a dynamic setting the
Pareto-optimal cooperative outcome is also an equilibrium. In this
equilibrium, no transgressions occur and states can cooperate
beneficially. However, this equilibrium entails that states agree on a
mechanism that triggers a coordinated response against an identifiable
action by the superpower. It also requires that states use trigger
strategies to punish one another for failing to cooperate in a coordinated
challenge. The heterogeneous actors that occupy the international system
are unlikely to resolve their coordination dilemma in a wholly
decentralized manner.
In accordance with the literature on comparative politics, Weingast
suggests that the most effective manner to induce limited governance in
divided societies is through elite pacts.94
An elite pact is an agreement among a select set of
actors that seeks to neutralize threats to stability by institutionalizing
nonmajoritarian mechanisms for conflict resolution. The SC can usefully be
understood as such a pact that functions as a focal point that helps state
actors coordinate what limits to the exercise of power should be defended.
If the SC authorizes a use of force, the superpower and the states that
cooperate should not be challenged. If, however, the United States
exercises force in the absence of SC authorization, other states should
challenge it and its allies, for instance, by reducing cooperation
elsewhere. This equilibrium behavior can be understood as a social norm or
convention. For a convention to be successful, it needs to be
self-enforcing. This means that actors should find it in their interest to
punish unilateral defections from the pact, for example, because they
believe that deviations have the potential to steer international society
down a conflict-ridden path. SC authorizations thus legitimize uses of
force in that they form widely accepted political judgments that signal
whether a use of force transgresses a limit that should be defended. This
fits with the conventional interpretation that legitimate power is limited
power.
To domestic publics this convention performs a signaling function.
Citizens are generally unprepared to make accurate inferences about the
likely consequences of forceful actions. If the convention operates as
specified above, SC agreement provides the public with a shortcut on the
likely consequences of foreign adventures. SC authorization indicates that
no costly challenges will result from the action. The absence of SC
authorization on the other hand, signals the possibility of costly
challenges and reduced cooperation. A U.S. public that generally wants the
United States to be involved internationally but is fearful of
overextension95
may value such a signaling function. To foreign
publics, SC approval signals that a particular use of force does not
constitute an abuse of power that should lead to a coordinated, costly
response.
96 Clearly this conception
of the SC poses fewer informational demands on general publics than
alternatives. Moreover, it does not rely on the assumption that citizens
share common values about the normative qualities of global governance.
All citizens need to understand is that SC authorization implies some
measure of consent and cooperation, whereas the absence of authorization
signals potential challenges. The symbolic (focal point) aspect of SC
approval allows for analogies to past experiences in a way that
cooperative efforts through ad hoc coalitions do not.
More generally, the elite pact account does not depend on the
existence of a broad set of common values that generates a consensus about
what global governance should look like. For a cooperative equilibrium to
survive, it is not necessary that each actor believe that the norm that
sustains the equilibrium is morally appropriate, as long as most
nonbelievers assume that other actors would react to violations. This is
consistent with Weber's view on why a social order is binding on an
individual level.97
It helps explain the observation that governments
insist on SC authorizations of uses of force even if they challenge the
normative qualities of the institution. As observed earlier, powerful
states such as Germany, Japan, and India, as well as many developing
countries, regularly criticize the SC for its composition and
decision-making procedures. Yet, they also insist on SC authorization of
uses of force and in some cases even adjust their domestic laws to make
cooperation conditional on SC.
The elite pact account has several other interesting implications that
put it at odds with the alternative accounts. The remainder of this
section discusses three of these: the mode of transformation,
institutional design, and the self-enforcing character of the pact.
Mode of Transformation
The alternative explanations either do not give a clear prediction of
how a shift in the authority of the SC takes place or (implicitly) assume
that change occurs in response to gradual normative shifts toward greater
reliance on liberal values or globalization.98
The elite pact model predicts
that if a shift toward a more cooperative equilibrium occurs, it will be
in response to a discrete event. Elite pacts cannot be formed at just any
time. In the most natural uncoordinated equilibrium, groups of actors
exploit others and have no direct incentive to stop this practice. Elite
pacts are therefore imposed following galvanizing events that disturb the
beliefs on which a preceding equilibrium rested.
