intervention had been impermissible during the Cold War as human rights were considered to be within the domestic jurisdiction of each state and beyond the purview of the UNSC. In the 1970s, the Security Council did not address internal situations of mass killing but instead criticized UN members that intervened militarily to halt the bloodshed in neighboring states, despite positive humanitarian motives or effects.5 For example, in 1979 when Vietnam intervened militarily in Cambodia, effectively ending the murderous regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, Vietnam was condemned by the council for its intolerable breach of UN rules, despite its potential positive humanitarian effects. France’s ambassador to the Security Council argued that using military force, even against a detestable regime, was dangerous to international order: “The notion that because a regime is detestable foreign intervention is justified and forcible overthrow is legitimate is extremely dangerous. That could ultimately jeopardize the very maintenance of international law and order and make the continued existence of various regimes dependent on the judgment of their neighbors.”6 At that time, references to human rights were inappropriate and illegitimate for Security Council deliberation. International order took precedence over justice. In direct contrast, in the month leading up to the passage of Resolution 1973 on Libya, UNSC members, including states as diverse as Brazil, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Russian Federation, condemned Libyan authorities for their violations of international human rights. At least thirty references to human rights were made in the Security Council chamber and within the council’s public documents on Libya during that period.7 Indeed, the formal meeting records indicate that those members supporting the resolution did so primarily on the basis of the “Libyan authorities’ disrespect for their obligations under international humanitarian and international human rights law” and the threat this posed to international peace and security.8
More than three decades after the French statement criticizing the Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia, the French minister for foreign affairs urged council members to quickly pass Resolution 1973, which would authorize all necessary measures to protect civilians from egregious violations of their human rights, in effect authorizing humanitarian intervention. “We do not have much time left. It is a matter of days, perhaps even hours. Every hour and day that goes by means a further clampdown and repression for the freedom-loving civilian population, in particular the people of Benghazi. Every hour and day that goes by increases the burden of responsibility on our shoulders. If we are careful not to act too late, the Security Council will have the distinction of having ensured that in Libya law prevails over force, democracy over dictatorship and freedom over oppression.”9 In 1979, the Security Council criticized illegal intervention against a rights-abusing regime. Humanitarian justifications were deemed inappropriate and illegitimate in the venue of the Security Council. In 1999, the Security Council declined to criticize or censure members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for another illegal intervention against a rights-abusing regime (to stop Serbian government led ethnic cleansing in Kosovo) precisely because it was humanitarian justification that, the council deemed, made the action legitimate. In 2011 in the case of Libya, the Security Council legally authorized its members to use military force against a sovereign state member of the UN because it was violating the human rights of its own population.
The UNSC is known as a realm of great-power politics and historically it did not consider human rights protection as a legitimate purpose of military force. How did the UNSC become concerned with human rights and willing to occasionally use military force to end or punish gross human rights violations in sovereign states without their consent? Humanitarian intervention by the UNSC signals that state observance of minimal human rights standards is an increasingly significant component of state responsibility within international society. As these examples illustrate, however, this has not always been the case. The legitimacy of humanitarian intervention and the authority of the Security Council to undertake it had to be actively socially constructed. This book’s purpose is to illustrate how the increasing legitimacy of human rights norms is changing the meaning of state sovereignty and the purpose of military force at the United Nations by examining Security Council behavior and justifications for that behavior. The central claim is that the arguments that international actors make about the cause and character of conflict and the source of sovereign authority matter: they shape the likelihood that military force will or will not be used in defense of international human rights.
Skeptics may protest that language has more potential to conceal than to reveal motive and that the primary determinant of humanitarian intervention is the selfish interests of powerful states. In this book, I challenge the claim that discourse is epiphenomenal in international relations. By using both a single historical narrative designed to compare evolution of norms over time and by examining a series of qualitative, comparative case studies, I demonstrate precisely how norms and discourse have real-world explanatory power. By tracking changes in discourse alongside changes in behavior, I demonstrate that Security Council members have mixed motives; that norms and strategic interests interact; and that shifting stories about human rights, sovereignty, and war alter humanitarian intervention policy at the UN. This survey of cases also shows that UNSC humanitarian intervention behavior does not map neatly onto a set of a priori interests of intervening states. Rather, humanitarian intervention is costly and imposes foreseen material costs on intervening states. It is through their interaction that norms and interests are mutually constituted and thus have the potential to evolve over time. As this study demonstrates, both human rights and sovereignty norms have coevolved such that a minimal conception of the former is now encapsulated in the latter. Power in the UNSC at the start of the twenty-first century is no longer simply about whose military can win but also about whose story can win.10
The United Nations and Military Force
The UNSC is charged with maintaining international peace and security and regulating state sovereignty. The UN Charter empowers it with the political and legal authority to identify aggression and to regulate the use of military force in international affairs in response to threats to, or breaches of, international peace. The Security Council has the sole legal responsibility to authorize enforcement measures against state members of the UN, including the use of military force under Chapter VII. The Charter preserves a state’s right of individual or collective self-defense in the event of an armed attack in Article 51 but even a state victim of attack must report its defensive actions to the council and defer to its authority and responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. The Security Council also has the power to recommend new members for admission to the UN. In effect, the Security Council regulates both international legal sovereignty (the mutual recognition between states) and Westphalian sovereignty (the state’s effective control over its people and territory without external interference).11
The Security Council comprises fifteen members: the five permanent members of China, France, Russia, the UK, and the U.S.; and ten nonpermanent or rotating members that are elected on a regional basis for two-year terms. Currently five nonpermanent members are drawn from the regions of Africa and Asia, two from Latin America, two from western Europe, and one from eastern Europe.12 Permanent members have veto power over any substantive resolution or decision that comes before the UNSC. This means that the UN cannot undertake any collective measures on international security without the consent or acquiescence of its permanent members. Although this prevents the UN from taking any action that might bring its most powerful members to the brink of war, it also allows permanent members to act as spoilers, preventing UN action in some cases of mass atrocity like Kosovo in 1999 and Syria in 2011–12. Despite the unequal power dynamic in the council, the five permanent members cannot act without the support of nonpermanent members. Decisions of the Security Council require nine affirmative votes and no permanent member veto—only then are they binding on all UN members (Article 25 of the Charter). The working methods of the UNSC allow nonmembers to participate in council meetings. Rule 37 of the Security Council’s Provisional Rules of Procedure permits any UN member that is not a member of the Security Council to participate in its formal meetings without a vote. Like the members of the council, nonmembers publicly justify their policy positions in formal meetings—they communicate directly with one
