IR-3006: International Organizations

Spring 2022-2023
Meryem İlayda Atlas

Week 3: The League of Nations, The UN and the International System

Power Politics:
Concept of national security:
• The power politics approach to security as worked out by Hans
Morgenthau and his successors takes as given the notion of “peace
through strength.” Here “strength” is equated with military capacity
and a robust approach to “national security”
Balance of power and security dilemma:
• The power politics approach also involves consideration of both
balance of power mechanisms and the security dilemma, which
ensures a perpetual competitive struggle for security.
Power Politics
Self-reliance:
• States can depend only on their own resources. Self-reliance is
therefore the ultimate key to survival in the international sphere. This
does not mean that diplomacy should not be pursued, or that the UN
doesn’t matter. It does mean that for any practical decision maker,
state survival must be the bottom line.
Security, Insecurity, and Power
Politics
Multipolar World:
• The state system in Europe from 1648 to 1945, realists have generally agreed that the system
during that period was “multipolar” (Mearsheimer) Significant power was distributed among
three or more great powers within the system.
Bipolar World:
• The Cold War period is generally described as “bipolar,” since power was essentially divided
between the United States and its allies on one hand and the USSR and its allies on the other.
The structure of bipolarity, together with the deterrent effect of the nuclear weapons
possessed by both sides, is often said to have produced the “long peace” of the Cold War period
in which major direct warfare between the superpowers never took place (although proxy wars in
Korea and Vietnam certainly did).
Security, Insecurity, and Power
Politics
Unipolar World:
• With the Cold War long over and the United States in a position of global
hegemony, the system is generally described as unipolar. Whether
unipolarity will prove to be more or less conducive to peace than bipolarity
is hard to predict.
War on Terror:
• The War on Terror continues around the World, i.e. in 2016, the American
focus shifted from Afghanistan and Iraq to Syria, where the Daesh occupies
large parts of the country. Traditional realist theory has had little to say
about conflicts that are not essentially state based and therefore do not
lend themselves to balance of power analysis.
League of Nations and Collective
Security
Founded on 10 January 1920 after the
Paris Peace Conference that ended the
WWI, it ceased operations on 20 April
1946.
League of Nations and Collective
Security
League of Nations: (successor organization of the UN)
• The League of Nations was the first worldwide intergovernmental
organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace.
• The organisation's primary goals:
• Preventing wars through collective security
• Disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation
and arbitration.
In 1919 U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson won
the Nobel Peace
Prize for his role as the
leading architect of
the League.
League of Nations and Collective
Security
• The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a
fundamental shift from the preceding hundred years wars.
• The League lacked its own armed force to enforce its resolutions,
keep to its economic sanctions, or provide an army when needed
and depended on the victorious WWI Allies.
• France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Japan were the permanent
members of the Executive Council.
League of Nations and Collective
Security
During the Second Italo-
Ethiophian War, when the
League accused Italian
soldiers of targeting Int’l Red
Cross’ and Red Crescent’s
medical tents, Benito
Mussolini responded that ‘the
League is very well when
sparrows shout, but no good
at all when eagles fall out.’
League of Nations and Collective
Security
• At its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935,
it had 58 members. After some notable successes and some early
failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of
preventing aggression by the Axis Powers in the 1930s.
League of Nations and Collective
Security
The credibility of the
organization was weakened by
the fact that the United
States never joined the League
and the Soviet Union joined
late and was soon expelled
after invading Finland.
League of Nations and Collective
Security
• Germany withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy, Spain and
others.
• The onset of the WWII showed that the League had failed its primary
purpose, which was to prevent any future world war.
• The League lasted for 26 years; the United Nations (UN) replaced it
after the end of the Second World War and inherited several agencies
and organisations founded by the League.
Atlantic Charter
United Nations:
• As World War II drew to a close, delegates from 50 countries, all opponents of
the Axis powers, met in San Francisco to approve a charter for a new body
capable of establishing a framework for maintaining international peace and
security.
• Soon after, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D.
Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter. This document had no legal standing, but
it denounced the use of force while affirming hopes for a stable new world order
when hostilities eventually ceased.
Atlantic Charter
• This new order would uphold the rights of people to live in peace and
freedom within the boundaries of their own states and to travel
abroad in safety.
• At a further meeting in London, representatives of most European
governments-in-exile and the USSR pledged support.
The United Nations
• By 1943 the process of securing broad agreement on a new
organization took another step forward with a meeting in Moscow of
the major powers, now including China, and another in Teheran a few
months later attended by the United Kingdom, the United States, the
USSR, and China.
• In August 1944 a proposal for a charter was drawn up by the four
major powers in Washington.
• By this stage, agreement had been reached on the main elements of a
new United Nations Organization, including a General Assembly, a