99 The conclusion of major wars is
particularly likely to upset previously held beliefs and payoff
structures.
100 This logic is also apparent
in Ikenberry 2001, who also stresses the
importance of creating credible limits to the exercise of power through
institutions. However, the logic that grants the SC authority is different
here than in Ikenberry.
This is compatible with the empirical record. Concerts were imposed
following the defeat of a hegemon in a major war; a characterization that
also fits the formation of the SC in the immediate aftermath of World War
II.101
Nevertheless, the pact was not self-enforcing and had little bearing on
whatever stability there was during most of the Cold War.
102 It is beyond the scope of this paper to
speculate on the reasons. A potential answer is that its purpose, to
restrain a weak defeated state (Germany), was rapidly resolved.
The end of the Cold War created uncertainty in the perceptions of states
about new equilibrium behavior. In such a situation it is highly likely
that the manner by which a cooperative resolution to the first major
international conflict was reached greatly influenced beliefs among
policymakers, politicians and citizens about the future resolution of
conflicts, and hence that adherence to the norm that the SC authorizes
force helps enforce a stable (but limited) form of governance.
It is important to emphasize that the strategic dilemma that states
faced in the Gulf War matches the game that motivates the elite pact
account. First, there were clear incentives for cooperation. The Iraqi
conquest of Kuwait constituted a violation of an international norm that
nearly all states would prefer to uphold. Moreover, many states had
strategic interests in the region that could be harmed by a unilateral
response. Second, there were fears of exploitation. These were especially
apparent in the USSR and motivated its initial preference for prolonged
economic sanctions over multilateral intervention.103
For example, Strobe Talbott wrote in 1991: “In one
Kremlin session, a top official of the Defense Ministry predicted that
U.S. forces would “stay in the Gulf region indefinitely,”
constituting a “new threat” to Soviet security. In effect, and
perhaps in intent as well, he continued, the U.S. was taking advantage of
the end of the cold war by moving its heaviest concentration of manpower
and firepower from Europe to the soft underbelly of the U.S.S.R.”
See Time Magazine, 2 September 1991. Available at
http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1101910902-157772,00.html.
Accessed 18 April 2005.
For more see Freedman and
Karsh 1993, 79.
Such fears were also evident in China,
104 Arab states,
105 and even Europe, especially in
France, where President Francois Mitterrand had to force the resignation
of his defense minister over the issue.
106 Jean-Pierre Chevenement, seen as the leader of a fraction of
Mitterrand's Socialist Party, reportedly said that “American
colonisation is more pleasant than Soviet invasion, but while the latter
is not likely to happen, the former is going on every day.”
Guardian, 1 February 1991.
Mitterrand explained to U.S.
Secretary of State James Baker that SC approval was necessary even if
lawyers believed that the intervention was legally justifiable without
explicit authorization:
107 Namely through
the previously mentioned Article 51 procedure.
“Fifty-five
million French people are not international lawyers. We need that
resolution to ensure the consequences it will entail.”
108 Thus,
Mitterand believed that his domestic audience desired reassurance and that
SC approval would provide it. Finally, the U.S. motivation for seeking SC
approval hinged strongly on the acquisition of political approval that
would remove suspicions of exploitative behavior. Baker explained his
logic of going through the SC in the following way:
But to my way of thinking our disagreement about legalities
was academic. As a practical matter, the United States had no real choice
initially but to try a coalition approach in dealing with the
crisis…. The credibility of our cause would be suspect, not just in
the Arab world, but even to some in the West, including the United
States.109
The Persian Gulf War was successful in that the first major conflict
after the Cold War was resolved in a cooperative manner without the United
States overextending. As I established earlier, there was a surge in SC
activity immediately following the Persian Gulf War. Whereas the United
States never considered asking for SC authorization for its intervention
in Panama in December 1989, such requests became commonplace after the
successful cooperative effort to remove Iraq from Kuwait. The suggestion
here is that this development was directly related to the experience of
the Gulf War in the uncertain environment of the end of the Cold War
rather than an ideational change that stipulated greater sympathy for
legal or liberal values.
