Title: A Crisis of Legitimacy for the UN Collective Security System?
Abstract: The role of the UN and the legitimacy of its collective security system have been seriously challenged in recent years. First, because of the Security Council.s failure to act in cases of genocide or other humanitarian disaster. There has been much criticism of the limited and delayed response of the Security Council to events in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda, somewhat unfairly in so far as it was the lack of political will on the part of the Member States rather than any institutional failure that was responsible for the failure to act. Secondly, the UN's central role in collective security has been undermined by unilateral use of force by States. After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 the UN was sidelined with regard to the forcible response against Afghanistan: in Operation Enduring Freedom the USA preferred not to act through the UN or even through NATO. Subsequently, the US National Security Strategy (September 2002) famously made no mention of the UN as a means of addressing perceived new threats from global terrorists. Most seriously, the US Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 was undertaken unilaterally, that is, without express Security Council authorization. 1 This was often portrayed as a crisis of legitimacy for the UN as much as for the USA and the States which participated in the invasion. As the Deputy Secretary-General put it recently:
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 18
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