SV - 2

Sovereignty and International Security: Challenges for the United Nations
Author(s): Samuel M. Makinda

Source: Global Governance , May–Aug. 1996, Vol. 2, No. 2 (May–Aug. 1996), pp. 149-168
Published by: Brill
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27800134
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Global Governance 2 (1996), 149-168
Sovereignty and
International Security:
Challenges for the United Nations
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150 Sovereignty and International Security
designed to facilitate institution building or institute a democratic process

after the breakdown of order? Is the UN capable of reacting to similar sit
uations consistently? And, would this suggest that the UN charter needs to
be amended to reflect these changes in international practice?
This article examines the way the UN has approached the notions of
state sovereignty and international security in the post-Cold War era. It
explains the changing nature of sovereignty, redefines security, analyzes
the main issues that have been raised by the UN's humanitarian interven
tion, and posits some options for future UN action.
The Nature of Sovereignty
Since the end of World War II, the concept of state sovereignty has been
understood on two levels?that is, as internal and external. Internal
sovereignty is predicated on the principle that each state is free to pursue
its internal affairs without outside interference. It essentially means that
the government of any state has supremacy over the people, resources, and
all other authorities within the territory it controls.5 Internal sovereignty
assumes not only the right but also the ability to exercise control, and this
is sometimes described as "empirical" sovereignty.6 External sovereignty,
on the other hand, is based on the notion that the territorial integrity of
every state is inviolate. It is generally considered to be "the legal identity
of the state in international law, an equality of status with all other states,
and the claim to be the sole official agent acting in international relations
on behalf of a society."7 External sovereignty, which has traditionally
given the government of a state independence from outside authorities, is
sometimes described as "juridical" sovereignty.8 Ultimately, the concept
of state sovereignty rests on two principles: internal control of the terri
tory, its people and resources; and equality of status internationally as well
as freedom to conduct foreign relations. However, like several issues in
international relations, external sovereignty is more about perception than
reality.
The principles that underpin state sovereignty date back to the 1648
Peace of Westphalia, which inaugurated what was considered a new "in
ternational" legal order for European states. The Westphalian international
legal regime is best remembered for codifying state sovereignty and mak
ing the territorial state the cornerstone of the modern international system.
There were cases in European history where state sovereignty was sub
verted or undermined with a view to maintaining the balance of power, but
it could be argued that for more than three hundred years, state sovereignty
came to be a respected concept, first in Europe and eventually globally.
However, Westphalian sovereignty was perceived to reside with political
leaders and governments, not with civil society, and occasionally the

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Samuel M. Makinda 151
defense of sovereignty provided an excuse for the imposition of dictatorial

rule. As one analyst has argued, for many years sovereignty was "an at
tribute of a powerful individual, whose legitimacy over territory . . . rested
on a purportedly direct or delegated divine or historic authority."9 This in
terpretation of state sovereignty, which was popularized by political
thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and Jean Bodin, runs counter to demo
cratic principles. Indeed, many dictatorial regimes in developing countries
in this century have continued to use Westphalian sovereignty, and espe
cially Article 2:7 of the UN Charter, as a means of avoiding international
scrutiny of their domestic human rights situations.
On the other hand, the ideas of John Locke, who redefined sovereignty
as popular sovereignty, were more in line with the principles of liberal
democracy. The concept of popular sovereignty, as distinct from West
phalian sovereignty, is predicated on democratic structures in society and
the respect for human rights. As the Commission on Global Governance
has observed: "Sovereignty ultimately derives from the people. It is a
power to be exercised by, for, and on behalf of the people of a state."10
The Commission on Global Governance has also argued that the exercise
of sovereignty must be linked to the will of the people, which basically
means that the political leaders must seek legitimacy through democratic
processes. In this sense, sovereignty would be respected only if the peo
ple of a state had opportunities to exercise their political, economic, and
cultural rights. As one analyst has observed, "Increasing numbers of peo
ple are willing to act on what must be an implicit belief that sovereignty
does not reside with an abstraction called the state, and certainly not with
self-appointed military or civilian dictatorships, but with the people of a
country themselves."11
The conclusions reached by the Commission on Global Governance
and recent comments by a growing body of analysts suggest that develop
ments in international norms and practice appear to be shifting the focus of
sovereignty from the government to the people of a state, from the West
phalian precepts to popular sovereignty. In the next section, I discuss
attempts to broaden also the concept of security to go beyond the West
phalian state-centered security and to include people-conscious or "human"
security.
Changing Perceptions of Security
For a long time, the notion of state sovereignty has also been closely as
sociated with the concept of national defense or security. For example, the
state-centered classical theory of international relations focuses on the
causes of war and the conditions for peace, order, and security. It posits
that the principal purpose of military forces is to ensure the survival of the

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state in an international system that is characterized by anarchy and that