There is much anecdotal evidence that policymakers and politicians
across the globe were indeed at least moderately optimistic about the
prospects for cooperation through the SC in the aftermath of the Gulf
War.110
That the experience would make
a big impression on policymakers is also supported by studies of foreign
policy decision making. For example, Khong has shown that war experiences
that have consensual interpretations are likely to be uncritically, and
perhaps inappropriately, used as analogies for future decisions.
111 Even those who believed that the legitimacy of the
SC was based on false perceptions of reality usually did not argue that it
was irrelevant, but rather that it was dangerous.
112 The success of
cooperation also shaped perceptions among the general public. In a
December 1992
Newsweek poll, 87 percent agreed with the
statement: “The US should commit its troops only as part of a United
Nations operation.”
113 10 percent
disagreed and 3 percent answered “don't know.” Poll
executed by Gallup on 3–4 December 1992.
Before 1990,
questions that suggested a primacy for the UN or the need for UN
authorization for interventions were not even asked to the American
public.
114 This statement is based on
searches for the 1980s in the archives IPOLL, Polling the
Nations, and a collection of survey items sent by Clay Ramsay,
Research Director Program on International Policy Attitudes, University of
Maryland. Most questions related to the UN either asked about general
support or support for peacekeeping missions in Third World
countries.
This too suggests a change in expectations about what
the SC could and should do.
Institutional Design
The argument advanced here does not presume that it was inevitable
that the SC would play the role it did in the Persian Gulf War or that it
would have risen to the same prominence had the Yugoslavian crisis
occurred before the Gulf War.115
The latter
hypothetical is especially interesting and, in my mind,
unresolved.
Rather, I maintain that given that the SC functioned
as it did at a time of great uncertainty about equilibrium behavior, it is
plausible that it impressed beliefs on state actors that a cooperative
equilibrium could be played with the SC as a focal solution. Nevertheless,
the institutional design of the SC did make it a more viable candidate for
such a role than alternative institutions.
First, elite pacts eschew majoritarian decision making and commonly
grant influential actors the power to veto decisions.116
This is
understandable because the goal of elite pacts is stability, not proper
procedure. Stability is threatened if those with the power to disturb it
are overruled in the decision process. Thus the GA would be a poor
coordination device and indeed has been largely irrelevant in security
affairs throughout the 1990s.
Second, the process by which compromises in elite cartels are achieved
is generally secretive rather than transparent. Public deliberation
manifests heterogeneity and commits actors to take stands from which it is
costly to recede. For the most part, the public record of SC meetings is
uninformative about true motivations actors have as most compromises are
achieved in unrecorded negotiations. Extensive public debate is uncommon
and counterproductive, as commented on in the section on deliberation.
Third, elite cartels usually embrace principles of subsidiarity or
segmental authority.117
Delegating discretion to influential actors within their own domain helps
preserve satisfaction with the status quo. It has become the modal option
for the SC to de facto delegate the authority to use force to regional
organizations (for example, NATO, Economic Community of West African
States) or regional powers (for example, United States, Australia). This
creates serious problems of accountability and has questionable legal
foundations in the Charter.
118 It fits, however, within the
purpose of an elite pact.
Although the elite pact's primary focus is to define instances of
appropriate uses of power by the United States and hence to identify the
circumstances under which other states may legitimately cooperate with the
United States, it may also confer judgments on the use of force by
regional powers. For instance, SC approval of Australia's
intervention in East-Timor signals that this use of force is legitimate in
that it should not trigger a coordinated response by other states. In the
absence of such an assurance, a military intervention that enhances peace
and security in the region may be more difficult to undertake for
Australia in that the risks may be less clear to the government and the
public. In this sense, the SC may enhance the production of public goods,
although through a different mechanism than discussed in the previous
section. It provides a political judgment on whether a particular use of
force is sufficiently in the “public interest” such that it
can be supported rather than challenged.
Although the SC's institutional characteristics reflect the
general properties of an elite pact well, one can surely think of
alternative and perhaps more efficient designs to tackle the coordination
problem. For example, it may not be obvious why states would rely on a
formal institution rather than a club-based organization with less
explicit decision-making procedures, such as the Group of 7 (G-7) or the
Concert of Europe.119
For an argument that
decisions in international finance are increasingly made in closed clubs;
see Drezner 2003.
