by Algy Moncrieff

Created on: February 06, 2010   Last Updated: February 07, 2010

In October 1945 the United Nations was created with a view to maintaining world peace through the cooperation of its Security Council of five permanent members (the ‘P5’) and ten non-permanent members, also taking into consideration the views of the remaining 177 members[1]. 

It is not surprising then that the organisation has been controversial from the start – achieving cooperation between the USA, Russia, China, the UK and France who all have the power of veto has not been easy, especially given the Cold War. 

However despite its difficulties (and a number of serious failures), the UN has also managed to deal with a number of global security issues successfully.  Given such a range from successes such as Haiti to disasters such as Rwanda, it is very difficult to say how effective the UN actually is. 

Nevertheless, looking at the reasons why UN operations have succeeded or failed in more detail does ultimately suggest that the UN is a force for good in the world, albeit a hotly disputed one, and will remain this way for the foreseeable future.

Chapter VII of the UN Charter sets out the conditions for when sanctions are acceptable, specifically any “threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression,” and what actions it is deemed correct to take. Articles 41 and 42 suggest that military intervention is only to be undertaken after other sanctions have failed, or are clearly of no use. 

The main tools to this effect are economic sanctions but also severance of diplomatic ties, arms embargoes and disruption of communications. As with military intervention, sanctions require the assent of all P5 members, but they are much easier to secure than the use of force since they require far less commitment from the five countries, and are politically much less damaging to a government than the use of the military. 

Nevertheless it is not entirely clear that sanctions always have the desired effect. Often they are applied to relatively poor countries and may simply serve to worsen conditions for the most poor in the country without forcing the government to change its ways. 

Arms embargoes have the further problem that the conflicts in questions are often fought with small arms which are almost impossible to control given the large quantities traded on the black market. 

Furthermore such sanctions may affect the equally poor trading partners of the country in question, suggesting

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