Security Council Debate Research Articles

Accepting responsibility? Institutions and the security implications of climate change

Who has responsibility for addressing the security implications of climate change? States and the United Nations justify their existence on the promise of providing security. Yet, although the national and international security implications of climate change are increasingly acknowledged, incorporation of climate change in national security planning or institutional arrangements is far from universal, while debates in the UN Security Council about its role in addressing climate change have been characterized by contestation. This article examines key debates about the responsibilities these institutions have for providing security in the face of the threats posed by climate change, examining the extent to which these institutions accept responsibility for providing security in these contexts. Drawing on Toni Erskine’s notion of institutional moral agency, the article examines a 2017 inquiry into the national security implications of climate change in Australia, and the September 2021 UN Security Council debate on the international security implications of climate change. These two case studies explicitly focus on the question of institutional responsibility – of the Australian Government and the UN Security Council respectively – for addressing the threat of climate change. In both cases these institutions stop short of accepting responsibility for providing security in the face of climate change, with limited policy responses or institutionalization as the result. With the security implications of climate change increasingly apparent, and increasingly recognized by these (and other) actors, the failure to accept responsibility raises potentially significant questions about the legitimacy of these institutions themselves.

Small Island Developing States and climate securitisation in international politics: Towards a comprehensive conception

This article focuses on the engagement of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the climate security debate launched by the United Nations Security Council. It aims to show how SIDS’ engagement in the Security Council debate can provide an innovative approach to explain and overcome some of the conceptual and policy challenges for climate securitisation at the international level. Big and small actors in the climate security debate have formed multiple perceptions about threats and solutions concerning climate security. Military-based framings of security have taken a dominant place in the Security Council debate; this has created challenges for security actors seeking to include multiple threat factors related to climate change in the security space. SIDS have illustrated the challenges in highlighting the diverse range of vulnerabilities, impacts, and solutions uniquely inherent to many security speakers and audiences involved in the climate security debate. Using a qualitative analysis of constructivist literature on securitisation, this article develops a conceptual framework to help incorporate SIDS’ broader aspects of climate security into the securitising move at the international level. It asserts that SIDS make a compelling case to explain the impacts of multilevel threat factors and security provisions on climate security formation.

Where to draw the line? Climate change-conflict-migration-terrorism causal relations and a contested politics of implication

This paper explores the politics of epistemological claims which link climate change, conflict, migration and terrorism in causal relationships. The paper contends that attempts to establish such causal relationships in conditions of empirical complexity are characterised by a contested politics of implication. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of a UN Security Council debate on climate security (December 9, 2021), and the concept of linguistic implicature (referring to the non-explicit, inferential meanings which can follow from language use), the paper traces two logics which could suggest a politics of racial implication in climate security discourses: first, a compulsive climatic determinism which roots risks of terrorist violence in climate-affected populations; and second, a logic of proxy geographies in which dehumanisation could be implicated through natural world metaphors. Overall, this paper seeks to provide an understanding of how the inferential meanings associated with claims linking climate change, migration, conflict and terrorism could constitute potentially unequal outcomes in climate security politics and policymaking.

The Lure of Novelty: “Targeted Killing” and Its Older Terminological Siblings

AbstractThe concept “targeted killing” has been increasingly adopted in scholarship, policy, and media discourses, particularly in the context of US armed drone attacks. While “targeted killing” is often understood as something new, there are strong historical continuities with more traditional concepts such as “assassination” and “extra-judicial execution,” as well as with the colonial concept “police bombing.” This paper builds on an analysis of over nine hundred Security Council debates, Human Rights Council reports, legal papers, and policy documents. Tracing the conceptual continuities, I argue that the peculiar novelty of “targeted killing” does not mainly stem from the novelty of the practices and claims it describes but from the contradictory modes in which the term has been used, which has problematic repercussions for recent counterterrorism discourses. Posed as a new category that reacts to a new situation, the adoption of the concept “targeted killing” has, I argue, played an important role in the promotion of claims that were long considered unlawful and illegitimate. Demonstrating the importance of language in setting political struggles up in a particular way, the paper contributes to a growing body of critical work on counterterrorism use of force.