Security Council, an International Court of Justice, and a Secretariat.
The United Nations and Collective
Security
• A subsequent meeting
produced the procedures for
voting in the Security
Council. A UN Charter was
formally signed in San
Francisco by representatives
of 51 countries (including
Turkey) on 26 June 1945.
The organization came into
official existence on 24
October 1945.
The United Nations and Collective
Security
• The UN saw a further
boost in membership
after the end of the Cold
War, when some former
federal republics of the
Soviet Union became
sovereign states.
Membership now stands
at 193.
The UN Charter
The UN Charter’s main purposes:
• Faith in fundamental human rights,
• Faith in the dignity and worth of the human person,
• Faith in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and
small
• Intention to establish conditions under which justice and respect for
the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international
law can be maintained
• Intention to promote social progress and better standards of life in
larger freedom.
The UN Charter
• Members commit themselves:
• to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good
neighbors;
• to unite in maintaining international peace and security; to ensure that
armed force will not be used, except in the common interest;
• to use international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social
advancement of all peoples (United Nations, 1945).
• (There follow 19 chapters containing a total of 111 articles spelling
out the more detailed structure of the UN and the various powers and
responsibilities of its principal organs.)
The UN Security Council
• The Security Council was originally composed of five permanent
members (the United Kingdom, United States, USSR, France, and
China) and six nonpermanent members. (There are now ten
nonpermanent members, each of which serves a two-year term.)
• The five permanent members—or “P5”—each retain veto power over
any Security Council decision. This extraordinary power reflects the
founding members’ belief that the new UN could not function if it did
not give a special place to the most prominent states, thereby
rectifying a perceived weakness of the old League.
UN Security Council
The UN Security Council
• More generally, the Security Council embodies the UN’s mission to provide
for “collective security”; the term underlines the founders’ conviction that
true security can never be achieved unless the great powers abandon the
principle of “every state for itself” and work co-operatively.
• The composition and functioning of the Security Council has been subject
to much criticism over the years. One is that the extraordinary power
given to the P5 more than 60 years ago, in a world where decolonization
had scarcely begun, no longer reflects the current balance of power, nor
the way the global population is distributed.
• India in 2021, assumed the presidency of the UN Security Council (UNSC)
taking over from France.
The UN Security Council
• The UN’s membership has almost quadrupled since then, and many
leaders in the developing world see the permanent membership as
unfairly skewed in favour of the developed world.
• Certainly, the geographic distribution of the P5 is relatively narrow,
with no representation whatever from Africa, the Middle East, South
Asia, or South America—regions that are home to many of the
world’s largest states.
The UN Security Council
• Reform of the P5 seems unlikely, at least in the near future.
• If reform entailed an expanded permanent membership, the veto
power would be extended, which would make decision making even
more difficult than it is now.
• On the other hand, if the number of permanent members were to
stay at five, which of the current P5 should or would vacate their seats
to make way for new members?
The UN Security Council
• One solution would be to remove the UK and France and give the
European Union a single seat: This would give Germany (and all other
European states) some representation and free up one seat for a new
member. But the UK and France are unlikely to agree.
• If one new member were to be admitted, which would it be? Brazil,
Japan, Turkey, India, Nigeria, and Egypt are possible claimants, but
none would be uncontroversial.
The UN Security Council
• The remaining option would be to eliminate the permanent
members altogether. However, this would almost certainly change the
dynamics of the Security Council, and there is no guarantee that the
change would be for the better.
• In any case, reform of the Security Council is unlikely to occur any
time soon, since any one of the P5 can easily veto any proposal that is
not in its national interest—it’s hard to imagine the United States or
China agreeing to have its power diluted.
The UN Security Council
Some Failures:
• The Iraq War raised many concerns about unchecked US power
• Russia’s conflict with Georgia in 2008 and its annexation of Crimea in 2014
• China has been sparring with Taiwan since the communist revolution in 1949
• Syrian civil war since 2011
• Myanmar government’s forced migration of 400000 Rohingyas 2018
• Russia’s annexation of Ukraine, 2022.
Srebrenica Genocide

The Balkans also presented a

particularly difficult case. The
breakup of the Yugoslav state
gave rise to serious conflict
between Croats, Serbs, and
Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian War
(1992-95), Srebrenica
Genocide.
The UN Security Council
• In Rwanda 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred by
extremist Hutu militia, is regarded as a product of the UN’s
monumental failure to take the decisive action necessary to prevent
an internal conflict from turning into a large-scale tragedy. (1994)
• Syrian Civil War (2011)
• Myanmar Refugee Crisis (2017)
The UN Security Council
• The structure of the Security Council and the dominance of the P5
reflect a realist concern for the accommodation of power politics,
even within an “idealist institution.”
• In addition, the broader liberal vision for collective international
security is still tied to a traditional state-based vision of world order
focused primarily on military issues. The same is true of other forms
of collective security, such the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO).