Legitimacy & efficiency inside the security council

Résumé du document

When the idea of a potential world organization first emerged in 1943, arbitration was soon to be made between maintaining effective power within the scope of a few powers, and the necessity to gain the support from small and medium States. The only possible answer to this dilemma was to initiate a process of legitimization, by which the most important nations, with their permanent seats and rights of veto, would acquire legitimacy coming from less influential States. Still, these countries opposed firmly, during Dumberton Oaks Conference, the idea of having some happy few retaining enormous powers. Indeed, never have an international organization had so much power as the Security Council of the United Nations: it we briefly take a glance at the legal documents, we will observe that the Charter grants the Council wide latitude to "determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression" (Art. 39) and the authority to require all kinds of supporting action from the member states when such an international threat, breach, or act has been found (Arts. 40, 41, 42, 36).

Extraits

[...] But what is noteworthy is that, despite its opposition to the resolution, Japan stated that it would abide by the Security Council's decision. This decision was not motivated by some obscure “allegiance” to the US: on the contrary, Japan as a good international citizen, aware of the Security Council's legitimacy and therefore complying its decisions. Evidently, public image and other national interests might also have fed the decision, but it is essentially an act of recognizing the UN's legitimacy just as the signatories to the Optional Protocol to the Statute of the International Court of Justice are making a similar commitment[9]. [...]

[...] And if all the P5 agree, it will be easy to find 4 more votes among the 10 non-permanent members. http://www.unausa.org/site/pp.asp?c=fvKRI8MPJpF&b=1813833 The 10 most important troop-contributors to the coalition as of 2004: the USA, the UK, Poland, Australia, South Korea, Italy, Georgia, Netherlands, Spain, Japan, Denmark. “There are many ways to form international coalitions, and the United Nations Security Council is but one of them” declared Ari Fleischer, President Bush's press secretary Although this paper is not a PIL essay, considering the remarkable following law study can only be of benefit to our reader: http://www.bc.edu/schools/law/lawreviews/meta- elements/journals/bciclr/26_1/07_TXT.htm http://www.un.org/secureworld/ The crash of the Rwandese President ignited the Rwandan genocide Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello was among the victims A more secure world: Our shared responsibility, p.18 Ibid, p.66 Ibid. [...]

[...] Still, when they realized that they will never succeed in moderating the appetites of the powerful, they backed the Charter with an extremely sincere and hopeful enthusiasm. Probably, this is the moment where the legitimacy of the Security Council came to life; at the exact moment where they renounced their own interests in this particular case, where they accepted to be second-class States in a system that was asserting sovereign equality between all countries, the commitment to a common idea of peace and security that would neither be subjected to fear nor tactical calculations was born. [...]

[...] Legitimacy & Efficiency inside the Security Council Introduction When the idea of a potential world organization first emerged in 1943, arbitration was soon to be made between maintaining effective power within the scope of a few powers, and the necessity to gain the support from small and medium States. The only possible answer to this dilemma was to initiate a process of legitimization, by which the most important nations, with their permanent seats and rights of veto, would acquire legitimacy coming from less influential States. [...]

[...] It is also an operational challenge: the challenge of stopping a Government from killing its own civilians requires considerable military deployment capacity[20] It proves the legitimacy the Security Council has to act, with its unique normative ability that calls for an expansion of its prerogatives. The report also pins down the obvious inequity in preventing risks and calls for a fairer system: 40. The credibility of any system of collective security also depends on how well it promotes security for all its members, without regard to the nature of would be beneficiaries, their location, resources or relationship to great Powers Too often, the United Nations and its Member States have discriminated in responding to threats to international security. [...]