Between Unilateralism and Collective Security: Authorizations of the Use of Force by the UN Security Council

Abstract

Whole libraries have already been written on various aspects of Security Council action since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990, on the unprecedented decisions during this conflict and its aftermath, followed by a much more cautious approach to the Yugoslav crisis and a curious response to the Somalia emergency. Assessments, of course, differed widely. They have ranged from believers in a New World Order to critics of Western imperialism under multilateral cover or neocolonialism in humanitarian disguise, from idealists to realists, from those who regarded the action in the Gulf as a one-time aberration to those who saw the dawning of a new era. In a way, the Security Council has proven all these extreme schools of thought wrong. In this paper I do not intend to intervene in this debate again directly. Instead I shall attempt to retrace the road taken by the Security Council since Resolution 665, giving to the extent possible some background of the genesis of all 19 texts which contain authorizations of the use of force but with variations upon the theme. Following these case studies, some of their legal aspects, and in particular the Charter basis for these resolutions, will be explored. Finally, through an examination of both the legal and the political aspects of authorizations of the use of force by the UN Security Council, I elaborate on my long-held view that, by and large, such authorizations are the most we can expect under present circumstances from the