Assessing the UN Security Council: a concert perspective.
Bosco, David
This article distinguishes between the UN Security Council's
"governance" and "concert" functions and argues that
the latter is important in assessing the body's diplomatic value.
It presents data suggesting that serving together on the Council deepens
diplomatic linkages between permanent members. It also argues that
Council membership may offer several benefits for managing relations
between the permanent members. Specifically, the Council provides a
mechanism through which permanent members have slowed the pace of crises
that might threaten their relations, used ambiguity to produce exits
from potentially dangerous situations, and mitigated diplomatic
humiliation. The article contends that many proposals for Council reform
pay little attention to this concert function and, if adopted, may
unwittingly diminish a key benefit of the institution. KEYWORDS: United
Nations, diplomacy. Security Council.
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THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL HAS BEEN MORE ACTIVE IN THE PAST TWENTY
years than during any other phase of its existence. The Council has met
more frequently, authorized more peacekeeping and observation missions,
and enacted more sanctions regimes and arms embargos than in its first
four decades. The Council's move toward the center of international
politics has intensified efforts to assess its role. Yet the metrics for
doing so are not always clear, and a central challenge in analyzing the
performance of international organizations is clarity about what is
being evaluated. (1)
Most scholarly attempts to assess the Council have focused on its
broad external impact or judged the effectiveness of certain Council
"products," including peacekeeping operations and sanctions
regimes. (2) In this article, I seek to shift the focus to intra-Council
dynamics and, in particular, to comity between the Council's
Permanent Five (P5) members. Specifically, I distinguish between two
methods of assessing the Council. I briefly define governance and
concert approaches, with the former focused on the maintenance of
international peace and security and the latter on fostering major-power
comity. I argue that the P5 in key respects represents a concert of
major powers and that assessing its impact accordingly is appropriate. I
then present data suggesting that serving together on the Council
deepens high-level diplomatic contacts between P5 members. Through
illustrative historical examples, I outline some benefits that the
Council structure offers to its permanent members in managing their own
relations. By providing an alternative approach to assessing the impact
of the Security Council, this article offers a new perspective on how
the Council should be used and reformed.
The Governance Vision
The UN Charter provides a straightforward metric for measuring the
Council's effectiveness: the "maintenance of international
peace and security." (3) The Charter outlines a collective security
structure in which the Council should respond promptly to threats or
breaches of the peace and acts of aggression anywhere in the world. In
so doing, the Council can meet immediately and draw on the resources of
all UN members, with the permanent members coordinating any UN military
operations. The Charter makes no geographic or qualitative distinction
between potential disruptions to the peace and makes clear that the
Council can investigate any dispute it deems dangerous to peace and
security. As Inis Claude argues, collective security in its ideal form
"purports to provide security for all states, by the action of all
states, against all states which might challenge the existing order by
the arbitrary unleashing of their power." (4) The Charter therefore
tasks the Council with a critical, if rudimentary, governance function:
providing the international community with security and order.
The content of this governance role has varied considerably over
time. The UN's founders and many early commentators focused almost
exclusively on the threat of renewed interstate aggression. (5) For this
reason, the Council's response to North Korea's aggression in
1950 and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait forty years later are often
cited as notable successes. Yet repelling cross-border aggression is
only one possible element in maintaining international peace and
security. Particularly in the post-Cold War era, the Council has sought
to address a broader array of challenges, including intrastate conflict,
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, mass atrocities and
genocide, and democratization. Health and environmental issues,
including HIV/AIDS and climate change, have also appeared on the
Council's agenda. Whatever the precise contours of the
Council's mission, a governance perspective essentially judges the
Council by its success in confronting external challenges. (See Figure
1.)
An alternative approach to assessing Security Council effectiveness
presents itself if the body is thought of less as an instrument for
providing global security and more as a grouping of the major powers
with the purpose of facilitating harmony within that elite group, or
concert of nations. (6) Without denying the Council's formal
governance function, a concert perspective shifts the focus from the
body's ability to resolve external challenges to its impact on
relations between permanent members.
The utility of a concert perspective rests largely on the
distinction between great-power comity and international security more
broadly. It is not obvious that these should be considered distinct. As
was evident during the Cold War, great-power tension often fosters
conflict around the world. Conversely, insecurity outside the
great-power community can lead to tension, and perhaps even conflict,
within this group. (7) Yet various local conflicts have begun and ended
without major powers being drawn into the conflict directly. Moreover,
relative comity between the major powers, as has existed for most of the
post-Cold War period, has not led ineluctably to stability elsewhere.
The end of bipolar tension helped reduce the occurrence of some types of
civil conflict, but may have also increased the vulnerability of certain
states to internal challenge. (8) It is possible to make a meaningful,
if not airtight, distinction between global security and great-power
comity. (See Figure 2.)
