The Security Council and the Cold War

Summary: Christine Gray.
International Law and the Use of Force. 
Oxford University Press (2004).
Chapter 7: "The UN and the Use of Force," pp. 195-205.

The UN Security Council was originally intended to be the locus of sovereignty for a new body of global governance. Made up of five permanent members--Russia, China, the UK, France, and the United States--and ten (?) more members elected for two-year terms, the Security Council was supposed to have direct command over its own armed forces, with which it could intervene, when necessary, to repair breachs of the peace or acts of aggression.  Its legal authority is mostly spelled out in Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

But that vision of global governance never came to pass.  First, the UN was unable to levy troops or commandeer resources the way Article 43 said it should be able to.  And second, the Soviet Union and the United States alternately used their veto powers to prevent the Security Council from authorizing interventions, effectively paralyzing it throughout the Cold War. Despite having been derailed by non-compliance with Article 43 and by superpower gridlock during the Cold War, in 1988 the Security Council again began to authorize interventions. But in them meantime, the General Assembly co-opted the authority to authorize interventions itself, giving rise to a practice now called 'peacekeeping', and started issuing recommendations to the Security Council on matters actively under its consideration.  

These actions were in direct violation of Articles 11 and 12 of the UN Charter, yet in spite of the lack of any legal justification, peacekeeping operations are now accepted as legal by all member states.  Fifteen instances of peacekeeping occurred during the Cold War, and Gray and others observe that the practice of peacekeeping underwent four distinct stages of development between 1948 and 1988: nascent (1948-56: Middle East, India/Pakistan, North Korea), assertive (1956-67: Suez, Lebanon, Congo, West New Guinea, Yemen, Cyprus, India/Pakistan, Dominican Republic), dormant (1967-73; no interventions), and resurgent (1974-1987: Suez, Golan Heights, Lebanon,  Iran-Iraq).   This process has greatly eroded the separation of powers between the General Assembly and the Security Council, and in practice the two now appear able to accomplish many of the same political functions.

Immediately following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990, the Security Council passed Resolution 660, which declared a breach of international peace and security and demanded that Iraqi troops withdraw.  Shortly thereafter, the UN also passed Resolution 678, which authorized 'all necessary means' to uphold Resolution 660, a generally accepted euphemism for the use of force.  This was to be a model for subsequent authorizations.  [Incidentally, it is Resolution 678 that the UK used to justify its intervention in Iraq in 2003.  They claimed that Iraq's violation of the cease-fire agreement reinstated the authorization granted in Resolution 678, which had merely been suspended, not terminated.  In any case, Gray claims that "the optimism prevalent at the time of Resolution 678 has since dissipated." (205)]