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Security, Solidarity, and Sovereignty: The Grand Themes of UN Reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2017

Anne-Marie Slaughter
Anne-Marie Slaughter*
Affiliation:
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
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American Journal of International Law , Volume 99 , Issue 3 , July 2005 , pp. 619 - 631
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Copyright © American Society of International Law 2005

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References

1 A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, UN Doc. A/59/565, at 8 (2004), available at <http://www.un.org/secureworld/report.pdf> [hereinafter Panel Report].

2 In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All, Report of the Secretary-General, UN Doc. A/59/2005 & annex (2005), available at http://www.un.org/largerfreedom/contents.htm [hereinafter Report of the Secretary-General].

3 The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (2001), available at <http://www.iciss.ca/report-en.asp> [hereinafter iciss Report]. The ICISS began from the premise that “[i]n key respects... the mandates and capacity of international institutions have not kept pace with international needs or modern expectations.” Id. at 3, para. 1.11. More specifically, the ICISS argued that the intense debate over military protection for humanitarian purposes flowed from a “critical gap” between the immense and unavoidable reality of mass human suffering and the existing rules and mechanisms for managing world order. At the same time, it noted a widening gap between the rules and the principles of the Charter regarding noninterference in the domestic affairs of member nations and actual state practice as it has evolved since 1945. It frames the “responsibility to protect” as an “emerging principle” of customary international law—not yet existing as law but already supported by both state practice and a wide variety of legal sources. Id. at 15–16, paras. 2.24–2.27.

4 Panel Report, supra note 1, Synopsis, at 11.

5 UN Charter pmbl.

6 Panel Report, supra note 1, at 23, & pt. 2 passim.

7 Id. at 49, para. 164 (emphasis omitted).

8 Kofi Annan, Speech to the General Assembly, UN Doc. A/58/PV.7, at 3–4 (Sept, 23, 2003).

9 Panel Report, supra note 1, at 57, para. 203.

10 Id.

11 Id. at 57, para. 202.

12 This language comes from the Report of the Secretary-General, supra note 2, annex, at 58, para. 6(h).

13 Id., annex, at 55, para. 2.

14 Id., annex, at 58, para. 6(h).

15 Id. at 41, para. 161.

16 U.S. Institute of Peace, American Interests and UN Reform: Report of the Task Force on the United Nations (June 2005), available at <http://www.usip.org/un/report>. (The present author served on the task force that produced this report.)

17 The title of part I of the high-level panel report is “Towards a New Security Consensus.”

18 Panel Report, supra note 1, at 21, para. 28.

19 Id., Synopsis, at 11.

20 Id.

21 Id. “Human security” first entered our official lexicon in the early 1990s and found an early champion in the Canadian government, particularly Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy. See, e.g., Axworthy, Lloyd, Canada and Human Security: The Need for leadership, 52 Int’l J. 183 (1997)Google Scholar. Kofi Annan then embraced the concept in his millennial “We the Peoples” report, where he spoke of the need for a more human-centered approach to security. “Once synonymous with the defence of territory from external attack, the requirements of security today have come to embrace the protection of communities and individuals from internal violence.” Annan, Kofi A., ‘We the Peoples’: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century 43, UN Sales No. 00.1.16 (2000), available at <http://www.un.org/millennium/sg/report/full.htm>Google Scholar.

22 Panel Report, supra note 1, Synopsis, at 11.

23 Indeed, as I will discuss below, the panel actually sees human security as a higher goal than state security.

24 Panel Report, supra note 1, at 22, para. 30.

25 Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2005: Trends and Facts—Containing Infectious Disease (Jan. 2005), available at <http://www.worldwatch.0rg/features/security/tf/4>.

26 Panel Report, supra note 1, at 19, para. 17.

27 Id. at 21, para. 24.

28 Anne-Marie, Slaughter, Sovereignty and Power in a Networked World Order, 40 Stan. J. Int’l L. 283, 284 (2004)Google Scholar.

29 Keohane, Robert O., Sovereignty, Interdependence, and International Institutions, in Ideas & Ideals: Essays on Politics in Honor of Stanley Hoffmann 91, 92 (Miller, Linda B. & Michael, Joseph Smith eds., 1993)Google Scholar.

30 For examples of Security Council action with respect to East Timor, see SC Res. 1272 (Oct. 22, 1999), 39 ILM 240 (2000); SC Res. 1319 (Sept. 8, 2000); SC Res. 1338 (Jan. 31, 2001); SC Res. 1392 (Jan. 31, 2002); SC Res. 1410 (May 17, 2002), 41 ILM 1011 (2002). For examples relating to Somalia, see SC Res. 794 (Dec. 3, 1992) (welcoming the U.S. offer to help create a secure environment for the delivery of humanitarian aid in Somalia and authorizing, under Chapter VII of the Charter, the use of “all necessary means” to do so).