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
While several scholars have discussed the conflict mitigation
effects of concert-style diplomacy, that insight has not been deployed
to explore the Council's impact. (9) The major-power peace that has
prevailed since the end of World War II between permanent Council
members suggests that it may be illuminating; in the more than sixty
years that the Council has been operating, there has never been a
sustained military clash between permanent members. (10) There are
multiple possible explanations for this, not least the fact that all of
the P5 are nuclear powers. Yet the possibility that the Council
structure has helped to maintain peace between its permanent members
merits examination. Before considering the evidence, however, it is
essential to expand on the notion of a concert and to demonstrate that
the Council's permanent membership should be evaluated as such.
[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]
Characteristics of a Concert
The concept of a great-power concert is familiar in diplomatic
history, with the Concert of Europe as the paradigmatic example. That
loose arrangement of the major European powers has often been credited
with stabilizing great-power relations in the wake of the Napoleonic
Wars and avoiding major conflict for at least several decades. (11) The
notion of a great-power concert has received less systematic attention
in the international relations literature, but several scholars have
identified key attributes of a concert structure. I argue below that
Council's permanent membership can be considered a great-power
concert nested within the broader framework of the Council.
The first attribute of a concert is that its membership is limited
to the major powers. Richard Elrod argues that an underlying feature of
concert diplomacy during the nineteenth century was the creation of a
privileged place for great powers that limited lesser powers to a
peripheral role: "Lesser states were occasionally consulted when
their interests were involved, but they possessed few rights and
certainly not that of equality." (12) The UN Charter offers a
similar privileged status to key powers. As the dominant Allied powers,
the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom secured
permanent seats for themselves. They in turn offered seats to France and
China in the expectation that these countries would assume, or reassume,
great-power status. There was significant debate between the three
Allied powers about whether this expectation was reasonable, but almost
none about whether it was appropriate to give great powers, however
defined, a unique place and special privileges. (13) In practice, the
Council's permanent members have usually operated as a distinct
community within the Council. Particularly in recent years, they have
often met separately from the rest of the Council and negotiated many
draft resolutions among themselves before presenting them to the rest of
the membership. Permanence and possession of the veto power create a
critical status difference with the elected members, even those (e.g.,
Germany, India, and Japan) who are major powers in their own right. (14)
Second, a concert operates by consensus rather than by majority or
supermajority voting. No major decision can be made without the
agreement of all concert members. In the Concert of Europe, according to
Elrod, "unanimity rather than majority rule prevailed." (15)
Charles A. Kupchan and Clifford A. Kupchan argue that decisions in a
concert "are taken through informal negotiations, through the
emergence of a consensus." (16) As a whole, the Council operates by
supermajority; nine of fifteen votes are necessary to pass a resolution.
But among the permanent members, the veto ensures that the Council is
consensus based. The Charter allows for permanent members to be outvoted
only on procedural issues, and the Council cannot make substantive
decisions without P5 acquiescence. In analyzing the Council as an
"elite pact"--a concept similar to a concert--Erik Voeten
emphasizes this nonmajoritarian quality of the Council's
operations. (17)
Third, a concert is political rather than legal in nature and
"entails no binding or codified commitments to collective
action." (18) The issues that a concert considers are resolved by
political negotiation rather than legal obligation. If, in the face of
some external crisis, the concert members decide not to act, they are
not necessarily violating the purpose of the arrangement. In this
respect too, the Council's permanent membership fits the criteria
for a concert. For all its admonitions about the necessity of preserving
the peace, the UN Charter creates no commitments for Council members to
act. While the Council is tasked with maintaining peace and security, it
alone has the power to determine whether a crisis constitutes a
"threat to international peace." (19) Even when the Council
decides that this threshold has been reached, the Charter gives its
members complete discretion as to the appropriate course of action.
Moreover, the existence of the veto power implicitly acknowledges that
the Council should not act when the permanent members are unable to
reach consensus. While the Charter's drafters hoped that the
Council would respond in the face of a security crisis, they did nothing
to compel the body to act.
Finally, a leading goal of a concert is preservation of the
group's internal harmony. Members of the Concert of Europe
"focused on regulating relations among each other" and had
limited ambitions to preserve peace more comprehensively. (20) A concert
does not seek to eliminate competition among the powers included in the
group, but it does aim to manage the competition and prevent it from
reaching outright conflict. This internal focus is the one respect in
which the Council's permanent membership does not clearly match the
criteria for a concert. The UN Charter gives the P5 the same global
security responsibilities that the Council as a whole has, and nothing
in the Charter suggests that the body should serve an intra-P5 conflict
resolution function. The historical record is not clear on whether key
diplomats expected the shared Council membership to serve that purpose.
