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Between Unilateralism and Collective Security: Authorizations of the Use of Force by the UN Security Council
Helmut Freudenschuß1
Full text available: PDF format *
I. Introduction
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 neo-colonialism 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.2 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 Security Council. Explaining why I believe Chapter VII is destined to remain, in its stricter sense, dead letter requires taking a close look at the premises on which it is based.
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1 Dr. jur., MSc Econ. (London), Diplomé de l'Academie de droit
international de La Haye, Counsellor, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Vienna,
Alternate Representative of Austria on the UN Security Council 1991/92. The
views expressed in this article - written in December 1993 and updated in
September 1994 - are only mine.
2 Freudenschuß, `The Changing Role of the UN Security Council:
Trends and Perspectives', in W. Kühne (ed.), Blauhelme in einer
turbulenten Welt (1993) 151.
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