First, formal
institutions help solve time-inconsistency problems that sometimes impede
mutually beneficial resolutions of distributional conflicts.
120 A formal SC authorization for military action raises
the cost for China or Russia to withdraw from endorsing it because
everyone knows they had the opportunity to veto the action. These costs
may be lower in a club-based organization. Second, fixed decision-making
procedures help clarify expectations and thus reduce uncertainties that
may impede compromises to distributive conflicts.
121 Third, the institutional
context of the UN facilitates the symbolic function that the SC performs
for domestic publics. Finally, negotiating an entirely new elite pact is
difficult. The fact that the SC is substantively charged with authorizing
force and had some experience with doing so may help explain the pull
toward the institution.
Norm Stability
Constructivists have criticized rationalist approaches for being
ontologically inclined to revisionism and therefore unable to adequately
explain the persistence of norms, since self-interested actors do not
value the norms themselves, just the benefits directly accruing from
them.122
Instead, constructivists typically assume that actors internalize social
norms. The concept of internalization is borrowed from the developmental
and social psychology literature, where it is used to characterize the
process by which humans absorb norms and values present in their social
environment to develop standards for appropriate behavior. Once these
standards are internalized, actors do not reevaluate adherence to them
when choosing between alternative courses of action. There are both good
theoretical and empirical reasons to suspect that internalization is not a
prominent source of norm stability in the case under investigation.
Theoretically, it is not at all obvious how the internalization concept
extends to state actors, especially when these are making decisions
regarding behavior than can hardly be described as habitual: the use of
military force. Empirically, there are examples aplenty where state actors
consciously and explicitly evaluated the trade-off between the legitimacy
benefits of the SC and the costs of compromise necessary to obtain those
benefits.
123 This suggests a different
thought process than internalization would.
That internalization is unlikely does imply that norm stability is a
concern. In the elite pact model, a stable norm reflects a self-enforcing
equilibrium. This indeed requires that governments must find that their
expected utility of abiding by the norm exceeds their utility from acting
otherwise. Whether the norm is self-enforcing depends at least partly on
the behavior of the institution itself. If the SC conforms to the
expectations of actors regarding its function, the legitimacy beliefs on
which its authority is based are reinforced. If, however, the SC defies
those expectations, these beliefs are undermined. If the behavior of the
SC reinforces the social norm, more actors in more situations perceive it
to be in their interest to adhere to it. If the behavior of the SC
undermines the social norm, fewer actors in fewer situations support it.
This self-undermining process can reach a critical level at which the
equilibrium is no longer self-enforcing and institutional change should
follow.124
Greif and
Laitin 2004. Legitimacy beliefs can be understood as
“quasi-parameters.” These are parameters that can gradually be
altered by the implications of the institution, but a marginal change will
not necessarily cause behavior associated with the institution to
change.
This point is consistent with the common assumption that
regimes weaken when actual practice is inconsistent with the rules and
norms that constitute the regime.
125 Behavior associated with the SC reinforces the social norm if it
contributes to keeping U.S. power in check while avoiding costly
challenges and maintaining beneficial forms of global cooperation. It
undermines the social norm if it either fails to provide an adequate check
on U.S. power or leads to costly challenges. In observing a SC
authorization for the use of force, one should not observe meaningful
challenges to the United States by other states. If important states would
retaliate even after the United States obtains SC authorization, the
United States may be less inclined to follow the social norm in future
instances. In addition, the decision to authorize force cannot merely be a
rubber stamp. If those states that are delegated the responsibilities to
constrain U.S. power give too much leeway, SC decisions lose their utility
to other states. This implies that to maintain the equilibrium it will
sometimes be necessary for permanent members to defend the interests of
important states not represented in the Council.126
On the practice of informal consultations, see Hurd 1997.
If they would fail to do so, the
social norm would be of little use to these states and they might
challenge it.
Besides the Persian Gulf War, other reinforcing examples include the
Haitian and Somalian invasions, and the various resolutions on Bosnia.
These cases may not have been resolved in a manner that is satisfactory
from a moral, legal, or efficiency standpoint, but they did not result in
an overextension of U.S. power or in costly challenges against its power,
despite disagreements between states over the proper courses of
action.