Inis L. Claude concludes that "it was assumed that the harnessing
of the Big Five into a team responsible for the successful operation of
the new organization might help to promote the maintenance of their
indispensable unity." (21) Yet that assumption was rarely made
explicit. More often, the Charter's drafters suggested that comity
between the permanent members would be a prerequisite to--rather than a
product of--the Council's operations. "The only hope for the
world is the agreement of the Great Powers," said Winston
Churchill, and that sentiment was widespread among observers of the new
organization. (22) Because I seek to demonstrate that the Council has in
practice had an internal impact, however, I do not consider the absence
of an explicit internal focus as disqualifying.
Conceiving of the Council's permanent membership as a
political concert rather than as part of a governance body generates a
different set of potential tests for effectiveness. Instead of asking
whether the Council has maintained peace and security by resolving
external conflicts and challenges, one might focus on whether it has
deepened diplomatic relations between the permanent members, increased
harmony between them, and provided these states with exits from crises
that threaten relations with other P5 members. I now turn to
quantitative and historical evidence suggesting that serving together on
the Council has in fact deepened diplomatic relations between P5 members
and, in several important cases at least, helped to manage tensions
between them.
Denser Diplomatic Relations
As a forum for regular meetings, the Council by its very nature
increases diplomatic density between the permanent members. During the
Cold War the Council normally met several times a month, and during
certain crises much more frequently. In the past two decades, the
intensity of contact has increased dramatically. The Council now
consults informally on a nearly daily basis and produces a steady stream
of resolutions, presidential statements, and press releases. While it
has declined somewhat recently, the Council's activity level has
been high since the end of the Cold War. Every year since 1992, the
Council has met formally or consulted informally more than 200 times.
The P5 also consult periodically separate from the other Council
members, usually in one of the P5 missions, although data on how often
these meetings occur is not available. (23) (See Figure 3.)
Yet how far beyond the UN diplomatic community does this increased
contact extend? Frequent contact between the UN diplomats of P5 members
may be of little relevance if it does not produce greater contact at
higher levels. There is anecdotal evidence that the practice of Council
consultations produces contact at different levels of P5 governments.
Issues considered by the Council often draw in officials and experts
outside of UN missions and create diplomatic contacts and linkages that
might not otherwise exist. One longtime French ambassador recalled that
"we often discuss from capital to capital issues on the council
agenda, trying to reach agreement or at least narrow the gap." (24)
Non-P5 ambassadors have noted that the P5 interact distinctly. According
to a former German ambassador, the P5 "have to make constant deals,
whether it's the election of the new Secretary-General or a Chapter
VII Resolution. [They] need each other all the time and I think it
affects also the way [they] behave in bilateral relations." (25)
Council matters also sometimes produce increased contact at the highest
levels of government. In certain cases, P5 foreign ministers have met
directly to discuss Council strategy and vote on resolutions. During the
deliberations that preceded the Iraq War, for example, the Council met
at the foreign-minister level multiple times in the space of a few
months.
[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]
A more systematic test for whether the Council increases high-level
diplomatic contacts between permanent members is to assess whether P5
foreign ministers interact with each other bilaterally more than they do
with the foreign ministers of other major powers. Visits at the
foreign-minister level require substantial investments of time and
diplomatic resources and can plausibly be seen as a signal of the
importance of the relationship between the countries in question. My
examination of travel patterns by US secretaries of state over the past
two decades suggests that there is in fact a "P5 preference."
For the purposes of this analysis, I excluded personal travel and
official travel primarily for multilateral conferences, as neither of
these categories would necessarily speak to the bilateral relationship.
I included a control group of major powers without permanent Council
seats for comparison purposes. (See Table 1.)
I also conducted a probability probe that compiled the travels of
the British foreign minister from January 1990 through September 2013.
Consistent with the findings for the United States, British foreign
ministers also made approximately twice the number of bilateral visits
to P5 countries than they did to the non-P5 major powers. (26)
These patterns suggest that there is a significant diplomatic
premium accorded to other permanent Council members. It is notable that
both Britain and France received more US visits than the much larger and
more economically powerful Germany. That China led Japan is also
striking, given the closeness of the US-Japan strategic relationship.
China received more visits even between 1990 and 2000, before the
country's economic rise became as obvious and as urgent a priority
for the United States. The P5 preference endured--and sometimes became
more pronounced--when economic strength (as measured by share of world
gross domestic product [GDP]) and military spending (as measured by
share of world military spending) were included in the analysis. France
and Britain retained their edge over similarly situated Germany when GDP
and military spending were taken into account. China's advantage
over Japan also endured. (See Table 2.)
