Why the Security Council Failed

Michael J. Glennon

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2003

Summary:  One thing the current Iraq crisis has made clear is that a grand experiment of the twentieth century--the attempt to impose binding international law on the use of force--has failed. As Washington showed, nations need consider not whether armed intervention abroad is legal, merely whether it is preferable to the alternatives. The structure and rules of the UN Security Council really reflected the hopes of its founders rather than the realities of the way states work. And these hopes were no match for American hyperpower.

Michael J. Glennon is Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the author, most recently, of Limits of Law, Prerogatives of Power: Interventionism After Kosovo

All who believe in the rule of law are eager to see the great caravan of humanity resume its march. In moving against the centers of disorder, the United States could profit from a beneficent sharing of its power to construct new international mechanisms directed at maintaining global peace and security. American hegemony will not last forever. Prudence therefore counsels creating realistically structured institutions capable of protecting or advancing U.S. national interests even when military power is unavailable or unsuitable. Such institutions could enhance American preeminence, potentially prolonging the period of unipolarity.

Yet legalists must be hard-headed about the possibility of devising a new institutional framework anytime soon to replace the battered structure of the Security Council. The forces that led to the council's undoing will not disappear. Neither a triumphant nor a chastened United States will have sufficient incentive to resubmit to old constraints in new contexts. Neither vindicated nor humbled competitors will have sufficient disincentives to forgo efforts to impose those constraints. Nations will continue to seek greater power and security at the expense of others. Nations will continue to disagree on when force should be used. Like it or not, that is the way of the world. In resuming humanity's march toward the rule of law, recognizing that reality will be the first step.