CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

motivated, to lack cultural empathy and understanding – a common criticism of
Western-led interventions. On Monbiot’s proposal, India would have been ruled out of
any authorised intervention in Bangladesh, Tanzania in Uganda or NATO in Kosovo.
Yet whatever the failings of these interventions, however mixed the motives, there can
be little doubting the humanitarian good that resulted, which would almost certainly
have been unrealised had intervention been constrained to the disinterested. Empirically
it is clear that more often than not the disinterested are also the uninterested. Regional
players with the greatest interest in regional peace, security, stability and future growth
are likely to be both best placed, and most willing to intervene. So long as there is just
cause and demonstrable right intent, we should not wish to preclude these players from
intervention. What might be a more successful approach, then, is to allow execution by
the interested but reserve authority to the disinterested. This brings us to the second
objection to Monbiot’s ideal.
The second objection to Monbiot’s ideal goes right to the issue of sovereign authority.
What Monbiot proposes, quite simply, resembles too closely what we already have; the
UN Charter as it stands does allow of intervention with the approval of either of the two
institutions that we take to represent the world’s states: either the approval of the
Security Council or, through a Uniting for Peace Resolution, a majority in the General
Assembly. We have already seen that things as they stand are inadequate. Monbiot
would doubtless respond that the problem is with the constitution of the Security
Council and with the veto vested in the P5. Indeed, elsewhere he argues just this: that
the Security Council as currently configured is a tyranny of the powerful. 161 Although
there exists the alternative of a Uniting for Peace resolution, this has rarely been
attempted and never with any significant resultant action.
‘Uniting for Peace’ was a US initiative in 1950, to overcome the difficulty posed during
the Korean emergency by the Soviet Union’s ending its boycott of the UN and returning
to its Security Council seat where it could exercise its veto. Established by General
Assembly Resolution 377 (V) of 3 November 1950, the key element is the resolution
that
if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members,
fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international
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