Evidence that the P5 members interact more intensively with each
other at high levels than with other major powers is notable. In other
areas, scholars have suggested a relationship between high-level
contacts and peaceful outcomes. In the context of regional
organizations, for example, Yoram Haftel has found evidence that
"regular meetings among top-level policymakers ... appear to
promote a peaceful resolution of political tensions." (27) Jennifer
Mitzen argues that face-to-face conference diplomacy produces what she
terms "forum effects" that in turn help avoid violence. (28)
These lines of research suggest that Council encouragement of more
frequent high-level meetings may itself be an important contribution to
P5 comity.
The diplomatic history of the Council suggests that the
institution's work has had other more specific benefits to P5
relations. At several important moments, the P5 have employed Council
procedures and mechanisms to help manage their relations. Methods have
included using the Council to facilitate quiet deliberations, to slow
the pace of crises, as a vehicle for "constructive ambiguity,"
and to avoid the humiliation of a P5 member. None of these diplomatic
methods is uniquely a product of the Council, and it is conceivable in
each case discussed below that the key players could have achieved
similar results through other means. That is far from certain, however,
and the Council's processes appear at least to have facilitated
major-power accommodation.
It is important to acknowledge several important limitations to
this historical evidence of Council's internal conflict mitigation
benefits. At a methodological level, isolating the Council's impact
on the course of events--and on P5 relations in particular--is difficult
and ultimately relies on counterfactual analysis. Moreover, the examples
outlined below must be set against broader patterns of Council activity
on issues important to relations among P5 members. Many of these issues
never reach the Council because no P5 member sees value in employing the
body. Even when the Council is engaged, it has in many cases
(particularly during the Cold War) done little beyond providing an
opportunity for P5 members to exchange well-rehearsed rhetoric. Recent
Council diplomacy on Syria and Ukraine has provided a reminder of that
tendency. I do not claim here that the P5 routinely use the Council to
manage their own differences or that the body can only have that effect;
I do seek to identify several ways in which it has served that function
and to highlight this mostly ignored facet of the Council's
performance.
The Value of Proximity: The Berlin Blockade
One of the Council's key attributes is that it places senior
major-power diplomats in close proximity to each other. In some cases,
that proximity has generated diplomatic breakthroughs on issues that
threatened relations between the permanent members. Perhaps the clearest
example of that dynamic occurred early in the Council's history. In
1948, as the crisis over the status of Berlin threatened conflict
between the superpowers, diplomacy between them appeared to be
nonexistent. After considerable debate, the Western powers chose to hold
formal Council debates on the crisis. Over strenuous Soviet objections,
they placed the Berlin blockade on the body's agenda. The formal
sessions that followed produced vituperative speeches, but little
diplomatic headway. A Western-backed resolution met a predictable Soviet
veto. (29)
Several months later, however, the mechanism of the Council did
provide valuable diplomatic space. After a quiet opening from the
Soviets, US and Soviet diplomats met on the margins of a Council meeting
to explore a solution. Deputy US ambassador Philip Jessup and Soviet
ambassador Yakov Malik emerged as key interlocutors on the crisis. US
secretary of state Dean Acheson (no fan of the UN overall) saw the
informal contact that the Council meetings allowed as particularly
valuable. "We concluded that a highly secret, casual approach to
the Russians could better be made by Jessup at the United Nations than
through the embassy in Moscow or by the [State] Department to the
Russian Embassy." (30) During the ensuing months, that diplomacy
continued in New York and was critical to a resolution of the crisis.
The Soviet Union and the United States each had reasons to seek an
exit from the Berlin crisis and they might well have found another
mechanism for achieving it. However, there were formidable obstacles to
arranging a high-level meeting. One attempt by President Harry Truman to
do so foundered when Secretary of State George Marshall and several
other senior officials objected. (31) As Acheson acknowledged, the easy
proximity of senior diplomats at the Council facilitated quiet bilateral
deliberations. As UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie wrote later, "The
electric tension that the Berlin Blockade generated between two
non-negotiating worlds was very great. Had there been no United Nations,
it might have been so great that the electricity would have shot across
the gap, setting both sides afire." (32)
The Value of Delay: The Cuban Missile Crisis
The Council's inability to respond quickly and unambiguously
in the face of developing crises is often cited as an institutional
defect. From a governance perspective, these attributes of Council
diplomacy may be pernicious. But in the context of an evolving crisis in
which the permanent members desire to limit their own involvement, delay
and ambiguity can become virtues. Prolonged deliberations allow the body
to give the appearance of action. This appearance can be helpful to the
permanent members when one or more of them is being pressured by
non-Council members, activist groups, or domestic actors to take more
assertive steps. The Council has served the interests of great-power
comity on several occasions by simply filling time and slowing the
diplomatic pace of international crises.
The Cuban missile crisis is a notable example of this function. The
Council debates on that crisis lasted for more than a week. They
occurred while President John F. Kennedy's advisers were
considering courses of action, and when several influential voices
inside and outside government were urging immediate military strikes. At
certain moments during these debates, the president appeared to use the
fact of the ongoing Council debate to fend off calls for prompt military
action. As he considered whether to order the forcible boarding of a
Soviet ship on 25 October, for example, President Kennedy pointed
explicitly to the Council process under way as a rationale for delaying
the decision to do so. (33) The chances of substantive Council action
were vanishingly small throughout the crisis. Yet the process of
extended debate may have been important; key participants such as
Secretary of State Dean Rusk later argued that the Council served a
critical delaying function. "Although the Cuban Missile Crisis was
directly resolved between Washington and Moscow, it was very important
that the Security Council [took] it up," Rusk wrote.
"Prolonged discussion lessened the chance that one side would lash
out in a spasm and do something foolish. The UN earned its pay for a
long time to come just by being there for the missile crisis." (34)
Rusk was a strong backer of the UN throughout his career, and his views
should be judged accordingly. Still, the broader record of the crisis
suggests that the Council process served as one of several factors that
helped prevent quick US military action.
The Value of Ambiguity: The 1967 and 1973 Middle East Wars
If delay can be a potent virtue from a concert perspective, so too
can ambiguity. Council resolutions are intricately worded documents that
are usually the product of lengthy deliberation. The resulting documents
are often difficult to interpret, and this lack of clarity is in some
cases intentional. From a governance perspective, this ambiguity can be
devastating. Peacekeeping commanders, for example, need clear guidance
on how to pursue their mandates and often have been frustrated by
confused Council instructions. At the broader political level, however,
the lack of clarity in Council resolutions can have positive effects. As
Michael Byers argues, ambiguity in Council resolutions "is a legal
safety valve that helps to buy time." (35)
The Council's most famous resolutions on the Israel-Palestine
crisis, Resolutions 242 of 1967 and 338 of 1973, offer an important
illustration of how Council ambiguity can serve the interests of comity
between the permanent members. Both resolutions emerged in response to
fighting that threatened to draw in the superpowers and, in both cases,
the superpowers were deeply involved in the drafting process. Resolution
242's key provision--that Israel exchange occupied land for Arab
recognition--included one central ambiguity: the resolution was not
clear about whether Israel should withdraw from all the Occupied
Territories. The English and French versions of the resolution led to
different interpretations. The uncertainty was intentional, and it
allowed the United States to argue that it had defended the interests of
Israel while giving the Soviet Union room to interpret it as requiring a
full Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, which its Arab
allies demanded. As Henry Kissinger wrote of the Council's
phrasing, "What it lacked in precision, it made up for in
flexibility. It was well suited for beginning a negotiation in which
reconnecting the different interpretations of the parties would be one
of the objectives." (36)
US and Soviet diplomats drew on that fragile and ambiguous
consensus during the 1973 war, which was in some respects even more
dangerous for the superpowers. At one point during the crisis generated
by that conflict, the United States changed the Defense Readiness
Condition (DEFCON) level for the first time since the Cuban missile
crisis. (37) As fighting continued, the United States and the Soviet
Union drafted a joint Council resolution reiterating the formulation in
Resolution 242 and insisting on a cease-fire. After several anxious
days, the Council's demand had the desired effect. In both cases,
the superpowers effectively used Council ambiguity as a tool for
managing their bilateral relations. As subsequent events have
demonstrated, the Council's formulation did little to resolve the
underlying conflict, but it did help limit the chances that the
superpowers themselves would be drawn into the fighting.
The Value of Face-saving: Russia's Decline and the Kosovo
Conflict
In several situations, the Council has been used to smooth over
diplomatic tension arising when a member of the P5 has suffered a
diplomatic or geopolitical reverse. Elrod argues that the Concert of
Europe had the avoidance of great-power humiliation as a central goal:
"Excessive weakness as well as superabundant strength of an
essential member posed a serious menace to the system." (38) A
similar recognition has been evident in Council behavior at several
points, and particularly in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet
Union. In late 1991, the Council members faced the question of how to
respond institutionally to the Soviet Union's dissolution and the
emergence of the Russian Federation. The UN Charter accords a permanent
seat to the USSR, not to the Russian Federation. That reality might have
prompted a full debate on how to adjust the Council's membership to
new realities. Instead, the other P5 members endorsed simply
transferring the Soviet permanent seat to the Russian Federation.
Several factors militated in favor of a substitution. The P5 had a joint
interest in avoiding a broader debate on Council reform that likely
would have brought scrutiny to their own privileges. Yet it is evident
that another motive for the quick substitution was softening
Moscow's geopolitical fall and boosting its new government.
"Russia will remain a great power," said the Soviet foreign
minister as it became clear that Russia would retain the USSR's
permanent Council seat. "It may not be a superpower, but it will
still be a great military power and part of the global strategic
balance." (39)
Almost a decade later, the Council mechanism helped to mitigate
some of the consequences of Russia's geopolitical decline. In 1999
Russia endured a diplomatic defeat when the NATO alliance initiated
military action to compel Serbia, a Russian ally, to cede control of the
restive province of Kosovo. In so doing, the Western powers circumvented
the Council and launched strikes without its authorization. The bombing
campaign, which lasted for more than two months, produced a significant
deterioration in relations between the West and Russia. In the wake of
the NATO campaign, however, a divided Council managed to assemble a
resolution authorizing a post-conflict stabilization force. Russia,
publicly bruised by its inability to protect its ally, was intent on
returning the Council to the center of the diplomatic process. During
the process of drafting a new resolution, it managed to extract several
concessions from the Western powers. Russia's Council veto
therefore had the effect of restoring a formal equality between the
great powers that the NATO air campaign had demonstrated did not exist
in military or diplomatic terms. "Formulated as a resolution of the
UN Security Council," Russian president Boris Yeltsin wrote later,
"the [Serbian] surrender ceased to be humiliating." (40) Even
as Russia recovered from a diplomatic setback, the Council process
provided space for its diplomats to secure minor diplomatic victories
and to reassert, at least in a symbolic sense, its prerogatives as a
major power.
Implications of a Concert Vision
In this article, I have presented evidence that the Council may
deepen high-level diplomatic contacts between its permanent members and
that Council processes can help the P5 manage their own relations in
several ways. I have shown that a concert approach produces a different
perspective on the body and its utility. It encourages seeing the P5
itself as a distinct institution embedded within the broader framework
of the Council. With this perspective, it emphasizes the Council's
political rather than its legal role. It encourages an understanding of
the body as a politically driven consensus body, the value of which
extends beyond its ability (or inability) to consistently enforce
international law or even respond promptly to many security crises. A
concert view emphasizes that increased contact and comity among the
permanent members is itself a key product--perhaps the most important
product--of the Council's work.
It may be asked whether these concert benefits could not be
obtained through a mechanism other than the Council, with all its formal
responsibilities and legal power for maintaining peace and security. The
diplomatic landscape is littered with consultative groups that allow for
informal consensus building between different groups of states. The
dilemma is that there appears to be a symbiotic relationship between the
Council's governance and concert functions. The council meets
regularly and consults intensively because of its responsibility to
manage the dozens of active UN operations in the field, supervise the
work of subsidiary bodies it has authorized, and monitor sanctions it
has enacted. If those burdens were formally or informally shifted
elsewhere, its concert benefits would likely be diminished.
Barring some kind of catastrophic international event, the Council
will remain often at the center of international security efforts. Its
conspicuous failures notwithstanding, states and international public
opinion will continue to ask the Council to fulfill its mandate for
preserving peace and security. Discussion will continue about how to
make this core institution more effective. In this environment, the
governance view will dominate, but the Council's concert benefits
should not be forgotten.
The Council's working methods have come under intense scrutiny
during the past several decades. A number of voices have argued that the
Council needs to increase its transparency. (41) The body's
informal consultations--where most major decisions are made--have been a
particular focus of criticism. These meetings, which became standard
practice in the late 1970s, occur without any record of discussion and
often without a formal agenda. In response to persistent criticism, the
Council has agreed to provide regular updates on its informal meetings
and to create certain avenues for civil society input. From a governance
perspective, this emphasis on transparency is understandable. A
legitimate governing body's methods and procedures must be clear to
the public. Whether transparency is unambiguously beneficial from a
concert perspective is less clear. Some of the Council's most
effective moments have resulted from off-the-record informal
consultations, particularly between permanent members. A relentless
transparency drive that discourages, for example, regular consultations
among the permanent members might sacrifice important Council benefits
on the altar of good governance. As Voeten argues, "Successful
reforms to make the Security Council more transparent may actually have
adverse effects in that powerful states may flee the forum." (42)
Finally, a concert approach offers a different perspective on the
perennial question of Security Council reform and enlargement. Those who
argue for significant Council expansion often cast these arguments in
terms of legitimacy and respect for the Council's decisions. A more
representative Council, it is asserted, will command greater respect and
ultimately be more effective. Arguments in favor of Council reform
therefore lean heavily on a governance conception of the Council's
role and usually pay little heed to its concert utility. From a concert
perspective, Council reform might be quite beneficial if it extends the
benefits outlined above to other major powers. Yet membership reform
might also pose a danger to the concert dynamic. Some proposals would
significantly expand the number of nonpermanent seats and produce a
total membership of up to thirty members. Reform of this type might
alter the diplomatic balance considerably and discourage major powers
from using the Council as often as they do now. If so, the push for a
more representative and effective Council could inadvertently undermine
one of the institution's hidden values.