puts a premium on self-help. This view presupposes the protection or
preservation of the state's territorial integrity and external sovereignty. In
fact, since the end of World War II, proponents of the classical tradition of
international relations have used the concept of national security to denote
the absence of a military threat, which generally means the protection of a
state from external military attack. For example, Helga Haftendorn has
defined international security, in part, as a concept "based on a mutual
interest in survival under conditions of nuclear deterrence and on recogni
tion that an adversary will be deterred from attacking out of its own self
interest."12 This definition, which represents the views of many strategic
analysts, is one-dimensional and tends to equate security with defense.
Barry Buzan subscribes to Haftendom's view of security in many re
spects, but he extends the definition and argues that owing to the com
plexity of this concept, one needs to be aware of at least three factors: the
political context of the term; the military, economic, societal, and envi
ronmental dimensions in which it operates; and "logical contradictions and
ambiguities . . . inherent in any attempt to apply the term to international
relations."13 Like Buzan, Edward Kolodziej argues for a "richer concep
tual, broader interdisciplinary, theoretically more inclusive . . . under
standing of security studies."14 Neither Buzan nor Kolodziej rejects the
military dimension of security: they merely add other aspects of security to
it. However, Sean Lynn-Jones, Andrew Mack, Pauline Kerr, and others
have rejected the broader definition of security because they feel it would
present "analytic" problems.15 To them, security, like military strategy,
refers to the development and employment of military force.
With a focus on Third World countries, Mohammed Ayoob has de
fined security in terms of the "vulnerabilities that threaten, or have the
potential, to bring down or significantly weaken state structures, both ter
ritorial and institutional, as well as the regimes that preside over these
structures and profess to represent them internationally."16 While Ayoob's
definition remains appropriate to many aspects of security in developing
countries, it revolves around state structures and the political elite. He ar
gues that his "emphasis on the primacy of the political realm . . . does not
mean that the political realm can or should be totally insulated from other
realms of human and social activity."17 However, his definition fails to ad
dress what some analysts have described as "human" security?that is, the
protection of individuals and their rights, especially from states. The report
of the Commission on Global Governance has provided a radically differ
ent concept of security that includes the protection of people from their
own states. It has suggested that "the security of people recognizes that
global security extends beyond the protection of borders, ruling elites, and
exclusive state interests to include the protection of people."18

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Indeed, the UN and its specialized agencies tend to include "human"

security in their definition of international peace and security. They often
define security to incorporate economic well-being, political stability,
democracy, development, social harmony, human rights, and basic needs
such as education, health, food, and housing. Article 1 of the 1946 unesco
constitution, for example, states that "the purpose of [Unesco] is to con
tribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among the nations
through education, science and culture in order to further universal respect
for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental
freedoms." This perception of security was based on the assumption that
"wars begin in the minds of people and that it is in these minds "that the
defenses of peace must be constructed."
According to the former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, the
concept of security, "as it appears in the [UN] charter, is as much about
the protection of individuals as it is about the defence of the territorial in
tegrity of states."19 Evans's argument is clearly exaggerated, and while the
UN charter refers to "peoples" in relation to self-determination in Articles
1:2 and 55, it does not specifically address the protection of individuals in
relation to breaches of international peace and security. The first-ever
heads of state Security Council summit in January 1992 pointed out that
"the non-military sources of instability in the economic, social, humani
tarian and ecological fields have become threats to peace and security."20
And in his paper An Agenda for Peace, UN Secretary-General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali argued that one of the UN's security roles in the post-Cold
War era was "to address the deepest causes of conflict: economic despair,
social injustice and political oppression."21
One theme that runs through many definitions of security is its pri
mary concern with the economic, political, cultural, and social stability of
the people and their societies. Indeed, it could be argued that even during
the Cold War, the East-West nuclear competition was driven by the inter
ests of the political leaderships on both sides to preserve their political,
economic, and social systems. Many Western Sovietologists believed that
the primary objective of the Soviet national security policy was to protect
the Soviet homeland and the gains of communism. Similarly, the United
States and Western leaders were primarily concerned with preserving their
political, economic, and social ways of life. In other words, security was
principally about the political, ideological, economic, and social stability
of the two antagonistic systems. Indeed, as U.S. deputy secretary of state
Strobe Talbott has argued, the Cold War was, inter alia, a conflict "be
tween competing concepts of how to organize the political and economic
lives of individual human beings."22 If security is therefore broadly de
fined, it should encompass military, political, cultural, and economic as
pects of society, and this can be ensured by military, diplomatic, or other

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means. Military capacity is an important means by which states and soci

eties can preserve or protect their institutions and values, but it is not an
end in itself: security is the end.
In this essay, security is defined as the preservation of a society's
principal values, norms, and institutions. At one end, this definition covers
the preservation of the states system and the values and norms that go with
it. At the other end, it includes both the protection of people from military
and nonmilitary threats and the guarantee of basic needs and fundamental
freedoms, including the freedom to choose an appropriate system of gov
ernance. A fundamental characteristic of security is that it is always the
political leadership (national or international) that determines whether or
not action should be taken to prevent a threat to, or a deterioration in, the
above-mentioned values.
While many of these issues fall within the domestic jurisdiction of in
dividual states, this definition is based on the knowledge that Westphalian
sovereignty is currently undergoing a reinterpretation and that the boundary
between domestic and foreign affairs is being eroded. As UN Secretary
General Boutros-Ghali has argued, "The time of absolute and exclusive
sovereignty . . . has passed."23 Similarly, former UN Secretary-General
Javier P?rez de Cu?llar argued in April 1991 that state sovereignty needs
to be reassessed in response to "the shift in public attitudes towards the
belief that the defence of the oppressed in the name of morality should
prevail over frontiers and legal documents."24 This is evidence that the
protection of state sovereignty offered by Article 2:7 of the UN Charter is
increasingly being questioned.25 This development also reflects a deeper
malaise in the international system?namely, the inability of some peoples
to identify with the modern state. This phenomenon, which the UN has not
addressed directly, has been described as the "crisis of the state."
In theory, the UN is regarded as the guardian of state sovereignty; but
it also has the responsibility of maintaining international peace and secu
rity.26 The imperative to maintain and promote international peace and se
curity could require the protection of people against authoritarian regimes,
and this could mean tinkering with Westphalian sovereignty. In situations
where a domestic conflict or the breakdown of a state has the potential to
destabilize neighboring states, the UN Security Council, which constitutes
a collective political leadership, can define the problem as constituting a
threat to international peace and security within the region, as was the case
in northern Iraq in 1991 and in Somalia in 1992. Indeed, the UN has faced
situations in which it has had to choose between the imperative of main
taining international security and the safeguarding of state sovereignty.
With the international community increasingly placing emphasis on mat
ters such as human rights and democratic reforms, which were previously
regarded as domestic issues, state sovereignty is likely to be diminished

