The U.N. and the Use of Force

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Neither the post-Cold War climate nor civil wars can rightfully be blamed for the failures that have beset the United Nations since 1991. External factors only partially explain the dramatic reversal of fortune in U.N. prestige. One must look to the workings of the United Nations itself, to the division of labor between the office of the Secretary General and the Security Council, to identify the most distinguishing factor between its periods of success and setback.

The Cold War actually ended for the United Nations more than two years before the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. The catalyst was Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, with his new attitude toward the world body, and the occasion was the Iran-Iraq War, perhaps the first non-East-West conflict. The five permanent members of the Security Council began a new way of working together in early 1987, and a year later the Secretary General brokered the end of the Iran-Iraq War, perhaps the most remarkable in a series of U.N. successes between 1987 and 1991. Among those, El Salvador’s conflict was a civil war, whose resolution garnered a 1988 Nobel Peace Prize, and others had civil war characteristics. In addition, the United Nations helped broker the accords that led to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, shepherded Namibia to independence, extracted the hostages from Lebanon, and fashioned the agreement for the subsequent settlement in Cambodia.

In all those cases, the office of the Secretary General played a key role. Importantly, however, U.N. success was not secured by the use of force. The United Nations was engaged under the Secretary General’s direction solely in negotiations and peacekeeping. The sole U.N. success in this period that did involve the use of force was the Gulf War. But there, critically, it was the U.N. Security Council that empowered a U.S.-led military coalition to repel Iraq from Kuwait. From that conflict, the office of the Secretary General was, de facto, kept out.

Taken together, these successes illuminate a critical rule: the functions of the institution of the Secretary General and the Security Council are complementary and work best when separated at the key dividing line involving the use of force. The roles of the Secretary General and the Security Council are and should be kept separate to be of maximum benefit to the international community.