Notes
David Bosco is assistant professor at American University's
School of International Service, where he teaches international law and
organizations. He is author of Five to Rule Them All: The UN Security
Council and the Making of the Modern World (2009) and Rough Justice: The
International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics (2014).
(1.) Tamar Gutner and Alexander Thompson, "The Politics of 10
Performance: A Framework," Review of International Organizations 5,
no. 3 (2010): 239.
(2.) For examples of the former, see Edward C. Luck, UN Security
Council: Practice and Promise (New York: Routledge, 2006); for notable
examples of the latter, see Virginia Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Work?
Shaping Belligerents' Choices After Civil War (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2008).
(3.) Charter of the United Nations, Article 24.
(4.) Inis L. Claude, Power and International Relations (New York:
Random House, 1962), p. 110 (emphasis in original).
(5.) Mary Ellen O'Connell, International Law and the Use of
Force: Cases and Materials, University Casebook Series (New York:
Foundation Press; Thomson West, 2005), p. 225; Anthony C. Arend and
Robert J. Beck, International Law and the Use of Force: Beyond the UN
Charter Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 33-34, 37.
(6.) It is not clear that the diplomats who negotiated the United
Nations conceived of the Council itself as a tool for managing
major-power relations. Instead, comity between the permanent members was
generally seen as the predicate for the body's broader role in
maintaining the peace.
(7.) For an examination of the role of major-power involvement in
local conflict, see Benjamin Miller and Korina Kagan, "The Great
Powers and Regional Conflicts: Eastern Europe and the Balkans from the
Post-Napoleonic Era to the Post-Cold War Era," International
Studies Quarterly 41, no. 1 (1997): 51-85.
(8.) Stathis N. Kalyvas and Laia Balcells, "International
System and Technologies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped
Internal Conflict," American Political Science Review 104, no. 3
(2010).
(9.) See, in particular, Jennifer Mitzen, "Reading Habermas in
Anarchy: Multilateral Diplomacy and Global Public Spheres,"
American Political Science Review 99, no. 3 (2005): 401-417.
(10.) The direct clashes between China and the United States (in
Korea) and between China and the Soviet Union (border dispute) occurred
before China assumed the Council seat, which to that point was held by
the government in Taiwan.
(11.) Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics,
1763-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Richard B. Elrod,
"The Concert of Europe: A Fresh Look at an International
System," World Politics 28, no. 2 (1976): 159-174 ; Georges-Henri
Soutou, "Was There a European Order in the Twentieth Century? From
the Concert of Europe to the End of the Cold War," Contemporary
European History 9, no. 3 (2000): 329; A. J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for
Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918, Oxford History of Modern Europe (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1954).
(12.) Elrod, "The Concert of Europe," p. 163.
(13.) Robert C. Hilderbrand, Dumbarton Oaks: The Origins of the
United Nations and the Search for Postwar Security (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1990).
(14.) B. Urquhart, "International Peace and Security: Thoughts
on the Twentieth Anniversary of Dag Hammarskjold's Death,"
Foreign Affairs 60, no. 1 (1981): 14; David L. Bosco, Five to Rule Them
All: The UN Security Council and the Making of the Modern World (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 137-139. For an in-depth look
at how permanent members of the Security Council worked informally
outside of the Council to develop the resolution leading to the
cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq War, see Cameron R. Hume, The United
Nations, Iran, and Iraq: How Peacemaking Changed (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1994), pp. 89-91, 94-97, 100-103.
(15.) Elrod, "The Concert of Europe," p. 167.
(16.) Charles A. Kupchan and Clifford A. Kupchan, "Concerts,
Collective Security, and the Future of Europe," International
Security 16, no. 1 (1991): 120.
(17.) Erik Voeten, "The Political Origins of the UN Security
Council's Ability to Legitimize the Use of Force,"
International Organization 59, no. 3 (2005): 527-557.
(18.) Kupchan and Kupchan, "Concerts, Collective Security, and
the Future of Europe," p. 120.
(19.) Charter of the United Nations, Article 39.
(20.) Kupchan and Kupchan, "Concerts, Collective Security, and
the Future of Europe," p. 123.