If the United States uses force in the absence of SC agreement, one
should see countermeasures that are costly to the United States. If states
fail to react, more people within the United States will believe that a
lack of SC authorization carries no serious consequences and thus fewer
believe that the social norm should be adhered to. To other states, the
utility of the SC as an institution to limit power is diminished if the
United States can engage in unpunished transgressions. Moreover, states
should seek to punish other states that cooperate with the United States
in the absence of SC authorization.
The Kosovo intervention presents the first important deviation from
the norm.127
There are at least two cases
where SC authorization was ambiguous: the 1991 enforcement of no-fly zones
in Iraq and the 1998 bombing in Iraq by the United States and the UK. The
20 August 1998 bombings in Sudan and Afghanistan in response to the
terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were not
authorized. The action was motivated as an act of self-defense and limited
in scope. Responses included various denunciations by states and
organizations such as the Arab League, which stressed the absence of UN
authorization. See Al-Ahram Weekly Online, 27 August 1998, issue
392. Available at
〈http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/1998/392/foc6.htm〉.
Accessed 10 March 2005.
The decision by the United States and its
NATO allies to intervene forcefully without SC authorization did elicit
protest from various sources, but it did not trigger an extensive
coordinated response. There were two circumstances that modify the
weakening implications for the SC somewhat, though not entirely. First,
the action was executed by NATO, which implied some checks to U.S. power.
Of course, if going through NATO would establish itself as an easier and
risk-free alternative strategy the social norm that grants the SC
authority is undermined. Second, although there was no explicit SC
authorization to use force, there were two previous resolutions that at
least implied a forceful response.
128 See
SC Resolution 1199, 23 September 1998; and SC Resolution 1203, 24 October
1998.
More importantly, the SC adopted new resolutions that
defined an extensive role for the UN once the fighting ended.
129 In particular, see SC Resolution 1239, 14
May 1999; and SC Resolution 1244, 10 June 1999.
The United States
and its allies were willing to delegate authority to the UN in
implementing their victory, thus alleviating fears of overextension
somewhat. Nevertheless, the Kosovo episode should at least have had the
consequence that fewer people in fewer situations believe that the absence
of SC authorization for an intervention carries great costs.
The decision by the Bush administration in 2003 to invade Iraq in the
absence of SC authorization presents a more serious challenge. A large
number of countries clearly perceived the U.S.-led intervention as a
transgression of acceptable limits to U.S. power. Failure to generate a
coordinated response should seriously weaken the legitimacy of the SC. It
leads U.S. decision makers to perceive that the benefit of SC
authorization for future interventions is minor. Moreover, it should
reduce the belief among states that the SC can provide a credible check on
U.S. power, perhaps inducing these states to resort to other means.
The early evidence is that challenging behavior is moderate. Pape has
referred to it as “soft balancing,” meaning that it relies on
recalcitrance in international institutions, the use of economic leverage,
and diplomatic efforts to frustrate American intentions.130
Boston Globe, 23 April 2003,
H1.
The leaders of several European countries strongly opposed to
the military action announced their intentions to increase military
spending, strengthen military cooperation within Europe, and strengthen
military ties with China.
131 Joint
Declaration Meeting of the Heads of State and Government of Germany,
France, Luxembourg and Belgium on European Defense, Brussels, 29 April
2003.
Several states, most notably India and Japan, have made
troop contributions conditional on SC resolutions. There is also some
evidence that states who perceived the U.S. action as a transgression
sought to “punish” states that cooperated in the absence of SC
authorization. For instance, French President Jacques Chirac said the East
European leaders who signed letters of support for the U.S. position on
Iraq had “missed an opportunity to shut up,” adding that he
“felt they acted frivolously because entry into the European Union
implies a minimum of understanding for the others.”
132 International Herald Tribune, 19
February 2003, 3.
These actions should reinforce beliefs that
there are some costs associated with acting and cooperating without SC
authorization. While it is too early to draw more definitive conclusions,
the actions should also reinforce beliefs that, at least in the short run,
the costs from disobeying the norm are not prohibitively large.