Student Engagement and Deep Learning in the First-Year International Relations Classroom: Simulating a UN Security Council Debate on the Syrian Crisis

This article evaluates a “real-time” simulation where students role-play a United Nations Security Council negotiation over humanitarian intervention in Syria. This simulation is undertaken in a large introductory International Relations (IR) subject. The article argues that in order to achieve deep learning outcomes across the diverse, contemporary cohort of first-year university students, active learning approaches need to be employed that engage differing learning styles and preferences. Deep learning is assessed across the conceptual and metacognitive knowledge domains with two indicators: (1) students’ understanding of IR concepts by applying them beyond the parameters of the Syria case and (2) students’ critical reflection on their moral reasoning elicited by the task. We evaluate 820 students across six cohorts and 21 iterations of the simulation during 2016 and 2017 with a survey instrument and formal reflection assignment. The article finds that the simulation is highly effective at consistently engaging the majority of students’ interest and motivation, while illustrating the acute and sometimes tragic tension between moral and political reasoning in IR. We found that disrupting student’s cognitive structures regarding human rights and justice stimulated not only deeper conceptual understanding but also emotional reactions that were the catalyst for metacognitive reflection.

R2P intervention, BRICS countries, and the no-fly zone measure in Libya

This paper adds value to ongoing academic debate on the emergence and evolution of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm. This is achieved through the proposition that understanding the coherent position taken by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS countries) in the case of R2P implementation in Libya in 2011 is important if we are to anticipate the development of this norm. Many studies have examined R2P within this context. But few of these focused on the interventions of BRICS countries in United Nations Security Council (UNSC) debates regarding R2P implementation in Libya. Analysis of statements made by BRICS countries—as a unified political group in those debates—has revealed that they have indeed advanced a coherent position regarding the definition and implementation of the R2P norm. More particularly, this paper finds that three distinctive features have characterised this coherent position, namely: (i) any form of intervention must refrain from preferential treatment of one party over the other, (ii) military intervention may be acceptable as a last resort only in situations where all peaceful options have been fully considered, and (iii) the criterion of reasonable prospects for success of an intervention must be met if an intervention is to be supported by BRICS countries in the future.

NATO Intervention in Kosovo in light of Security Council Actions and International Law

The horrors of World War Two made it universally clear that the world cannot progress without general respect for human rights. Still, the need for humanitarian intervention arose several times before 1999, but international political and military organisations including the UN, were either late or hesitant to prevent genocides or other related human catastrophes worldwide. The NATO intervention in Kosovo, however, marked the beginning of the new era in international relations. The facet of this intervention in view of legality is the topic of this paper. The aim of this study, above all, is to analyze the Security Council actions, debates and resolutions concerning situation in Kosovo, and the level of impact that the military operation had in international law (in particular) and international relations (in general). The study uses many authentic documents issued by the United Nations Security Council itself and other material related to the theme in order to develop an argument on the points raised. Throughout, this research paper has attempted to answer numerous issues related to the topic and offer a balanced view on the all the themes examined. Several but distinct points raised focus on relevant core subjects, discuss the challenges and opportunities of the humanitarian intervention and offer recommendations regarding the future of such operation for the well being of the humanity.

Climate Change and Environmental Security: For Whom the Discourse Shifts

This article explores the implications of the April 2007 United Nations Security debate on the security dimensions of a changing climate for international climate change politics. Specifically, our analysis focuses on whether and how security concerns have been addressed in past international political debates on climate change and considers whether the Security Council debate, which emphasized the threat of climate-related conflict, reflects a discursive shift. We elaborate on two general discourses on the relationship between environment and security, which we call environmental conflict and environmental security. Using content and discourse analysis, we demonstrate that both the historical climate change debate and the more recent Security Council debate have been informed by the environmental security discourse, meaning that a discursive shift has not taken place. We conclude by considering the possibility of a future discursive shift to the environmental conflict perspective and argue that such a shift would be counterproductive to the search for an effective global response to climate change.

Climate change: A new threat to stability in West Africa? Evidence from Ghana and Burkina Faso

Traditionally seen as an environmental and an energy issue, climate change is now being recast as a threat to international peace and security. Africa, though the least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, is seen as the continent most likely to suffer its worst consequences - a function of the continent's reliance on climate-dependent sectors (such as rain-fed agriculture) and its history of resource, ethnic and political conflict. The security implications of climate change have become the subject of unprecedented international attention, and in 2007 climate change was the focus of both a Security Council debate and the Nobel Peace Prize. There have been some attempts to construct scenarios of the ways in which warming temperatures might undermine security on a global scale. But the security impacts of climate change at the level of countries have been lost in the political rhetoric. This paper is an effort to address this research gap. Drawing on field visits and consultations with local experts, the authors explore the extent to which climate change could undermine stability in two different West African countries, namely Ghana and Burkina Faso.

