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Chapter Nine: International Law And Organization And The Quest For Peace
Review |
The chapter examines the changing role of intergovernmental organizations in maintaining peace and security. It begins by examining the sources, origins, and evolution of international law, with a particular focus on just war. It then considers early ideas about the value of international organizations, and examines the role of the United Nations in global politics. The chapter emphasizes its role in preserving peace and evaluates its relationship with the United States in today’s complex global context. The chapter then turns to several regional organizations in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. It concludes by considering the growing role of nongovernmental organizations in global politics.
1. The law of nations
International law deals with the rights and duties of sovereign states. Theorists disagree as to the significance of international law. Realists tend to dismiss it, liberals tend to support it and would like to see states rely more heavily on global norms than on power; constructivists view it as reflecting changing global norms.
a) Sources and evolution of international law
- Sources of international law include treaties, international custom, general principles of law, and judicial decisions and the work of prominent legal scholars.
- Sovereign states designed international law to advance their interests—to protect territory and manage violence so it would not threaten the state system.
- The Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius is often described as the “father of international law.” He argued that a body of law between states would reduce the misunderstandings and misperceptions that lead to war.
b) Just war
- For centuries scholars have debated whether wars could be initiated and fought “justly.”
- Grotius believed that:
- the most important just cause for war was self-defense,
- wars needed to be declared by the proper (sovereign) authorities,
- wars must not be fought for reasons of national interest,
- wars must only be initiated if they have a reasonable chance of success, and
- the ends of the war must be proportional to the means used.
2. Types of international organizations
a) Theorists disagree over whether or not intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) act independently in global politics.
b) There are three types of IGOs in global politics:
- those that do no more than their leading member states ask of them;
- those that can work with states to achieve collective goals; and
- those that have genuine autonomy to pursue their own policies.
3. Early Ideas and Efforts
Thinkers like Kant and Rousseau influenced later efforts to establish IGOs, including the Hague Conferences.
4. The United Nations
The UN, the largest and most complex IGO in history, has enjoyed more success than the League in maintaining peace but is today threatened by the magnitude of its tasks and the policies of its leading members, especially the US.
a) Early Expectations
- The UN was established at the end of World War II with hopes for cooperation among the victorious powers and with a Charter designed to remedy the League’s defects.
b) UN organs
- The UN consists of 5 principal organs designed to give a voice even to the smallest state while recognizing the special role of the great powers.
- The General Assembly consists of all members with equal votes, but its resolutions are non-binding.
- The Security Council, which affords its five permanent members with a veto and can pass binding resolutions, has primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. It pioneered new techniques of peacekeeping during the Cold War.
- The Secretariat is the UN executive arm and is led by a Secretary-General who plays a key role in identifying and initiating peacekeeping efforts.
- The International Court of Justice adjudicates disputes between states arising over the application of international law.
- The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is responsible for economic, social, cultural, educational, and health matters.
c) Economic and Social Issues
- ECOSOC and the specialized agencies that report to it reflect UN recognition that violence has roots in economic and social ills and that human security requires more than military capability.
- Many of these specialized agencies are based on the idea of functionalism. Functionalists believe that states are economically and socially interdependent and if they can cooperate to solve common economic and social problems they will be less likely to go to war with one another.
- Neofunctionalists view expanding cooperation as a product of political pressure levied by interest groups that see such cooperation as in their interest. Neofunctionalists advocate extending supranational cooperation to new issues and deepening that authority.
d) The UN and the Maintenance of Peace
The UN uses nonbinding resolutions, fact-finding missions, observers, economic and military sanctions, peacekeeping forces, and sometimes military force, to keep the peace.
- Maintaining peace during the Cold War
- The UN’s efforts to maintain peace and security have evolved from the earliest days to the present.
- With the Council deadlocked between the superpowers, the UN developed a novel approach called peacekeeping that combined elements of peace enforcement and pacific settlement to reduce violence in cases in the developing world that threatened superpower confrontations.
- Peacekeeping was designed to end conflicts by delaying or limiting violence, thereby creating an atmosphere conducive to negotiation; it was not designed to resolve highly contentious issues.
- Maintaining peace after the Cold War
- In the flush of enthusiasm that followed the end of the Cold War, UN operations grew to encompass humanitarian intervention, and the magnitude of these operations strains UN capabilities.
- The most complex of these operations was UNPROFOR, which operated in the Former Yugoslavia between 1992 and 1995.
e) The UN and American Unilateralism
American relations with the UN, especially after U.S. influence in the organization declined, have been hostage to American concern lest the organization limit U.S. foreign-policy independence. Relations became especially strained with the unilateral U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
f) The UN and the Future
- In recent years, there have been numerous calls for reforming the UN.
- Suggested reforms include changes in Council membership, clearly defining terrorism, and increasing assistance to poor countries.
- Prospects for the UN in a rapidly changing world can be evaluated from realist, liberal, and constructivist perspectives. Realists think the UN will remain an instrument of its most powerful members. Liberals believe that states should turn over greater authority to the UN in matters of war and peace. Constructivists think that norms will slowly evolve to enlarge the UN role in global politics.