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Samuel M. M?kinda 155
progressively. However, this interpretation of security by the UN will con

tinue to raise controversy.
Challenges to State Sovereignty
In the past few years, evidence of the erosion of both internal and exter
nal dimensions of state sovereignty has increased. While there is no supra
national institution that could take away the power of sovereign states,
many countries have been constrained to different degrees by international
organizations and regimes and by other factors within the international
system, such as the emergence of environmental and ecological problems
that transcend state boundaries, rapid improvements in the technology of
communication and transport, the fast growth in international institutions,
and increased interdependence. If interdependence is understood as a situ
ation whereby "changes or events in any single part of a system will pro
duce some reaction or have some significant consequence in other parts of
the system,"27 no sovereign state, whatever its political or ideological orien
tation, can successfully insulate itself against foreign influences in the mod
ern world. Interdependence has meant that the boundary between domestic
and foreign affairs is gradually being eroded. Global warming, for example,
is not exclusively the problem of one state or group of states; it is an interna
tional issue that has to be addressed collectively in the global arena.
The erosion of state sovereignty through interdependence and the
above factors can be termed the subliminal2* or creeping diminution of
state sovereignty, and it tends to affect all states, albeit differently. This
is a continuing phenomenon that predates the post-Cold War era.
However, factors that constrain state sovereignty can also reinforce it.
For example, while interdependence has resulted in the limiting of the
freedom of action of many states in both internal and external affairs, it
also has provided opportunities for government officials of different coun
tries to communicate and travel much more easily and to exercise their le
gitimate authority more effectively. Moreover, global environmental
agreements may constrain some states, but, to the extent that environmen
tal management remains the responsibility of states, these agreements also
reinforce state sovereignty.
There have also been what could be termed normative constraints on
state sovereignty. These have come about through the process of "global
ization," which to a large extent is a form of Westernization. This process
naturally affects non-Western societies more than Western ones. For ex
ample, in some cases globalization has come about through the imposition
of Western values, norms, and standards on many states, especially the de
veloping countries. The "global" values, which include important issues

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such as justice, liberal democracy, individual liberties, free markets, and

particular forms of environmental protection, are not values that have been
arrived at through reflection and consensus in the world community. They
are the norms, rules, and standards that have been promoted by the politi
cally, economically, and militarily more powerful Western countries.
These countries are also more accomplished in public relations.
As human rights have come to be recognized increasingly as interna
tional rather than exclusively domestic matters, many developing countries
have come to perceive most efforts to promote civil liberties as an affront
to their newly acquired Westphalian sovereignty. It was partly for this rea
son that some developing countries and China vigorously opposed the con
cept of the universalization of human rights at the UN-sponsored World
Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in June 1993, arguing that the
standardization of rights was a conspiracy by the West to impose its val
ues on non-Western societies. In the end, the Vienna Declaration achieved
a classic compromise by stating that "human rights are universal, indivis
ible and interdependent and interrelated," while also recognizing "the sig
nificance of national and regional particularities and various historical,
cultural and religious backgrounds."29 While the promotion of individual
liberties has become one of the most important "normative" issues through
which Westphalian sovereignty has been, and still could be, challenged,
it also serves to enhance popular sovereignty. For example, the erosion
of Saudi Arabia's state sovereignty through the promotion of human rights
could result in the reinforcement of popular sovereignty for the Saudi
people.
Since the 1940s, the UN General Assembly has passed several reso
lutions concerning human rights. Some of the binding human rights in
struments, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights,
have not been signed by all UN member states. Even where these human
rights treaties have been signed and ratified, they require domestic legisla
tion to be effective. One of the best-known human rights instruments is the
1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is not binding to
member countries. Article 21:3 of the Universal Declaration states that the
"will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this
will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be
by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by
equivalent free voting procedures." While the declaration recognized "pe
riodic and genuine elections" as a universal right, in the past few years the
word "genuine" has been used to describe elections with a wide range of
irregularities. As the cost of supervising and monitoring elections has in
creased, the "international community" has occasionally certified elections
as "genuine" in situations where some political groups experienced serious
disadvantages.

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Sam ue? M. Makinda 157
Another "normative" issue that could challenge Westphalian sovereignty

in developing countries is liberal democracy. The UN and Western coun
tries would like to see many developing countries introduce liberal demo
cratic systems. This is partly because the respect for civil and political
liberties in Western countries has given the impression that the ordinary
people in liberal democratic societies have a greater say in their gover
nance. Moreover, political legitimacy is increasingly being seen to be de
rived from popular support, and the respect for human rights is assumed to
be linked to liberal democracy?hence the efforts by Western governments
and international donor agencies to tie aid to African countries to political
reforms. It was perhaps for this reason that Thomas Franck argued that
democracy "is on the way to becoming a global entitlement, one that in
creasingly will be promoted and protected by collective international pro
cesses."30 While these tactics appear to diminish the state sovereignty of
the countries affected, they have enabled opposition groups in these coun
tries to organize themselves relatively more freely. Moreover, the Cambo
dian and Mozambican elections, in 1993 and 1994, respectively, illustrate
the extent to which political groups in these states had come to believe that
elections that were organized, conducted, and supervised by the UN were
the most vividly accepted expression of the popular sovereignty of these
countries.
Periodic elections, democratic rule, and the respect for human rights
are some of the most important expressions of popular sovereignty. The
belief that individuals have inalienable rights that should be observed and
protected by all governments is increasingly being accepted worldwide.
However, given the assumption that "human" security is partly anchored
on the respect for individual liberties and the attainment of basic needs,
how can the UN ensure the promotion of respect for human rights and
democracy? Should sovereignty be reinterpreted?
If sovereignty were universally reinterpreted as popular sovereignty,
the "international community" would have a basis for intervening in states
where human rights were violated by a military regime or an unelected
government. It would also have a basis for insisting on the holding of "free
and fair" elections, taking into account the historical and cultural charac
teristics of the states concerned. If elected governments violated human
rights, they would run the risk of being voted out at the next election. Al
though there has been no consensus on a reinterpretation of state
sovereignty as popular sovereignty, the UN authorized a Chapter VII in
tervention in Haiti in 1994. It is partly for this reason that Michael Bar
nett has argued that the UN's interpretation of state sovereignty has shifted
from juridical to empirical sovereignty.31
Such a shift and associated challenges to the traditional view of
sovereignty can be described as an interventionist diminution of state
sovereignty. For example, the intervention in northern Iraq by Western

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countries to protect the Kurds from dictatorial rule in 1991, the so-called
Operation Provide Comfort, could be described as a beginning of this pro
cess. The U.S. role in Haiti following the overthrow of President Jean
Bertrand Aristide in 1991 could be seen as another example. Using UN
Security Council Resolution 940 of July 1994, the United States, with
twenty-nine other states, intervened in Haiti in September 1994 and forced
out the Haitian military dictators. U.S. deputy secretary of state Strobe
Talbott described Resolution 940 as a watershed because "the UN gave the
defence of democracy standing as justification to use * al 1 necessary
means.'"32 Operation Uphold Democracy does not fit the description of a
humanitarian intervention, but the U.S. government sought to portray it as
one, and in defense of the action taken, President Bill Clinton said that al
though the Unites States was not "the world's policeman," it had "a re
sponsibility to respond when inhumanity offends" its values.33 This fits in
with what Barry Blechman has described as the "typical American urge to
export democratic and humanitarian values."34 While there was consider
able disquiet in some parts of the world about the U.S. action in Haiti
partly because it had the effect of eroding Westphalian sovereignty, oth
ers argued that such a UN-sanctioned intervention could have the effect of
strengthening rather than weakening popular sovereignty. The situation in
Haiti was quite different from that in northern Iraq in 1991, but they both
constituted outside intervention in internal matters of sovereign states.
The problem in Haiti, as in many African states, is that the type of
democratic institutions the UN and Western states seek to introduce are
foreign to a people who have not had the experience of living in a liberal
democracy. Without the necessary public education to enable the ordinary
people to understand their rights and responsibilities in a liberal democ
racy and to differentiate public goods from private ones, some of these ef
forts may not achieve their objectives. For example, in some African states
where multiparty systems have been established, the winners of elections
have adopted the mentality of "winner takes all," by which they more
often than not deny the opposition politicians the use of government facil
ities. This is not entirely surprising, because it is hard to see how a stable
democracy can exist if the structures through which the people express
their decisions are unintelligible to them.
These "unintelligible" values and institutions include the economic
concepts and political pluralist ideas that Western countries and multilat
eral institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), have been urging on developing states in the past decade. The
countries most seriously affected by IMF and World Bank measures are
those that have been unable to meet their external debt obligations, largely
(but not exclusively) because of ineptitude on the part of their political
leaders. In the eyes of the people of developing countries, some of these
Western measures represent not only an injection of new values into their

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societies but also a new form of control of the underdeveloped South by

the industrialized North. However, in cases where liberal democratic val
ues have been understood and accepted, local social movements, interest
groups, and other elements of civil society have served as a challenge to
the traditional concept of internal sovereignty.
Another issue that has challenged the territorial integrity of some
states, from the former Yugoslavia to the former Soviet Union and Africa,
is the notion of self-determination, which simply means that a "people"
determines its own future.35 This could be described as an assertive chal
lenge to Westphalian sovereignty. Self-determination arises from many
sources: the existence of colonial rule, the desire to establish a new state
or belong to another existing state, and the oppression of one ethnic or
religious group. As Kamal Shehadi has argued, self-determination has
the "ability to destroy some states and create others."36 This makes self
determination a serious challenge to state sovereignty, security, and the
territorial status quo, but by giving rise to another state, it can also rein
force state sovereignty. Shehadi also has observed that, since the end of
the Cold War, the "wave of ethnic claims to self-determination" has chal
lenged "the very foundations of the international order and the security of
the international system."37 This is largely because the international order
is based on a states system rather than a system of nation-states. And while
claims for self-determination, as group rights, have often been supported
by the international community, they by no means guarantee the rights of
minorities or individuals. In some situations, self-determination can result
in the suppression of individual liberties. It was partly for this reason that
Morton Halperin and David Scheffer have argued that some of the criteria
for recognizing the right of self-determination for any movement needed
to include the movement's respect for human rights, the degree of support
it enjoys, the potential for violence, and historical factors.38
In the majority of cases, demands for self-determination are based on
clearly stated political, economic, or cultural issues. Guyora Binder has ar
gued that it is important to recognize that the demands for self-determina
tion are consistent with the pursuit of both individual rights and collective
or group rights. In his own words: "Democracy depends upon group au
tonomy, while the autonomy of rights depend upon their democracy. These
two aspirations are not . . . separable components of the principle of self
determination, but inextricable skeins of a single fabric."39 Self-determi
nation, both as a legal right of peoples and as a political aspiration, is
supported by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and
the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.
The exercise of the right of self-determination, as well as its denial,
can lead to a deterioration in regional or international security, depending
on the prevailing conditions. For instance, the decision to grant the right of
self-determination to Bosnia-Herzegovina and deny the same right to the