(21.) Inis L. Claude, Jr., Swords Into Plowshares: The Problems and
Process of International Organization (New York: Random House), p. 76.
(22.) Prime Minister's Personal Minute, quoted in Martin
Gilbert, Road to Victory: Winston S. Churchill, 1941-1945 (London:
Heinemann, 1986), p. 1170.
(23.) Bosco, Five to Rule Them All, pp. 149-151.
(24.) Ibid., p. 251.
(25.) Ibid.
(26.) The data was compiled using major news sources. It excludes
visits to Germany and France because regularized European Union meetings
make these difficult to track.
(27.) Yoram Z. Haftel, "Designing for Peace: Regional
Integration Arrangements, Institutional Variation, and Militarized
Interstate Disputes," International Organization 61, no. 1 (2007):
217-237.
(28.) Mitzen, "Reading Habermas in Anarchy," p. 411.
(29.) For an account of Western diplomacy at the Council, see
Philip Jessup, "The Berlin Blockade and the Use of the United
Nations," Foreign Affairs 50, no. 1 (1971): 163-173.
(30.) Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State
Department (New York: Norton, 1969), p. 269.
(31.) James Reston, "Truman Blocked in Move to Send Vinson to
Stalin," New York Times, 9 October 1948, p. 1. See also Wilson D.
Miscamble, "Harry S. Truman, the Berlin Blockade and the 1948
Election," Presidential Studies Quarterly 10, no. 3 (Summer 1980):
footnote 50.
(32.) Trygve Lie, In the Cause of Peace: Seven Years at the United
Nations (New York: Macmillan, 1954), p. 218.
(33.) Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes:
Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 404-405.
(34.) Dean Rusk as told to Richard Rusk, As I Saw It, 1st ed. (New
York: Norton, 1990), p. 236.
(35.) Michael Byers, "Agreeing to Disagree: Security Council
Resolution 1441 and International Ambiguity," Global Governance 10,
no. 2 (2004): 181.
(36.) Henry Kissinger, Crisis: The Anatomy of Two Major Foreign
Policy Crises (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), p. 273.
(37.) Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1992), pp. 529-531.
(38.) Elrod, "The Concert of Europe," pp. 166-167.
(39.) David Remnick, "In New Commonwealth of
'Equals,' Russia Remains the Dominant Force," Washington
Post, 21 December 1991, p. A39.
(40.) Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries (New York:
Public Affairs, 2000), p. 265.
(41.) See, for example, High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges,
and Change, "A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility,"
UN Doc. A/59/565 (December 2004), pars. 246-260.
(42.) Voeten, "Political Origins," p. 552.
Table 1 Bilateral Visits by US Secretaries of State, 1990-2013
Number of Visits
Other P5 members
China 27.0
Russia 42.0
France 30.0
United Kingdom 26.0
Average 31.5
Non-P5 major powers
Brazil 12.0
Japan 19.0
Germany 22.0
India 14.0
Average 16.75
Source: Records of the travels by the US secretary of state are
recorded by the US Department of State, Office of the Historian. The
current secretary's travels can be accessed at www.state.gov/
secretary/travel while the travels of former secretaries are
archived at http://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/travels/
secretary.
Table 2 US Secretary of State Visits, Controlling for Share of World
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Share of World Military Spending
Average
Average Share of
Share of World Military
Number of World GDP, Expenditure,
Visits 1990-2013 1990-2013
Other P5 members
China 27.0 4.98% 4.71%
Russia 42.0 1.72% 4.24%
France 30.0 4.59% 4.98%
United Kingdom 26.0 4.34% 4.14%
Average 31.25 3.91% 4.52%
Non-P5 major powers
Brazil 12.0 2.28% 2.06%
Japan 19.0 11.99% 4.47%
Germany 22.0 6.46% 3.96%
India 14.0 1.71% 2.3%
Average 16.75 5.61% 3.20%
Visits
Visits Divided by
Divided by Share of
Share of World Military
World GDP Expenditure
Other P5 members
China 5.42 5.73
Russia 24.42 9.91
France 6.54 6.02
United Kingdom 5.99 6.28
Average 10.59 6.99
Non-P5 major powers
Brazil 5.26 5.83
Japan 1.58 4.25
Germany 3.41 5.56
India 8.19 6.09
Average 4.61 5.43
Sources: Records of the travels by the US secretary of state are
recorded by the US Department of State, Office of the Historian,
http://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/travels/secretary. GDP
data for this analysis was drawn from the World Bank World
Development Indicators, http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/
world-development-indicators, in current US dollars. Military
expenditure figures were calculated using the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Military Expenditure Dataset,
www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/milex_database.
