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The World Today
May 1999
Willing The End But Not The Means
By Adam Roberts
| Are threats or the use of military force against a sovereign state in support of the declared aims of the UN Security Council legitimate when there is no explicit authorisation in a Security Council resolution? Are such threats wise? And why do UN sanctions, widely seen as an alternative to force, often lead to it? In 1998-99 these questions have arisen in crises over Iraq and Kosovo. Western political leaders have made little attempt to address them openly. |
The structure of the international system creates strong pressures for intervention. Contemporary concepts of international order are not limited to an order of sovereign states, but concern also events within states. This provides the underlying foundation for most cases of sanctions and international military interventions in the 1990s.
Collective action under UN auspices regarding a largely internal matter is not new: the first cases of UN sanctions, against Rhodesia (1966-79) and South Africa (1977-94), were about white minority rule within these states. However, in the 1990s the UN and various regional bodies have repeatedly concerned themselves with matters within states: humanitarian issues, human rights violations, protection of safety zones, pursuit of war criminals, restoration of elected governments, and inspection of measures of disarmament or arms control. On these issues, major powers and international institutions have sometimes acted decisively, often against the wishes of the current government of a particular target state.
The problem of refugees, long connected with the initiation of wars, has reinforced interventionist pressures. In an ominous transformation of reactions to refugee issues, states, including liberal Western ones, have put in place a range of policies and procedures designed to limit immigration. Their response to urgent crises is to grant temporary asylum, not permanent refugee status; and they have engaged in some practices of forcible repatriation.
Thanks to the media they feel obliged to respond to refugee crises, but have a strong interest in influencing events within refugee-producing countries so that refugee flows across borders do not happen or, if they do, conditions can be created for their return. Hence the unprecedented emphasis of states, and of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), on assisting the internally displaced so they do not become refugees, and on helping to create conditions for the repatriation of refugees.
Different World-Views
Despite globalisation, and despite their formal adherence to certain common procedures and values, states still have different world-views and interests – especially on issues relating to the use of force. They have different experiences of war, fear different enemies, and have very different instincts about the inviolability of state sovereignty. This has helped to create the situation in which, in one crisis after another, the international community has willed the end but is hesitant about willing the means, especially the military means.
Obtaining agreement in the Security Council on the use of force has repeatedly proved difficult. Many states are reluctant to get involved in any use of force, and harbour deep suspicions about the motivations of those advocating it.
Scepticism about the desirability and utility of using force to achieve the goals of the Security Council has been most evident in statements made by Russia and China, but is not confined to them. Even within the European Union there are fundamentally different perspectives.
Britain and France illustrate the point. On 4 December 1998 the Declaration on European Defence, concluded at the British-French summit at St Malo, spoke of the ‘progressive framing of a common defence policy in the framework of CFSP’. Within weeks the UK had joined the US in bombing Iraq while France kept out.
Unevenness in the degree of commitment of diplomatic partners is no new problem. In the crisis over Turkey in 1875-77, which revolved around its internal structure and its management of Bosnia, Bulgaria and other territories, there was an exact mirror-image of the problems between Russia and the Western powers in 1998-99 over Iraq and Kosovo.
Then, in the resurgent Concert of Europe – the Great Power coalition that was the ‘Contact Group’ of its day – Russia was militarily serious. Britain, meanwhile, dragged its feet: always prepared to sign a joint ultimatum, suspicious of the motives of those proposing military action, and never prepared to do so itself. The result was the 1877 war between Russia and Turkey.
The idea that if the Great Powers can maintain a facade of unity, and cobble together a coherent set of demands, then local powers will make a calculation of relative forces and duly capitulate, was seductively misleading in the nineteenth century as it is now. In the first speech of his Midlothian Campaign in November 1879 Gladstone said that he had for some years recommended coercion of Turkey to bring about the better government of that country, but it was ‘coercion by the united authority of Europe’. 1 In reality, as the Turkish authorities noticed, this ‘united authority’ was largely a sham.
Strategic Coercion
Many uses of force today are forms of strategic coercion. 2 They are aimed, not at simple deterrence of an adversary nor at simple conquest or reconquest of territory, but rather at persuading one or more authorities to take a particular action: Saddam Hussein to accept the presence of weapons inspectors, Colonel Qaddafi to hand over suspects for trial, and Slobodan Milosevic to accept an unwelcome settlement and foreign monitors in a province of Serbia. Compelling a sovereign authority to take some publicly demanded action is difficult and delicate.
In the eye of beholders, especially in states with still living memories of colonialism, strategic coercion can look very like gunboat diplomacy – especially as its weapon of choice, technologically superior air power, is today’s gunboat. Further, most states feel distanced from this form of strategic coercion because they lack the capacity to participate.
Sanctions
The extent of disagreement about the use of force, and the hazards involved in strategic coercion, make it unavoidable that international institutions involved in complex situations will prefer to use peaceful methods before authorising force. In numerous crises the first reaction of the European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the UN Security Council has been to deploy unarmed monitors, peacekeeping forces, humanitarian missions, economic sanctions or arms embargoes. Only when their inadequacy is demonstrated does force become a serious option.
In all the recent cases sanctions have been advocated as a peaceful method, but this decade’s experience leads to some disturbing conclusions.
First, sanctions, especially when general, are a blunt instrument, hitting masses more than elites. Because of this effect, particularly evident in Iraq, the Security Council has tempered sanctions by providing for humanitarian needs. Such humanitarian initiatives have run into trouble both because of bureaucratic problems in implementation, and because the Iraqi government has not cooperated.
These humanitarian initiatives are bound to be least successful in the circumstance where they are needed most: when facing a dictatorial regime that is not especially concerned about the population’s suffering.
Second, the record of sanctions in achieving fundamental changes in policies of the target state is poor, and any results achieved generally take years rather than weeks or months. In discussing the efficacy of sanctions, three issues are often confused.
Where a desired policy change has ultimately been achieved, it has usually been either because the aims of particular sanctions were modest – as in the US-led sanctions over Poland in the 1980s – or because – as with the sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro up to 1996 – the sanctions operated in conjunction with other forces, including military pressure.
Sometimes even badly designed sanctions may have a considerable effect because the aim is realisable: the sanctions against Libya (which enabled it to continue about 97.5 percent of its trade) are a case in point. In other cases, where the aim is more ambitious, sanctions sometimes have the effect of shoring up a target regime, especially if it is dictatorial.
Third, sanctions can contribute to a requirement for the use of military force. This may be ancillary support of sanctions: either to ensure their implementation, as with the naval patrols in connection with the Rhodesian, Iraqi and Yugoslav sanctions; or to deter the target state from breaking out by attacking a neighbouring country, as with troop deployment to Saudi Arabia in 1990.
Because sanctions commit the prestige of the sending states to achieving a result, they often lead on to a direct use of force. The credibility of these states is at stake, and if sanctions are not achieving results, then military means have to be tried. This is particularly important for those states, especially the US, which are preoccupied with their credibility.
Despite these three criticisms, sanctions still have value in stigmatising and weakening the target state. Attrition is never a stated goal of sanctions, but it is the best rationale for them against powerful and dictatorial opponents such as Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. The rump Yugoslavia might not have changed policy towards Bosnia in 1994, or reacted so passively to the Croat invasion of the Krajina in 1995, without the pressure of sanctions.
The traditional ‘Just War’ criteria should be applied to the initiation of sanctions as well as the initiation of force, but with one major difference. ‘Non-combatant immunity’ is even harder to achieve with sanctions than with war. The effects of economic sanctions on civilians seem unavoidable. It is impossible to view sanctions as not risking serious effects on the innocent, but it is possible to try to mitigate those effects.
In the particular case of Iraq, sanctions can still severely limit its ability to import arms and develop weapons of mass destruction. The UN’s disarmament objectives there still command wide support. However, changes in the sanctions regime are needed, including:
Such policies cannot work as long as Iraq exports very little oil because of the low price and the damaged state of its oil industry. That situation makes it all the more urgent to reconfigure the current sanctions regime. If the major powers are not seen to be doing something positive, the international consensus on sanctions will collapse.
Legitimate Force
When sanctions are not enough, and the threat or use of force comes to be seen as necessary, only in certain cases – including the 1991 war to liberate Kuwait, certain NATO-led operations in Bosnia from 1993 onwards, and the invasion of Haiti in 1994 – has authorisation been obtained from the Security Council.
Direct Security Council authorisation is not the only basis on which force can legitimately be used. Granted the existence of five vetoes, the Council could not possibly have such a moral monopoly. The UN Charter itself allows for other bases for the use of force: in particular, in the recognition of ‘the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations’ (Article 51). Its recognition of the role of ‘regional arrangements or agencies for dealing with such matters as are appropriate for regional action’ (Article 52) is qualified by the requirement that an enforcement action on this basis requires ‘the authorisation of the Security Council’ (Article 53).