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Bosnian Serbs is one of the main causes of the civil war in Bosnia
Herzegovina. The situation there suggests that decisions on matters of self
determination need to take account of their effects on state sovereignty,
the rights of minorities, and the stability of the international system. The
conflicting demands of self-determination and security are likely to create
a dilemma for policymakers. For instance, allowing each Somali clan to
exercise the right of self-determination would hamper rather than facilitate
peacemaking and peace building. For the UN, this means a delicate bal
ancing of the needs of self-determination against the requirements for in
ternational peace and security.
The UN Charter makes references to self-determination in Articles 1:2
and 55. While Article 1:2 states that one of the purposes of the UN is to
"develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the princi
ple of equal rights and self-determination of peoples," Article 55 refers to
"the creation of conditions of stability and well-being which are necessary
for peaceful and friendly relations among nations based on respect for the
principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples." For many
years, these sections of the UN Charter were interpreted as asserting the
right of existing states to determine their internal affairs free from outside
intervention. Given the changing norms regarding sovereignty, they could
now be reinterpreted to assert the right of a people to have control over
its own future. This is an area where no changes are needed in the UN
Charter to make it serve popular sovereignty and "human" security more
effectively.
The Changing Role of the United Nations
The UN can play a crucial role in the redefinition of security and sovereignty.
This is largely because it has the responsibility to both safeguard state
sovereignty and maintain international peace and security. In the past few
years, the way the UN Security Council has interpreted and executed its
responsibilities in relation to security and sovereignty has given the im
pression that these issues can be interpreted flexibly. The apparent shift in
the Security Council's position is due to several factors: the changes in the
international political climate after the Cold War, the growing crisis of
the state in developing countries, the rapid growth of globalization, and the
dominance of the United States and its Western allies in the Security
Council. Starting with the decisions in 1990 to evict Iraq from Kuwait, the
council's functions in the post-Cold War era have reflected one or a com
bination of these factors.40
It is generally acknowledged that the UN's ability to discharge its in
ternational security responsibilities is dependent on the national interests
of the five permanent members of the Security Council (China, France,

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Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), and this in itself can
be a help or a hindrance depending on how a particular UN operation is
perceived to affect these interests. In the post-Cold War era, the United
States and two of its allies, France and the United Kingdom, have domi
nated the Security Council and drafted most of its resolutions. This has
meant not only that these three states exercise considerable power, but also
that their national interests have sometimes come to be described as the
"will of the international community." These three powers quite often
determine the direction of the Security Council, and once the council has
defined a situation as constituting a threat to international peace and secu
rity, it can apply Chapter VII of the charter and authorize intervention,
even if it means intervening in the domestic affairs of member states.
But, can the council be relied on to enforce "human" security consis
tently? As long as council members continue to formulate or support res
olutions on the basis of their national interests, they cannot be relied on to
act with consistency. Indeed, as Adam Roberts has argued, UN efforts in
international security are often "a coexistence of unilateral, alliance-based
and UN-based uses of force."41 There is no doubt that, to a large extent,
the Security Council's performance on issues pertaining to international
security will continue to be determined by the national interests of its
dominant members.
In the early 1990s, the council authorized humanitarian interventions
in northern Iraq, Somalia, and Haiti. The problems in some of these situa
tions stemmed from the above-mentioned "crisis of the state," but apart
from Somalia, these interventions appear to have been determined more
by the national interests of the great powers than by global values. Each of
these cases represents a different situation, but there are two important rea
sons for examining them. First, they illustrate a readiness by the Security
Council to define nonmilitary problems as constituting a threat to inter
national peace and security. Second, they reveal the lack of consistency
in the Security Council's post-Cold War attempts to reinterpret state
sovereignty. Thus, the council has been consistent on the redefinition of
security but inconsistent on the reinterpretation of state sovereignty.
In Haiti, for example, the military regime was in effective control of
the territory, and there was no starvation or civil war. The UN's goal was
to remove the military regime, headed by Lt. Gen. Raoul C?dras, and to re
install an elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been toppled in
a military coup three years earlier. The UN claimed it authorized inter
vention in order to reestablish democracy, but Haiti has had no history of
democratic rule. The wording of Security Council Resolution 940, which
authorized the Haiti operation, is very similar to Resolution 678, which au
thorized the eviction of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1990. Strobe Talbott
has argued that the UN intervention in Haiti established the fact that "the
international community can take action not just when regimes attack their

