CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

nearly all important points. Not all disagreements split along East-West lines but the
most important ones did. The Western Powers envisioned UN bases worldwide at
which the contingents could be based. The Soviet Union vigorously opposed this.
Western proposals to assist other states in the equipping and supplying of their
contributions were similarly opposed by the Soviet Union as an attempt to secure
further Western domination. Most importantly, no agreement could be reached on the
size of the force or the breakdown of contribution from each of the Permanent
Members. At the top end of the scale, the US proposed a force of twenty divisions,
almost 4000 aircraft and over 100 major ships! The Soviet Union perceived the UN as
essentially Western dominated (as indeed its major organs remained until the substantial
increase in Third World independent membership post-decolonisation, and the
emergence of the Non-Aligned Movement). Consequently it would only support a
much smaller force and one in which each element, land, sea and air, was constituted in
equal proportion by each of the Permanent Members.
Negotiations in the Military Staff Committee and subsequent debate in the Security
Council failed to reach agreement. So the provisions of Article 43 have never been
met. 61 The Military Staff Committee has remained in existence, meeting regularly in
New York at the level of the Permanent Five’s Defence/Military Attachés to the US.
However, these meetings have rarely been more than a formality, opening and closing
with no business on their agendas. The notable exception to this was during the 1991
Gulf War when the Committee initially played an informal coordinating role and then,
in accordance with Resolution 665 62 , a more formal one.
Recognising, in 1992, ‘that an opportunity has been regained to achieve the great
objectives of the Charter’ 63 Secretary General Boutros-Ghali called upon the Security
Council to reinitiate negations on the ‘special agreements’ envisioned by Article 43:
Under the political circumstances that now exist for the first time since the
Charter was adopted, the long-standing obstacles to the conclusion of such
special agreements should no longer prevail. The ready availability of armed
forces on call could serve, in itself, as a means of deterring breaches of the peace
since a potential aggressor would know that the Council had at its disposal a
means of response. 64
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