CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

1. Demands that Iraq comply fully with resolution 660 (1990) …
2. Authorizes Member States co-operating with the Government of
Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements, … ,
the above mentioned resolutions, to use all necessary means to uphold
and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant
resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area;
If this first true act of collective security was the high watermark of the legalist
paradigm, then it was not to be long before it ebbed. The almost three-year hiatus in use
of the veto was broken in April 1993 by Russia 48 (having inherited the Permanent
Security Council seat on the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991). This
was really a disagreement over organisational issues rather than a political spoiling
action: concerned at the vastly burgeoning costs of the UN’s rapidly expanding range of
peace keeping operations, Russia objected to a proposal for UNFICYP’s * financing to
be regarded as expenses of the Organisation under Article 17(2) i.e. general expenses,
the apportionment to states being determined by the General Assembly, as opposed to
specific peacekeeping costs. The following year was to see the first (Russian) veto on
issues relating to the situation in Balkans and in 1995 the first of a series of US vetoes
over the situation in the Middle East and the Palestinian question. 49 In 1999 NATO
nations attacked Serbia-Montenegro in response to the growing human rights abuses
and oppression in the Serbian province of Kosovo. No UN Security Council authority
was sought, and the reason given for this was the expectation of a Russian veto. No
draft resolution was presented, no vote taken and so no veto cast so this ‘virtual’ or
‘hidden’ veto is not reflected in the official records. (There will, of course, be other
instances of no actual veto appearing, but an issue not being presented because of the
understanding that there would be one, which serves to disguise the full influence of the
veto on the Security Council’s actions). The threat of a Russian veto was held by the
NATO nations to render the UN powerless to act and so they took the decision to act
without authorisation – outside the confines, in fact, of the legalist paradigm.
* United Nations Force in Cyprus
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