5. Regional International Organizations
Cooperation among states is enhanced by the presence of a growing number of regional IGOs on every continent that perform a wide variety of tasks.
a) The European Union
The most successful regional IGO is the EU, which has gone a long way toward achieving economic and political integration of member states.
- From the end of World War II to the Schumann Plan
European integration began with U.S. efforts to reconstruct the continent after World War II. Its first step was the European Coal and Steel Community.
- The continuing process of European integration
- The process of Europe’s integration has proceeded by fits and starts. Europe’s Common Market was created in 1957 and was then merged with other European institutions to form the European Community. The 1986 Single European Act standardized members’ rules in many new areas, and the 1992 Maastricht Treaty created the EU, promising to create a single monetary area which was established in 2000.
- The EU has expanded to encompass most of Europe from the Atlantic to Ukraine, but efforts to harmonize member’s foreign and defense policies have been less successful.
- A European constitution
In 2001, EU members agreed to draft a constitution for the group as a whole, but it was rejected in French and Dutch referendums held in 2005.
b) Other Regional Organizations
- Today, every continent has regional IGOs performing a variety of tasks.
- Africa hosts two key IGOs: the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States.
- The Americas are home to the Organization of American States, NAFTA, Mercosur, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
- Asia hosts the Association of Southeast Asia Nations and the enormous Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation consisting of countries along the Pacific Rim.
- Europe has a variety of important regional IGOs in addition to the EU, including NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
c) International organizations and peace
The evidence suggests that IGOs do contribute to peace much as Kant had claimed.
6. Nongovernmental organizations
a) Global politics in recent decades has witnessed a proliferation in the number and type of transnational NGOs that help like-minded citizens in many countries to collaborate on important issues. So dense has the network of such groups become that some observers believe that these groups are creating a global civic society.
b) NGOs have been established to lobby, publicize, and provide expert information about a vast array of global issues, including the environment, human rights, and humanitarian issues.
c) NGOs also have a growing role in promoting norms that states are obliged to follow.
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Focus Questions |
Q1 What are the sources of international law, and in what ways has international law evolved?
A1 International law is the body of legally binding rules that governs relations among states although in recent decades it has begun to provide individuals with protection from abuses by states. International law is unlike domestic law because there is no legislature to make it, no court to judge it, and no executive to administer and enforce it. Realists dismiss international law as "utopian"; liberals would like to strengthen it; and constructivists view the evolution of international and the precedents it sets as reflecting normative change in global politics. Although international law is routinely violated, most political feel it necessary to justify their actions in terms of such law. The key sources of international law are international treaties, international custom, the general principles of law recognized by "civilized nations," and judicial decisions and the teachings of legal scholars. Historically, custom has been very important, and many law-making treaties confirm custom which reflects the practices that states find useful and that have arisen through reciprocity. Before the emergence of the interstate system, medieval rulers were constrained only by natural law of the law of God. As the interstate system of sovereign states emerged, however, it was accompanied by a growing body of law between rather than above states, a development closely associated with Hugo Grotius, "the father of international law."
Q2 When are wars "just wars"?
A2 Although some groups like the Quakers believe that all war is immoral, the idea that some wars are "just" has existed for centuries. For instance, theologians like St. Augustine as well as legal scholars like Grotius believed that a war was just if waged in self-defense and to restore peace, not for self-interest. Grotius also argued that wars were just when waged for the enforcement of rights or in response to aggression, and were waged in a just manner in which means were proportional to goals and the accomplishment of goals was possible without undue brutality. Thus, Grotius distinguished between just reasons for war and just conduct of war. The latter is the basis for laws of war, especially determining what are legitimate targets in war and the amount of force that is permissible.
Q3 What are the organs of the United Nations, and what are their functions?
A3 The United Nations is a universal international organization established after World War II as the successor to the League of Nations. Realist believe that such organizations are no more than the instruments of powerful states, whereas liberals argue that they should and can become independent factors in global politics. For their part, constructivists believe that such organization can evolve from being subservient to states to enjoying greater autonomy if global norms move in that direction. The organs of the UN as described in the UN Charter are the Security Council, General Assembly, Secretariat, International Court of Justice, Economic and Social Council, and Trusteeship Council. All have seen their role change over time. When the UN was first established, the Security Council was viewed as principally responsible for maintaining peace and security. The Council could pass binding resolutions, and, with five great powers as permanent members that enjoyed a veto, it was assumed that they would work together. The Cold War proved this assumption wrong, and the task of maintaining peace and security shifted to the General Assembly in which all members have an equal vote thereby reflecting the principle of sovereign equality and to the Secretariat. The Secretariat is responsible for managing the UN bureaucracy, and the role of the Secretary-General is the maintenance of peace depends in part on the personality and skill of the individual holding that office. The International Court of Justice can decide cases brought before it and render advisory opinions when asked to do so, but great powers have been reluctant to allow it to adjudicate major political issues. The Economic and Social Council reflects a belief that economic and social issues are a major source of violence and insecurity in global politics. This belief is central to functional and neofunctional theories that aim at eroding state sovereignty. ECOSOC accounts for most of the UN's budget and employees and oversees the UN's specialized agencies like the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization. Finally, the Trusteeship Council has been moribund since the completion of the process of decolonization.
Q4 How have United Nations' efforts to maintain peace evolved over time?
A4 Chapters Six and Seven of the UN Charter are central to UN efforts to maintain peace. Chapter Six provides for tools such as negotiation, mediation, and arbitration for peaceful settlement of disputes in which misunderstanding rather than aggression is the cause of conflict and disputants seek to resolve their differences. Chapter Seven, which was entrusted to the Security Council, deals with aggression by means of peace enforcement up to and including economic sanctions and military force. Military forces has provided for in Chapter Seven has only been authorized twice, in 1950 after North Korea invaded South Korea and in 1990 after Iraq invaded Kuwait. However, with the Security Council paralyzed by the Cold War, the UN developed an innovative process called peacekeeping which combined elements of both Chapters Six and Seven. To be effective, the process had to be more robust that peaceful settlement but less provocative than peace enforcement. First used in 1956 in the Middle East, the idea was to send lightly armed troops drawn from nonaligned states to interpose themselves between belligerents. Such a force had to be approved by the parties to a dispute and would remain only as long as it was desired by the disputants, and the conflict should not be a civil war in which peacekeepers would find themselves in the middle. Peacekeeping, which has been used in all the world's regions, was not intended to solve disputes. Rather, it was to prevent intervention by the superpowers that might escalate and to provide time for negotiations to solve disputes. With the end of the Cold War, it appeared that the UN could work as it had originally planned to and that the Security Council could again become the principal organ for maintaining peace and security. Bolstered by renewed optimism, the UN became involved in larger and more complex operations to maintain peace ranging from humanitarian intervention in failed states like Somalia to ethnic conflicts such as the Congo war and nation-building as in the cases of Cambodia and East Timor. These operations were larger than those undertaken previously. UN forces were more heavily armed and became enmeshed in civil conflict, sometimes among foes that had consented to the UN presence. The largest and most complex of these operations was the UN Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia between 1992 and 1995. Such operations have strained UN capabilities and, if undertaken in the future, will require larger budgets and greater commitment by members, especially the United States which has demanded major reforms in the organization and with which it has had an uneasy relationship in recent decades.
Q5 What have been the major steps in the evolution of the Europe Union?
A5 Regional cooperation in Europe began with American encouragement as the onset of the Cold War loomed. The original purposes of such cooperation were to stimulate economic recovery, reduce the prospect of news wars in Europe, and reintegrate defeated Germany into Europe. The first step was the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 which integrated these key industries in France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. As functionalist theory suggests, integration of one sector produced pressures for additional integration. Thus, the 1957 Treaty of Rome gave birth to the European Atomic Energy Communist and the European Economic Community (EEC) or Common Market which eliminated tariffs among members and erected a common external tariff. The EEC also instituted the Common Agricultural Policy which to this day continued to subsidize European farmers. In 1967, the ECSC, EURATOM and the EEC were merged into a single European Community (EC). The enlargement of the community then followed, with Great Britain, Ireland and Denmark joining in 1973, and Greece, Portugal and Spain joining in the 1980s. European integration took a major step in 1986 with the Single European Act which required members to harmonize their policies in a variety of areas. Then came the 1992 Maastricht Treaty which formally established the European Union (EU) and began the process of linking members in a single monetary zone, a process which culminated with the introduction of the euro in 2000 and the establishment of a European Central Bank to set interest rates for the community as a whole. In recent years, additional countries from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have joined, creating a common market from the Atlantic to the Russian border. The integration process, however, has slowed in recent years with failure to harmonize members' foreign and defense policies, adopt a constitution for the European Union, or admit additional states like Turkey and Ukraine. Although the EU has some supranational attributes such as the European Parliament and its executive organ, the Commission, members still retain sovereign independence, and full integration remains elusive.
Q6 Do international organizations foster peace?
A6 Research suggests that international organizations do foster peace. One analysis suggests they do so in six ways: (1) coercing aggressive states, (2)mediating among those in conflict, (3) providing information to reduce uncertainty and misunderstanding, (4) helping states see their interest in new ways, (5) promoting shared norms, and (6) fostering shared values and shared identities.
Q7 What role do nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) play in global politics?
A7 Recent decades have witnessed the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—unofficial, not-for profit, citizens' groups--that link people in different societies to foster a public good. Such groups have emerged in many policy areas including the environment, human rights, gender, medical, and humanitarian. They publicize issues and derive authority as sources of expertise, information, and frequently innovative political techniques. One of the most important roles is in creating and diffusing new norms or changing old ones, a role that attract the attention of constructivists. To this end, they have formed effective transnational networks of exports sand advocates called epistemic communities. Liberals believe that in this manner NGOs are building a global civil society in which like-minded individuals from around the world exchange ideas and coordinate activities to promote such norms as environmental protection, democracy, gender equality, arms limitation, and racial and religious tolerance. Such groups are having such an impact that some countries, including Russia, are trying to curb their independence. |
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