The Case for Climate Security

There was a very powerful moment during the recent UN Security Council debate on climate security last month. The Ghanaian representative, L K Christian, spoke of growing evidence that nomadic Fula...

Power and Rhetorical Bargaining: The UN Security Council Debate on the Iraq War

The UN Security Council (UNSC) was an important arena of confrontation between the major powers during the recent pre-war crisis on Iraq, yet the realist-materialist focus of IR theory does not provide a useful perspective for analysing the debate and the ensuing defeat of American interests. This paper seeks to establish the meaning of “power” within a rhetorical context, applying insights from Searle's theory of institutional facts, constructivism, and self-presentation theory. Rhetorical strategies are then examined empirically by means of thematic and structural analyses of key texts from the UNSC debate on Iraq.

The UN Security Council and the Question of Humanitarian Intervention in Darfur

This article explores the different moral and legal arguments used by protagonists in the debate about whether or not to conduct a humanitarian intervention in Darfur. The first section briefly outlines four moral and legal positions on whether there is (and should be) a right and/or duty of humanitarian intervention: communitarianism, restrictionist and counter-restrictionist legal positivism and liberal cosmopolitanism. The second section then provides an overview of the Security Council's debate about responding to Darfur's crisis, showing how its policy was influenced by both normative concerns and hard-nosed political calculations. The article concludes by asking what Darfur's case reveals about the legitimacy and likelihood of humanitarian intervention in such catastrophes and the role of the UN Security Council as the primary authorising body for the use of international force. The authors argue that this case demonstrates that for the cosmopolitan/counter-restrictionist case to prevail pivotal states need to put humanitarian emergencies on the global agenda and express a willingness to act without Council authorisation, though the question of how to proceed in cases where the Council is deadlocked remains vexed.

Guerrilla Journalist

I. F. Stone took keen interest in discussion among United Nations correspondents at lunch August 7, 1964. The United States had just completed first unilateral American attack on Communist forces in history in retaliation for what it believed was an assault by North Vietnamese gunboats on its destroyers. Stone joined reporters covering United Nations Security Council debate on Gulf of Tonkin affair. The independent left-wing journalist listened as they reminded another that United States had condemned retaliation raids, wherever they occur and by whomever they are committed, only months before. But none mentioned this in their dispatches, he wrote in disgust days later.' Stone assailed press repeatedly in his own reports on Tonkin affair, accusing his colleagues of cynically hiding known facts from public. Media watchers years later would come to share his disappointment. Why should it have taken l.F. Stone to put lie to so much of propaganda from State, Pentagon, and White House? Ron Dorfman, editor of Chicago Journalism Review, complained of media's performance on Vietnam War.2 He cited Gulf of Tonkin affair in particular as case in which Stone, in his one-man newspaper, I.F. Stone's Weekly, out-reported grand institutions of press. The chimerical battle of August 4, 1964, on dark seas half world away from Washington, had given President Lyndon B. Johnson excuse he needed both to show his mettle as presidential election approached and to get Congress to cede to him unprecedented presidential war powers. In escalation that followed Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, fifty-eight thousand American troops would die and as many as three million Vietnamese. The sheer quantity of human blood spilled down through years would come to invest Tonkin incident with enormous significance. CBS's Fred Friendly called it the lost opportunity that must haunt print as well as broadcast journalists.3 The names Tonkin and Stone became linked for posterity thanks primarily to 1973 film by Jerry Bruck, I.F. Stone's Weekly, which used Stone's Tonkin coverage as its centerpiece.4 Its view of Stone and Tonkin would become standard. In memorial to Stone on his death in 1989, New York Times wrote, Mr. Stone came equipped with superb nose for fakery. He was thus able to challenge at outset all sorts of hokum-such as puffed-up battle used to justify famous Tonkin Gulf resolution.5 While Stone may mean little to young generation of journalists in 1990s, he remains venerated figure among many journalists who worked during Vietnam War years.6 No less journalistic icon than CBS anchor emeritus Walter Cronkite hailed Stone as a blue-print of honesty and integrity, and, at iconoclastic end of scale, syndicated columnist Molly Ivins proclaimed Stone one of my greatest heroes. 7 Stone practiced journalism with combination of political commitment and dedication to facts that impelled him to challenge his government's policy in Vietnam. Media analysts-including sociologists, historians, and self-critical journalists themselves-have traced American mass media's general abandonment of an independent, skeptical, watchdog role vis A vis federal government from World War II through much of cold war. The merits of skepticism and independent investigation did not powerfully reassert themselves in American journalism until late 1960s and early 1970s.8 Many have faulted kind of tunnel vision imposed by strictures of journalism, especially narrow interpretation of journalistic concept of objectivity that encouraged over-reliance on government authority and whatever official hokum it dished out.9 On matters of foreign policy, many, too, have identified patriotic bias among objective reporters that resulted during cold war in fundamental support for established anti-Communist order. …