The Charter does not directly address the ancient and difficult question of whether intervention on humanitarian grounds is ever justified. Overall, it creates a strong presumption against the use of force except when one state has been directly attacked by another. However, self-defence was not the issue in the three hard cases of the 1990s.
Two Iraqi Cases
The establishment of the ‘safe haven’ in northern Iraq was the first clear case of military action to achieve the goals of the Security Council but without its authorisation. Following the movement of hundreds of thousands of refugees in northern Iraq in March and early April 1991, the UN required, in the Delphic terms of Security Council Resolution 688 of 5 April 1991, that ‘Iraq allow immediate access by international humanitarian organisations to all those in need of assistance in all parts of Iraq’. This willed the end, but not the means. It was not a formal authorisation of military intervention, whose basis remained ambiguous, but was nevertheless of assistance to the Americans and their partners in providing some justification for the subsequent military action.
This could also be defended on the grounds, not essentially Charter-based, of urgent humanitarian necessity leading to a strictly temporary military action which was not in principle hostile to the territorial integrity of the state concerned. States broadly accepted this action, some by indications of assent, others by silence. The ambiguous character of the legal justification set a pattern which was to be repeated, with variations.
The subsequent threats and uses of force over weapons inspections in Iraq, reaching a climax in the Operation Desert Fox bombing in December 1998, also lacked the backing of specific Security Council authorisation. During the crisis it was evident that, had there been an attempt to get authorisation of bombing, it would have been opposed by a veto-wielding power.
This did not mean that Desert Fox took place in a legal limbo. An argument can be made that the bombing of Iraq in December had a basis in international law because the cease-fire at the end of the war over Kuwait was conditional upon Iraq accepting provisions in Security Council Resolution 687 of 3 April 1991 for disposing of its weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s hampering of the work of UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspectors was a violation of the cease-fire resolution, and entitled the coalition partners, or what was left of them, to take military action.
In 1998, the Security Council went further than is commonly recognised towards the authorisation of force over Iraq’s weapons programmes. Security Council Resolution 1205, adopted on 5 November 1998, demanded that Iraq ‘rescind immediately and unconditionally’ its decisions to suspend cooperation with UNSCOM. The statement that the resolution was adopted under Chapter VII of the Charter, and the reaffirmation that the Security Council would ‘act in accordance with the relevant provisions of resolution 687’, carried more than a hint that Iraq was obliged to comply with the resolutions and would face consequences if it did not. Although China, France and Russia all declared themselves unhappy about the use of force in this case, they consented to the implicit acceptance of its use in resolution 1205.
The 1998 bombing of Iraq over the issue of weapons inspections posed problems of effectiveness as well as lawfulness. Such a use of force with the ostensible purpose of enabling foreign personnel to carry out actions within the country tends to make their future presence less likely. While, in earlier crises, the threat of external military action did assist inspections resumptions, its actual use, as in December 1998, did not.
This is not to say the bombing had no useful effects, only that they were not those which had been proclaimed in Council resolutions. Further, the bombing was perceived very adversely in many countries. Revelations about US dominance and misuse of UNSCOM cast further doubt on the legitimacy of the operation of which the bombing was part.
The poor results of the December bombing are likely to reinforce the case for a shift away from the most intrusive elements of the West’s Iraq policies, and away from some elements of strategic coercion. The obvious alternative approach in any new policy would be one that emphasised deterrence. This would aim at ensuring that any attempt by Iraq to attack its neighbours would be firmly rebuffed. 3
Kosovo
NATO made threats of force over Kosovo in October 1998 and this February; and on 24 March launched air attacks whose legitimacy and wisdom were the subject of intense debate. Security Council resolutions, while not providing a solid foundation for the use of force over Kosovo, do provide a partial basis. Security Council Resolution 1160 of 31 March 1998, imposing an arms embargo on Yugoslavia, condemned the ‘excessive force’ used by Serbia, and called on ‘the authorities in Belgrade and the leadership of the Kosovar Albanian community urgently to enter into a meaningful dialogue on political status issues’.
Subsequent resolutions, also adopted under Chapter VII, made specific demands of both parties, with which they did not fully comply, and also warned of an impending humanitarian catastrophe.
Resolution 1199 of 23 September 1998 demanded that Yugoslavia ‘cease all action by the security forces affecting the civilian population and order the withdrawal of security units used for civilian repression’. The same resolution endorsed proposals of the Contact Group, and referred to possible ‘further action’ if measures demanded in the resolution were not taken. Resolution 1203 of 24 October 1998 demanded full implementation of a commitment ‘to complete negotiations for a political settlement by 2 November 1998’.
A Russian attempt on 26 March to get the Security Council to demand an immediate end to NATO’s air attacks was defeated by twelve votes to three, unintentionally giving a degree of legitimacy to the action that had begun two days earlier.
In the absence of explicit Security Council authorisation of the use of force, the possible legal basis for it has been discussed intermittently in various fora, including a thoughtful debate on Kosovo in Canada’s House of Commons on 7 October 1998. Various justifications made before and in the early days of the NATO campaign encompassed four inter-related elements.
Although there is no agreed doctrine in international law of humanitarian intervention, there can be cases in which military action with a humanitarian purpose is accepted by the international community. As Baroness Symons put it in a written answer to a question on the use of military force in connection with Kosovo in the House of Lords on 16 November 1998:
‘There is no general doctrine of humanitarian necessity in international law. Cases have nevertheless arisen (as in northern Iraq in 1991) when, in the light of all the circumstances, a limited use of force was justifiable in support of purposes laid down by the Security Council but without the Council’s express authorisation when that was the only means to avert an immediate and overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe. Such cases would in the nature of things be exceptional and would depend on an objective assessment of the factual circumstances at the time and on the terms of relevant decisions of the Security Council bearing on the situation in question.’ 4
The use of force in connection with Kosovo presents special problems. It is unconscionable to engage in military action against Serbia unless at the same time sufficient outside troops can offer real protection to the ethnic Albanian inhabitants of Kosovo, the victims of Serb wrath.
Although one aim of the use of force has been to secure Serb consent to the presence of outside personnel in Kosovo, this is hard to achieve when deep in the Serb soul is a fierce nationalism, and a hostility to capitulation.
Future Force
So what are we to make of the future use of force and sanctions? Both force in the form of bombing, and economic sanctions, present attempts to affect decisions in the receiving state with limited cost to the sender, and both can produce strong nationalist reactions.
The patchy record of sanctions, their adverse humanitarian consequences, and their tendency to lead on to uses of force, all suggest that they should be initiated only in exceptional cases.
Despite the existence both of international law about the circumstances in which force may be used, and of an international institution (the UN Security Council) a principal purpose of which is the making of decisions about international peace and security, ambiguity about the legitimacy of particular uses of force in connection with Security Council purposes has been a marked feature of recent crises. While in the three cases discussed there was no explicit Security Council authorisation of force, there has been some tacit acceptance. This is much less clear than exponents of black-letter law would like.
These cases of threat and use of military force raise the question of which body can authorise force in cases where the UN Security Council only wills the end, not the means. In these three crises it has been various Western governments and NATO.
Any decision by Western powers to act for the Security Council should be tempered by awareness that others might follow as self-appointed vigilantes of UN resolutions. There was an element of such an approach in some of the justifications of the use of force by certain Arab states in the October 1973 Middle East War.
Both the UN Security Council and the Western powers must learn from these crises to avoid the language of the ultimatum unless they are confident of their capacity to carry to a useful conclusion whatever military action they have threatened.
In some cases, including Iraq, there is a need to move from a policy heavily dependent on strategic coercion to one with a larger degree of reliance on deterrence – not to be equated with nuclear deterrence – and containment.
The fundamental question is not the legality, but rather the wisdom, of particular uses of force. Discussion of this issue in large and diverse multilateral fora is difficult, especially when events are fast-moving. The Western tendency to rely on air power alone suggests that the West shares the problem of the Security Council: it wills the end, but not always the means.
| UN Security Council sanctions and arms embargoes in the 1990s |
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| GENERAL ECONOMIC SANCTIONS |
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| MORE LIMITED SANCTIONS |
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Endnotes
Note 1: W.E. Gladstone, Political Speeches in Scotland, November and December 1879 (London: Ridgway, 1879), p. 53. Back.
Note 2: Lawrence Freedman (ed.), Strategic Coercion: Concepts and Cases (Oxford University Press, 1998). Back.
Note 3: John Moberly, ‘Deterrence: The Last Weapon’, The World Today, March 1999, pp.16-17. Back.
Note 4: Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, written answer to Lord Kennet, Hansard, 16 November 1998, col. WA 140. On UK Government thinking on legal authority for military action over Kosovo see also FCO memorandum of 22 January 1999 to House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the Committee’s examination of Mr Tony Lloyd on 26 January 1999. Back.