EnglishMeasure Five: Increase the Effectiveness of the United Nations Security Council
A fifth measure would be to strengthen the international body entrusted with the primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security: the UN Security Council.
Too often, the Security Council’s engagement is inadequate, selective, or after the fact. The tragedies of recent years in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Darfur are cases in point. In the case of Rwanda in mid-1994, the Security Council was unable to move much beyond hand wringing, with the result that 800 000 people lost their lives in the span of a few months. In the Second Congo War, the Security Council’s efforts in the interest of diplomacy and peacekeeping were not enough to prevent the deaths of an estimated 3.8 million people.
And whatever the lessons learned from these admitted failures, the more recent case of Darfur continues to suffer from the inability of the Security Council to muster sufficient peacekeeping troops and sufficient resources to prevent the continuing atrocities.
In specific cases of arms control, the Security Council’s efforts have not been very systematic or successful.
In the case of Iraq, the Council for over a decade imposed a series of blanket economic sanctions — which were manipulated to the advantage of the ruthless regime in power, and resulted in the death and suffering of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. The Council could not later agree, in 2003, on either the need for or the timing of the use of force in Iraq.
In the case of India and Pakistan, the Council in 1998 requested both countries to stop further nuclear testing and the development of their nuclear weapons programme. The resolution was not implemented by either country.
In 1981, Israel was also requested to submit all its nuclear facilities to IAEA safeguards. The resolution was not implemented.
The case of North Korea was reported to the Council first in 1993, and again in 2003, in connection with North Korea’s decision to withdraw from the NPT. While the Council in 1993 adopted a resolution asking North Korea to reconsider its decision to withdraw from the Treaty, it was not able to agree on how to respond to the North Korean decision to finally withdraw in 2003.
I should also note here that the Security Council has not engaged itself in the whole question of formulating a system for the "regulation of armaments", as mandated by Article 26 of the UN Charter. This is, admittedly, a complex assignment, given that the five permanent members of the Council are also the five nuclear-weapon States recognized by the NPT. But for the Council’s approach to be equitable — a key to its credibility — this mandate cannot continue to be ignored.
In sum, when dealing with threats of nuclear proliferation and arms control, the Security Council has too often fallen short. It has made little effort to address nuclear proliferation threats in context, by dealing with the ‘drivers’ of insecurity that give rise to proliferation. It has not responded or followed up effectively to the emergence of new countries with nuclear weapons. And it has not exercised its arms limitation mandate. It is clearly time for the Security Council to be reformed, expanded and strengthened, as part of the current efforts to reform and revitalize the United Nations.
Conclusion
The current challenges to international peace and security, including those related to nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear arms control, cannot be wished away.
The five measures I have outlined — tightening controls, protecting materials, supporting verification, reinvigorating disarmament and strengthening the Security Council — are all necessary and urgent steps. But to return to my opening theme, all of these measures affect each other, and all will fail to protect us if the root causes of insecurity are not addressed.
The longer we delay in placing sensitive nuclear operations under multinational control, the more new countries will seek to build such facilities. The longer we take to protect global stocks of nuclear and radioactive material, the higher the risk they will fall into terrorist hands. The longer effective verification authority is not universally in place, the more the potential for clandestine activity. As long as disarmament measures are not progressing meaningfully, efforts to strengthen nuclear non-proliferation will be poisoned by cynicism, and more countries will try to "join the major leagues". And the longer the Security Council is not acting systematically, equitably and effectively, as the guardian of international peace and security, the more its legitimacy will be undermined, and a sense of insecurity will continue to prevail.
In short, we will not succeed if we continue to treat the symptoms of insecurity and ignore or only pay lip service to the root causes. Asymmetry cannot remain the dominant characteristic in our approach to global security. The security concerns of all countries and regions must be acknowledged and addressed. The world has grown too small, and globalization has become a double-edged sword.
Will the reliance on nuclear weapons and the doctrine of "nuclear deterrence" continue to figure prominently in the security strategies of more and more nations? Or will more countries evolve towards a doctrine of "deterrence based on interdependence", similar to the one emerging in the European Union and Europe in general — the construction of relationships that contain threats and drive common interests so as to make the use of military force the least desirable and most costly option? It may not be an exaggeration to say that, ultimately, the international security landscape of the 21st Century will be shaped by how we choose to treat these two competing approaches.
The irony is that we know the problems, and we know the solutions. What is yet to come is the vision and leadership to overcome the hubris that threatens our mutual destruction, and to build a civilization rooted in the unity of the human family, the sanctity of all human life and the core values we all share — a civilization that is humane and just.
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