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neighbours, but when they savage their own people as well," and that the
world is in the process of redefining geopolitics.42 However, the fact that
the UN did not intervene in Myanmar (Burma) or other military-ruled
states would tend to weaken the claim that lack of democracy was the
overriding concern.
In Somalia, the crisis of the state was most acute, state institutions had
collapsed, the entire population was faced with starvation, and interna
tional humanitarian agencies had found it impossible to deliver relief sup
plies without some military involvement. Unlike Haiti or Iraq in 1990, the
UN had no particular regime or leader to confront. Resorting to Chapter
VII, the Security Council passed Resolution 794 of December 1992 and
Resolution 814 of March 1993 authorizing interventions, having defined
the breakdown in law and order as constituting a threat to international
peace and security.43 The situation in Somalia was special in the sense that
law and order had completely broken down, the civil war had led to thou
sands of deaths, all state institutions had been destroyed, and there was no
functioning government. In fact, Somalia had lost its sovereignty. The UN
had initially sent in a peacekeeping force in mid-1992, but it was rejected
by some Somali faction leaders. It was for this reason that the Security
Council approved a peace enforcement operation with the mandate to use
all necessary means to create a secure environment for the delivery of hu
manitarian assistance and the rebuilding of state institutions. While the UN
operation in Somalia can be described as intervention in domestic matters,
it can also be seen as an attempt to help Somalia consolidate its empirical
and popular sovereignty.
Prior to the Somali situation, the Security Council had, through Reso
lution 688 of April 1991, condemned human rights abuses in the Kurdish
populated areas of northern Iraq and suggested that the consequences of
Iraq's actions would "threaten international peace and security" in the re
gion. Although Resolution 688 contained no provision requiring an en
forcement action under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the United King
dom, United States, France, the Netherlands, and other countries deployed
ground and air forces in northern Iraq with a view to creating "safe
havens" for the Kurdish refugees. In 1992, the United Kingdom, the
United States, France, and other nations imposed the "no-fly" zone in
southern Iraq in efforts to meet what they described as the "severe hu
manitarian need" of protecting Shiite Arabs in the region. Although UN
Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali tried to justify Western actions in south
ern Iraq by suggesting that they were authorized by the UN in response to
Iraq's violation of the Kuwait cease-fire resolution, some of the partici
pants in the enforcement of the no-fly zone saw their actions differently 44
Unlike Haiti and Somalia, the interventions in northern Iraq were designed
to prevent the Iraqi regime from exercising control over part of its terri
tory. These interventions constituted a violation of Iraq's sovereignty as

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traditionally conceived, but it could be argued that they also served to

advance "human" security and had the potential to enhance popular
sovereignty.
If the Security Council had been motivated by humanitarian concerns
to intervene in Haiti, northern Iraq, and Somalia, why did it not intervene
in southern Sudan? In Sudan, the conflict between the Muslim north and
the non-Muslim south is widely known and has become extremely severe
in the 1990s. Indeed, the magnitude of the humanitarian tragedy in south
ern Sudan is much greater than that in northern Iraq in 1991, and for sev
eral years humanitarian agencies and the Western press have publicized it.
It was partly for this reason that the UN and international relief agencies
launched an emergency assistance program called Operation Lifeline in
1989. Given the fact that the Sudanese civil war has the potential to cause
regional instability, especially in Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda, the
UN or the international community would have good reasons to intervene
militarily.
Thus, the intervention in northern Iraq appears to have been deter
mined not only by the scale of the humanitarian tragedy but also by the na
tional interests of some Security Council members. The Western powers'
desire to constrain Saddam Hussein's power since his forces invaded
Kuwait in August 1990 has been obvious, and this motivation was also be
hind the intervention in northern and southern Iraq. While it is difficult to
see a direct security interest of the great powers in Somalia, several factors
in combination appear to have been behind it: the UN secretary-general's
long-standing interest in the region, a possible rivalry between the United
States and the UN concerning who should take the credit for maintaining
order in the post-Cold War world, and what some analysts have described
as the "CNN effect." On the other hand, Haiti's proximity to the United
States and the fear that its problems would affect its neighbors, especially
the flight of refugees to the United States, appears to have been the over
riding motive behind that intervention. While these interventions might
have been contrary to the Westphalian concept of sovereignty, they had
the potential to reinforce or "rescue" popular sovereignty.
Prior to these interventions, the traditional approach to such issues,
based on the twin principles of territorial integrity and nonintervention,
was that humanitarian aid could be delivered to the people of a state only
with the consent of the government of that state. Although the UN and
Western powers appear to have been asserting a right of humanitarian in
tervention in Haiti, Somalia, and northern Iraq, in the first two cases they
resorted to the enforcement powers vested in Chapter VII of the UN Char
ter, thus avoiding the prohibition in Article 2:7. This could mean that there
is a growing recognition that human rights, state sovereignty, and interna
tional security need to be reassessed in the post-Cold War era, and it
would therefore be appropriate for sections of the UN Charter to be amended

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to reflect these changes in perception. In one of its highly controversial

recommendations in early 1995, the report of the Commission on Global
Governance suggested: 'The Charter of the United Nations should be re
vised to allow the Security Council to authorize action in situations within
countries, but only if the security of people is so severely violated as to
require an international response on humanitarian grounds."45
Prospects for Sovereignty and Security
Sovereignty and security are likely to be two of the most important fea
tures defining the evolution of the international system in the coming
years. However, there is as yet no strong sign that the uncertainty sur
rounding these issues, and the UN's role in relation to them, is about to be
cleared. The UN interventions in Haiti, northern Iraq, and Somalia are
proof that the Security Council can take action in difficult circumstances if
its dominant members are determined to do so, but these cases are not use
ful illustrations of the council's readiness to redefine state sovereignty.
This is largely because several other factors appear to have been behind
the decisions to intervene, and in two of them, Chapter VII was invoked.
Given the rapid changes in the world political climate, the deepening
economic problems and the growing crisis of the state in some developing
countries, what options does the UN have? The UN has at least three op
tions: it can use recent cases of intervention to design long-term peace
making and peace-building strategies, it can provide a framework for re
defining sovereignty and security independent of the recent cases, or it can
leave the Security Council to continue to reinterpret them in an ad hoc and
inconsistent manner as has been the case in the early 1990s. Each of these
options has costs as well as benefits.
The message that the interventions in Haiti, northern Iraq, and Soma
lia have conveyed is that the UN is probably ready to implement a broader
concept of security that, among other things, includes economic develop
ment, societal institutions, and good governance. They also indicate that
the UN has recognized that respect for state sovereignty ought to be bal
anced against other issues, such as the provision of basic needs, respect for
fundamental freedoms, and, where necessary, a guarantee of minority
rights. However, these cases differ markedly from each other. For exam
ple, the situation in Somalia was very different from that in Haiti and in
northern Iraq, and because of this, there does not appear to be a consen
sus within the UN on using them to design long-term peace-building and
peacemaking strategies. There is, indeed, a fear that recognizing a right of
humanitarian intervention is likely to be abused by great powers seeking to
promote their national interests, in which case the cure might turn out to
be more unpleasant than the illness.

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The second option concerns the imperative to provide a framework

through which to reinterpret sovereignty and, if necessary, amend the UN
Charter to reflect the apparent changes in norms and practice. The basic
question to address would be, under what circumstances should the UN or
the international community intervene in the domestic affairs of member
states? And how universally applicable is this practice likely to be? These
questions are likely to raise controversies between the North and the South
for completely different reasons. One issue that might prove difficult to
resolve is how popular sovereignty would be assessed. There are no clear
answers to any of these questions.
Many states recognize the inevitable diminution of their sovereignty
as a result of globalization and other international developments, but they
would still resist attempts by the UN or other powerful international play
ers to interfere in what they view as their internal affairs. However, the
fact that most conflicts now take place within rather than between states
means that the UN can only postpone, but not completely avoid, consider
ing a reinterpretation of state sovereignty. This reinterpretation would be
easier if the definition of security that stresses social, political, economic,
and cultural aspects was widely accepted. Such a broad concept of security
would incorporate institution building, demands for self-determination,
and the effect of poverty and economic stagnation on regional and inter
national stability; it would merely reflect what the Security Council heads
of state endorsed in January 1992. In the past, Western policymakers have
been quite reluctant to accept a broader notion of security that would cover
these matters. While the Security Council heads of state summit in 1992
offered a broader definition of security, it is doubtful that the United States
and its allies would like to employ it in planning future action. The expe
riences in Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda have compelled some Western
policymakers to rethink the wisdom of defining security in nonmilitary
terms. However, a reinterpretation of state sovereignty and security would
have the potential of strengthening civil society and popular sovereignty.
The option of leaving the situation as it is might be attractive to many
states. Those states that are comfortable with the status quo would not like
to see major changes in international norms. There are other states that are
not comfortable with the status quo, but they might oppose these changes
because they believe they are likely to make matters worse. However,
without changes, uncertainty in the international system would remain, and
in the medium and long term, this would mean ad hoc and inconsistent ap
plications of these concepts, which could, in turn, create a crisis of credi
bility for the UN. A UN with a severe crisis of credibility is not likely to
be very effective in carrying out its responsibilities.
Will sovereignty and security then remain unchanged? While a grow
ing number of policymakers and analysts have been calling for a reinter
pretation of state sovereignty and international security, uncertainty in the

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post-Cold War international system, past practice, and political impera

tives in both the industrialized and developing worlds suggest that there
will be no formal redefinition of these concepts. However, subliminal and
normative factors will continue to erode Westphalian sovereignty. ?
Notes
Samuel M. Makinda is a senior lecturer in international politics at Murdoch Uni

versity in Australia and a contributing editor for the Current Affairs Bulletin. His
most recent publications include Seeking Peace from Chaos: Humanitarian Inter
vention in Somalia (1993) and Security in the Horn of Africa (1992).
The author wishes to acknowledge constructive comments on an earlier draft
of this essay from Paul Diehl, Ramesh Thakur, Thomas G. Weiss, Stephanie Copus
Campbell, Ann Kent, Robert O'Neill, Adam Roberts, and two anonymous reviewers.
1. For a useful discussion of the principles governing the traditional peace
keeping operations, see F. T. Liu, United Nations Peacekeeping and the Non-Use of
Force (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1992), p. 11; N. D. White, Keeping the Peace: The
United Nations and the Maintenance of International Peace and Security (Man
chester, England: Manchester University Press, 1993), especially Chaps. 7 and 8.
2. See Our Global Neighbourhood, The Report of the Commission on Global
Governance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 71.
3. Thomas G. Weiss and Jarat Chopra, "Sovereignty Under Siege: From Inter
vention to Humanitarian Space,".in Gene M. Lyons and Michael Mastanduno, eds.,
Beyond Westphalia? State Sovereignty and International Intervention (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), pp. 87-114; Barry M. Blechman, "The In
tervention Dilemma," Washington Quarterly 18, no. 3 (summer 1995): 63-73.
4. For a useful discussion of some of the problems associated with failed
states, see Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament (Boulder:
Lynne Rienner, 1995), pp. 171-173.
5. See Ramesh Thakur, The Government and Politics of India (London:
Macmillan, 1995), p. 347; Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (London: Macmil
lan, 1977), p. 8; Bruce Russett and Harvey Starr, World Politics: The Menu for
Choice (New York: Freeman, 1989), p. 58.
6. Michael Barnett, "The New United Nations Politics of Peace: From Ju
ridical Sovereignty to Empirical Sovereignty," Global Governance 1, no. 1 (winter
1995): 79-96.
7. Thakur, The Government and Politics of India, p. 347. See also Bull, The
Anarchical Society, p. 8; Russett and Starr, World Politics, p. 62.
8. Barnett, "The New United Nations Politics of Peace," pp. 79-96.
9. W. Michael Reisman, "Sovereignty and Human Rights in Contemporary
International Law," American Journal of International Law 84, no. 4 (October
1990) : 867.
10. Our Global Neighbourhood, p. 69.
11. Blechman, "The Intervention Dilemma," p. 64.
12. Helga Haftendorn, "The Security Puzzle: Theory-Building and Discipline
Building in International Security," International Studies Quarterly 35, no. 1
(March 1991): 3-17.
13. Barry Buzan, "Is International Security Possible?" in Ken Booth, ed., New
Thinking About Strategy and International Security (London: HarperCollins,
1991) , p. 33.

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Samuel M. Malanda 167
14. Edward A. Kolodziej, "Renaissance in Security Studies? Caveat Lector!"

International Studies Quarterly 36, no. 4 (December 1992): 421.
15. See Sean Lynn-Jones, "The Future of International Security Studies," in
Desmond Ball and David Horner, eds., Strategic Studies in a Changing World
(Canberra: Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University,
1992); Andrew Mack and Pauline Kerr, Security Studies in Australia in the 1990s,
Working Paper 1994/2, Department of International Relations, Australian National
University.
16. Mohammed Ayoob, "The Security Problematic of the Third World,"
World Politics 43, no. 2 (January 1991): 259.
17. Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament, p. 8.
18. See Our Global Neighbourhood, p. 81.
19. Gareth Evans, "Cooperative Security and Intrastate Conflict," Foreign
Policy 96 (autumn 1994): 9.
20. "Note by the President of the Security Council," UN Doc. No. S/23500, 31
January 1992, p. 3.
21. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace (New York: United Nations,
1992), par. 15.
22. Strobe Talbott, "The New Geopolitics: Defending Democracy in the
Post-Cold War Era," The World Today 51, no. 1 (January 1995): 7.
23. Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace, p. 5.
24. UN press release, SG/SM/4560, 24 April 1991.
25. For a good discussion of this part of the UN Charter, see A. Williams, J.
Alvarez, R. Gordon, and W. A. Knight, "Article 2:7 Revisited," acuns Reports and
Papers no. 5, 1994.
26. For a useful discussion of these UN responsibilities, see White, Keeping
the Peace. For concise analyses of the UN in the post-Cold War era, see, for ex
ample, Ramesh Thakur, "The United Nations in a Changing World," Security Di
alogue 24, no. 1 (March 1993): 7-20; Adam Roberts, "The United Nations and In
ternational Security," Survival 35, no. 2 (summer 1993): 3-30.
27. Russett and Starr, World Politics, p. 485.
28. The term subliminal was originally coined in psychological research in
vestigating the point at which individuals could or could not perceive a stimulus.
In the context of this article, it is used to refer to external forces that gradually di
minish state sovereignty without overtly challenging the authority of the govern
ments or leaders.
29. UN General Assembly, "Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action,"
A/CONF. 157/23, p. 5.
30. See Thomas M. Franck, "The Emerging Right to Democratic Gover
nance," American Journal of International Law 86, no. 1 (January 1992): 46.
31. Barnett, "The New United Nations Politics of Peace," pp. 83-95.
32. Talbott, "The New Geopolitics," p. 9.
33. Reported in the Weekend Australian (Sydney), 17-18 September 1994, p. 15.
34. Blechman, "The Intervention Dilemma," p. 63.
35. Kamal S. Shehadi, Ethnic Self-Determination and the Break-up of States,
Adelphi Paper no. 283 (London: Brassey's for the International Institute for Strate
gic Studies, 1993), p. 4.
36. Ibid., p. 3.
37. Ibid., p. 8.
38. Morton H. Halperin and David J. Scheffer, with Patricia L. Small, Self
Determination in the New World Order (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, 1992), pp. 76-80.

86.49.247.161 on Tue, 28 Sep 2021 03:45:35 UTC
39. Guyora Binder, "The Case for Self-Determination: The Kaplan Lecture on
Human Rights," Stanford Journal of International Law 29, no. 2 (summer 1993):
250.
40. For a useful discussion of how the post-Cold War UN operations relate,
or fail to relate, to each other, see Thomas G. Weiss, David P. Forsythe, and Roger
A. Coate, The United Nations and Changing World Politics (Boulder: Westview,
1994), especially pp. 60-81.
4L See Roberts, "The United Nations and International Security," pp. 27-28.
42. Talbott, "The New Geopolitics," p. 9.
43. For a detailed analysis of the Somali situation, see Samuel M. Makinda,
Seeking Peace from Chaos: Humanitarian Intervention in Somalia (Boulder and
London: Lynne Rienner, 1993).
44. See, for instance, Christopher Greenwood, "Is There a Right of Humani
tarian Intervention?" The World Today 49, no. 2 (February 1993): 34-40.
45. Our Global Neighbourhood, p. 132.

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Sovereignty and International Security: Challenges for the United Nations

Author(s): Samuel M. Makinda

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27800134

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designed to facilitate institution building or institute a democratic process

The Nature of Sovereignty

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defense of sovereignty provided an excuse for the imposition of dictatorial

Changing Perceptions of Security

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state in an international system that is characterized by anarchy and that

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Indeed, the UN and its specialized agencies tend to include "human"

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means. Military capacity is an important means by which states and soci

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progressively. However, this interpretation of security by the UN will con

Challenges to State Sovereignty

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such as justice, liberal democracy, individual liberties, free markets, and

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Another "normative" issue that could challenge Westphalian sovereignty

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societies but also a new form of control of the underdeveloped South by

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The Changing Role of the United Nations

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traditionally conceived, but it could be argued that they also served to

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to reflect these changes in perception. In one of its highly controversial

Prospects for Sovereignty and Security

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The second option concerns the imperative to provide a framework

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post-Cold War international system, past practice, and political impera

Samuel M. Makinda is a senior lecturer in international politics at Murdoch Uni

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14. Edward A. Kolodziej, "Renaissance in Security Studies? Caveat Lector!"

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