Defence Forces Review 2008

The Nobel Lecture - 9 January 1989
As regards international peace and security the United Nations Charter sets out a process
which, in its first stage, is based on the renunciation of force in international relations and on
the peaceful settlement of disputes. If these principles are rejected, the Charter provides for
collective enforcement action by the world community through the Security Council. Such
action ranges from various forms of sanctions and embargoes to the use of military force by
the Security Council. In the political and military conditions of the post-war world, forceful
international action has not proved to be a practical proposition. Sanctions and embargoes
have rarely been agreed on, and military enforcement action never, apart from the exceptional
case of Korea. Instead the Security Council and the Secretary-General have pioneered a
different route - the route of consensus, conciliation, good offices, diplomatic pressure and
non-forceful, cooperative peacekeeping.
This last concept - peacekeeping - was honored this year with the award of the Nobel Peace
Prize. This was a recognition not only of the architects and the soldiers of peacekeeping, but
also of an extremely important idea. The evolution of peacekeeping may provide a useful
practical indication of how international authority, and respect for it, can be built up.
Before considering the evolution of peacekeeping, however, I would like to say a word about its
opposite, enforcement. Chapter VII of the Charter, the enforcement chapter, was a recognition
by the authors of the Charter that the failure of the international community to deal with the
aggressions of the 1930s had inevitably led to World War II. They were determined that the
international community should not make this mistake again.
In the period since World War II aggressors on this scale have, mercifully, not emerged. The
measures of Chapter VII have thus not been invoked in order to take forceful action against
aggression. The Security Council, in its wisdom, has never seen fit or been able to agree on
the full-scale use of Chapter VII. Instead, international disputes and threats to the peace have
been, for the most part, dealt with by non-forceful means. That should not mean that Chapter
VII should be forgotten, It is all well and good to evolve a design for international peace and
security based not on forceful techniques, but on cooperation and persuasion. But we cannot
say for certain that the world will never again be threatened by irrational aggressors. The
capacity to react forcefully, and in time, to such a contingency must therefore be maintained,
while we pursue the option of peacemaking and peacekeeping as the normal approach to
international disputes or threats to the peace.
The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the
instruments of war. It is in fact the exact opposite of the military action against aggression
foreseen in Chapter VII of the charter. Although the arms race continues, it would seem that the
majority of nations have, in practice, opted for the rule of international authority and law in their
relations with each other. The only sanction for this authority is usually persuasion, the moral
force of international authority and diplomatic pressure. In addition, international authority
can be symbolized in conflict areas by non-fighting soldiers, the UN’s peacekeepers.
These are soldiers without enemies. Their duty is to remain above the conflict. They may
only use their weapons in the last resort for self-defense. Their strength is that, representing
the will of the international community, they provide an honorable alternative to war and a
61