31 The growing number of international criminal tribunals is testament to that. See, e.g., Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, July 17, 1998, 2187 UNTS 3, corrected through jan. 16, 2002, at <http://www.icc-cpi.int>. Today, for example, Slobodan Milošević is being prosecuted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and former Liberian president Charles Taylor is under indictment by the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Bass, Gary, Milošević in The Hague, Foreign Aff., May/June 2003, at 82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Prosecutor v. Taylor, Indictment, No. SCSL–03–01 (Mar. 3, 2003), available at <http://www.sc-sl.org>.

32 For a discussion of this so-called boomerang effect, see Keck, Margaret & Sikkjnk, Kathryn, Activists Beyond Borders 12–13 (1998)Google Scholar.

33 See, e.g., Fukuyama, Francis, State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21 St century 96 (2004)Google Scholar (noting that “the problems that weak states generate for themselves and for others vastly increase the likelihood that someone else in the international system will seek to intervene in their affairs against their wishes to forcibly fix the problem”).

34 Article 10 of the League Covenant declares, in part: “The Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League.”

35 Article 2(7) of the UN Charter reads:

Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII.

36 Annan, supra note 8, at 3–4.

37 Panel Report, supra note 1, at 55, para. 194.

38 Id.

39 Id. at 55, paras. 190, 192 (emphasis omitted).

40 Id. at 57, para. 205.

41 Id., para. 207.

42 Independent International Commission on Kosovo, The Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned 4 (2000), available at <http://www.relielweb.int/library/documents/tliekosovoreport.htm>>Google Scholar.

43 SC Res. 1244 (June 10, 1999), 38 ILM 1451 (1999).

44 See, e.g., Popovski, Vesselin, From ‘Responsibility to Protect’ to ‘Protect the Responsibility’ (Dec. 19, 2004)Google Scholar (unpublished manuscript, on file with author)

45 Panel Report, supra note 1, at 21, para. 29.

46 Id. at 22.

47 Id. at 21–22.

48 Annan, Kofi A., Two Concepts of Sovereignty , Economist, Sept. 18, 1999, available in Lexis, News Library, Individual Publications File, available at <http://www.un.org/News/ossg/sg/stories/kaecon.html>Google Scholar.

49 Gareth Evans subsequently also served as a member of the secretary-general’s high-level panel.

50 iciss Report, supra note 3.

51 Id. at 13, para. 2.11.

52 Id., para. 2.14.

53 Id.

54 Id. (emphasis omitted).

55 Panel Report, supra note 1, at 22, para. 30.

56 The high-level panel addresses this point somewhat indirectly, noting that when a state fails in its responsibilities to its own people or to the international community, “some portion of those responsibilities should be taken up by the international community, acting in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to help build the necessary capacity or supply the necessary protection, as the case may be.” Id., para. 29.

57 Espen, Barth Eide, Introduction: The Role of the EU in Fostering ‘Effective Multilateralism,’ in ‘Effective Multilateralism’: Europe, Regional Security and a Revitalised UN 1, 9 (Global Europe Report No. 1, Espen, Barth Eide ed., 2004)Google Scholar.

58 Cooper, Robert, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century (2004)Google Scholar.

59 Raustiala, Kal, Rethinking the Sovereignty Debate in International Economic Law, 6 J. Int’l Econ. L. 841, 860 (2003)Google Scholar.

60 Id. at 852.

61 Id. at 843.

62 Chayes, Abram & Antonia, Handler Chayes, The New Sovereignty: Compliance with International Regulatory Agreements 4 (1995)Google Scholar.

63 Id. at 26. Similarly, Wolfgang Reinicke has emphasized the extent to which globalization, unlike interdependence, penetrates the deep structure and strategic behavior of corporations and other actors in the international system. See generally Reinicke, Wolfgang H., Global Public Policy, Foreign Aff., Nov./Dec. 1997, at 127 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 This is what Raustiala calls a “sovereignty-strengthening” theory. Raustiala, supra note 59, at 843.

65 See text of Article 2(7) supra note 35.

66 The quoted language is from John Ikenberry, G., Why Bush Grand Strategy Fails (May 15, 2005)Google Scholar (unpublished manuscript, on file with author). Ikenberry has used the term “Westphalian flip” and spelled out the basic argument in John Ikenberry, G., The Liberal Leviathan, Prospect, Oct. 2004, at 46–51 Google Scholar.

67 This strategy would emulate U.S. foreign policy following World War II, when, as John Ikenberry has argued, die United States set limits to its power to create and preserve a stable international system, from which it benefited greatly. John Ikenberry, G., After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars (2001)Google Scholar. Ikenberry argues:

Leading postwar states might ideally want to tie other states down to fixed and predictable policy orientations and leave themselves institutionally unencumbered. But in seeking the institutional commitment of less powerful states—locking them into the postwar order—the leading state has to offer them something in return: some measure of credible and institutionalized restraint on its own exercise of power. The type of order that emerges after great wars hinges on the ability of states to restrain power institutionally and bind themselves to long-term commitments.

Id., Preface, at xi, xi.

68 Panel Report, supra note 1, at 22, para. 30.

69 Id.

70 Id.