Argumentative form and negotiating strategy in three United Nations security council debates

Previous research has suggested that different nations use different argumentative forms and may think differently. This examination of the arguments used in three United Nations Security Council debates contradicts this conclusion. The study found that the nature of data and the relative emphasis on principle as a negotiating strategy were more characteristic factors.

Europe after Stalin: Eisenhower's Three Decisions of March 11, 1953

Stalin's death on March 6, 1953, reopened the debate within the Eisenhower administration over whether or not the United States should propose and actively promote the reunification of Germany at a summit conference. Written by an insider, this is the only published firsthand account of this foreign policy decision-a decision that illuminated the dilemmas of the Cold War at an important moment. W. W. Rostow examines the origins of Eisenhower's peace speech of April 16, 1953, and of the National Security Council's debate on the German question between John Foster Dulles and presidential adviser C. D. Jackson. Jackson proposed immediate high-level diplomatic contact with the Soviet Union and the countries of Western Europe to discuss German reunification, as well as proposals for the general control of armaments and special security arrangements for Europe. Dulles, however, argued for a more reserved posture, which ruled out summitry and immediate negotiation with the Soviets. Dulles prevailed, but Eisenhower made his famous peace speech. In his concluding chapter, Rostow explores the question of whether or not anything was lost by this outcome. Was an opportunity for a united Germany forfeited when Eisenhower rejected Churchill's suggestion for a prompt summit meeting and backed Dulles against Jackson in the National Security Council meeting of March 11? This is the third in a series of volumes by the author that probe the relationship between ideas and action in the making of major policy decisions. In this series, Rostow examines historic decision making from an insider's point of view while exploiting fully the rich documentary evidence.

United Nations: Security Council Debate and Draft Resolutions Concerning the Operation to Rescue Hijacked Hostages at the Entebbe Airport

United Nations: Security Council Debate and Draft Resolutions Concerning the Operation to Rescue Hijacked Hostages at the Entebbe Airport

U.N. Security Council Resolution on Renewal of U.N. Disengagement Observer Force Mandate and Continuing Security Council Debate on Middle East

U.N. Security Council Resolution on Renewal of U.N. Disengagement Observer Force Mandate and Continuing Security Council Debate on Middle East

General Assembly

The first emergency special session of the General Assembly, summoned by the Secretary-General in the light of the resolution adopted by the Security Council at its 751st meeting on October 31, 1956, was held from November 1 through 10, 1956 (56Ist–563d, 565th, 566th–567th and 572d plenary meetings), under the presidency of His Excellency Ambassador Rudecindo Ortega (Chile). At the opening of the session the representative of France (de Guiringaud) criticized the principal substantive item of the provisional agenda of the session, which was the “question considered by the Security Council at its 749th and 750th meetings held on October 30, 1956”. Mr. de Guiringaud stated that in his view it was impossible for the letter of the representative of Egypt to the Security Council to be dealt with by the Assembly, since in the Security Council debate on the Egyptian complaint, no draft resolution had been presented, and consequently no vote had been taken; therefore, no lack of unanimity on the part of the permanent members of the Council had been demonstrated. As to the United States draft resolution considered by the Security Council, Mr. de Guiringaud held that it was within the framework of Chapter VI of the Charter, rather than Chapter VII. Therefore, he concluded, the conditions of the “Uniting for Peace” resolution had not been fulfilled, and he made a complete reservation on behalf of his government as to the convening of the special session of the Assembly and as to the validity of any resolution that might be adopted.

Security Council Debate

Essay| January 01 1951 Security Council Debate Current History (1951) 20 (113): 45–47. https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.1951.20.113.45 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Security Council Debate. Current History 1 January 1951; 20 (113): 45–47. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.1951.20.113.45 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentCurrent History Search This content is only available via PDF. © 1951 by The Regents of the University of California1951 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.