Conclusions
The ability of the SC to successfully restrain the United States is at
the heart of its aptitude to play a legitimizing role in international
politics. In this conception, a legitimate exercise of power abides by
certain accepted limits. SC authorization signals the observance of these
limits, which are defined not by legal, moral, or efficiency standards,
but by an undemocratic political process that seeks to achieve compromise
among elite actors. It is important to understand that although the role
of the SC depends entirely on the configuration of state interests, this
fact does not make the institution epiphenomenal. There are many potential
equilibria and convergence on a particular (semicooperative) equilibrium
has important implications. This is true even if the restraint on the
exercise of power is limited to raising the cost of unilateralism.
Theoretically, this conception of legitimacy corresponds best to those
classical realists who did not consider power and legitimacy to be
antithetical, but complementary.133
Legitimacy, these theorists argued, helps convert power into authority.
Authority is a much cheaper regulatory device than the constant exercise
of coercion. Therefore, attempts to legitimize power are a persistent
feature of political life, even in the anarchical global arena. However,
these realists had little faith in legalities or moral values as the
source for legitimacy. Instead, the process of legitimation primarily
involves the acquisition of political judgments about the proper way in
which the exercise of power ought to be limited. As Claude wrote in 1966:
“[T]he process of legitimization is ultimately a political
phenomenon, a crystallization of judgment that may be influenced but is
unlikely to be wholly determined by legal norms and moral
principles.”
134 This statement contrasts
sharply with the view that IOs derive their legitimacy precisely from
their ability to appear depoliticized. One way of reconciling these views
is that the latter focuses mostly on the role of IOs as bureaucracies or
courts, whereas the first stresses their political arena role. The UN
encompasses both roles, but the ability of the SC to legitimize the use of
force stems from its function as a political meeting place. This political
arena function of IOs has hitherto received too little attention in the
theoretical literature.
The implications of this argument differ in important ways from
alternative accounts. The common claim among scholars of international law
that the SC threatens to lose its legitimacy if it adopts resolutions that
do not fit a broader legal framework depends strongly on the (usually
implicit) assumption that its legitimacy depends primarily on its ability
to fulfill the role of legal adjudicator. This is the premise of
Glennon's argument that the SC was a “grand attempt to subject
the use of force to the rule of law,” which has “fallen victim
to geopolitical forces too strong for a legalist institution to
withstand.”135
If the SC's legitimacy
does not critically depend on its functioning as a guardian of a legal
system, as I argue here, the legal consistency of SC resolutions should
not per se be of great consequence to the legitimacy of the
institution.
136 Others claim that the gravest threat to the legitimacy of the SC is
that a few countries dominate it and that its procedures are opaque and
unfair.137
If demand for proper procedures were the motivating
factor behind the SC's authority, secretive backroom deals among the
great powers would be considered illegitimate. Such deals are part of the
elite pact account of legitimacy. This does not imply that actors view the
procedural aspects of elite politics as desirable per se, but that these
are useful to the higher purpose of stability. This situation suggests
that successful reforms to make the SC more transparent may actually have
adverse effects in that powerful states may flee the forum.
138 In the public
goods rationale, the legitimacy of the SC depends critically on preventing
free riding and effectiveness in producing global public goods. This is
not necessarily the primary concern in the elite-pact rationale, although
the proper functioning of the elite pact increases public good production
in comparison to uncooperative equilibria. Nevertheless, the failures of
the SC in Rwanda and other places and the failure of the United States to
meet its peacekeeping burden may have diminished esteem for the
institution, but these failures appear to have had little effect on the
belief that the SC is the proper authority to legitimize force.
The conclusion from this study should not be that states are not
concerned with legal and moral principles or global public goods, but that
the existing and persistent belief that the SC is the most desirable
institution to approve the use of force cannot be explained persuasively
from the assumption that states do. Legitimacy that relies on the
effectiveness of an institution to resolve a particular dilemma is often
thought to be inherently unstable. For example, it depends on outcomes
that could be caused by a multitude of factors, not just the decisions of
the institution. I agree that if the SC's legitimacy were based on a
convergence of opinions on its normative properties, its legitimacy would
be more stable than it is today. However, such agreement does not exist
and is unlikely to emerge in the near future. The collective legitimation
function of the UN helps shape state behavior because state officials have
made it important by their actions and statements.139
Those actions and statements could also undermine the
Council's legitimacy.
