Searching for a Just and Lasting Peace? Anglo-American Relations and the Road to United Nations Security Council Resolution 242

United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of 22 November 1967 continues to rank as a key point of reference for the Arab-Israeli peace process. The resolution laid down a ‘land for peace’ formula for the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, under which Israel would withdraw from territories occupied during the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War in exchange for full peace agreements with its Arab neighbours. This article analyses the Anglo-American diplomacy at the United Nations which led to the passing of the resolution. It argues that the policy-making of the Johnson administration was rendered incoherent by internal rivalries and disorganisation. US Ambassador to the UN, Arthur Goldberg, was perceived as excessively sympathetic to Israel by the Arab delegations. The British approach, by contrast, was perceived by all parties as more even-handed. The clear position adopted by Foreign Secretary George Brown on Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, together with the skilful diplomacy of the Ambassador to the UN, Lord Caradon, explains the British success in sponsoring Resolution 242. The episode holds broader lessons for the conduct of Anglo-American relations showing that Britain was better placed to achieve diplomatic success when it retained its freedom of manoeuvre in relations with the United States.     

‘Cypriot-led,Cypriot-owned’: Cyprus talks revisited

Cyprus occupies an unenviable position among a group of intractable international conflicts which transcend their national borders and whose resolution has eluded third-party mediation. The Cyprus dispute has preoccupied theorists and practitioners of conflict resolution ever since the United Nations stationed its peacekeeping force on the island in 1964. Even attempts by the United Nations to revitalise the Cyprus talks following the 2004 referendum on the Annan plan have not yielded satisfactory results. For decades, the Cyprus problem has challenged conventional international analysis and defied traditional approaches to negotiation and peacemaking. This article grapples with the question of why this conflict has not been resolved despite endless negotiations. By extrapolating three seemingly distinct variables—Cypriotisation, Europeanisation and post-Kemalism—this article alludes to changes in the conflict's contextual parameters that are conducive to a political settlement.     

Rhetoric versus reality in the rise of policing in UN peace operations: ‘More blue,less green’?

ABSTRACT

United Nations police (UNPOL) have become increasingly important to operational effectiveness of peace operations. For some time, their contribution to re-establishing the rule of law in conflict-affected states has been seen as a cornerstone for building sustainable peace and enabling mission exit strategies. In a departure from traditional peacekeeping and post-conflict assistance, recent years have seen UN peace operations directed to stabilise countries and protect civilians in the context of on-going violent conflict. As a result, UNPOL have had to undertake a range of expanded tasks, exacerbating long-standing challenges and producing new impediments to their operational effectiveness. At the same time, a ‘pragmatic turn’ is generating increased interest in more police-centric concepts of peacekeeping as a possible alternative to today’s expensive and military-focused peace operations. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in multiple peace operations and at UN headquarters, this article examines the changing roles of UNPOL in a new breed of UN peace operations, identifies the major associated challenges and proposes a series of recommendations for overcoming them. It argues that if police are to respond to unfolding challenges while becoming more central to peacekeeping outcomes, then significant reforms and further research into their impacts will be required.     

Queering women,peace and security

The aim of the eight Women, Peace and Security (WPS) United Nations Security Council resolutions, beginning with UNSCR 1325 in 2000, is to involve women in peacebuilding, reconstruction and gender mainstreaming efforts for gendered equality in international peace and security work. However, the resolutions make no mention of masculinity, femininity or the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) population. Throughout the WPS architecture the terms ‘gender’ and ‘women’ are often used interchangeably. As a result, sexual and gender‐based violence (SGBV) tracking and monitoring fail to account for individuals who fall outside a heteronormative construction of who qualifies as ‘women’. Those vulnerable to insecurity and violence because of their sexual orientation or gender identity remain largely neglected by the international peace and security community. Feminist security studies and emerging queer theory in international relations provide a framework to incorporate a gender perspective in WPS work that moves beyond a narrow, binary understanding of gender to begin to capture violence targeted at the LGBTQ population, particularly in efforts to address SGBV in conflict‐related environments. The article also explores the ways in which a queer security analysis reveals the part heteronormativity and cisprivilege play in sustaining the current gap in analysis of gendered violence.     

The construction of gender-sensitive peacebuilding in Australia: ‘Advance Australia Fair’

Australia was the first United Nations member state to commit to the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund when it was established in 2006, and it has made annual contributions since then. Australia has also made significant contributions towards enhancing gender equality in peace and security governance, most recently during its 2013–14 term of office on the United Nations Security Council, recognising that gender matters in and to all aspects of peacebuilding activity. This article offers a discourse-theoretical policy analysis of a range of Australian Agency for International Development guidelines and strategies addressing gender and peacebuilding issues, and reads these against the international framework to explore the discursive construction of gender-sensitive peacebuilding in Australia. The authors argue that the representations of peacebuilding in the documents they analyse shape how Australia engages in peacebuilding-related activities and inform how Australia is positioned internationally as a peacebuilding actor.     

‘Add women and stir’: the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands and Australia's implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325

With the changing nature of warfare and the increasing awareness of the specific gender dimensions of war and peace, the international legal framework has been expanded to address the particular challenges faced by women in conflict and post-conflict contexts. This process culminated in 2000 with the first United Nations document to explicitly address the role and needs of women in peace processes: United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on women, peace and security. Thirteen years on, this article assesses the extent to which Australia's stated commitment to women, peace and security principles at the level of the international norm has translated into meaningful action on the ground in the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). The analysis shows that despite it being an ideal context for a mission informed by UNSCR 1325, and Australia being strongly committed to the resolution's principles and implementation, the mission did not unfold in a manner that fulfilled Australia's obligations under UNSCR 1325. The RAMSI case highlights the difficulty in getting new security issues afforded adequate attention in the traditional security sphere, suggesting that while an overarching policy framework would be beneficial, it may not address all the challenges inherent in implementing resolutions such as UNSCR 1325.     

分歧与协调:佐藤内阁对联合国中国代表权问题的政策选择

亲台反华的日本佐藤内阁在1971年联合国中国代表权问题上费尽心机,不仅是为台湾当局继存于联合国的“逆重要问题案”的始作俑者,甚至一度对美国将安理会席位交归中华人民共和国的主张持“保留意见”。但随着尼克松访华计划的公布,视日美关系为日本对外关系核心的佐藤内阁迅速调整政策,公开与美国政府在联合国图谋“两个中国”并存局面。佐藤内阁顽固追随美国在联合国中国代表权问题上的政策立场,不仅遭到日本国内要求调整对华关系的反对力量的猛烈攻击,同时也使执政的自民党在对华政策上的内部分歧越发难以调和,并最终导致佐藤内阁失去调整对华政策的历史契机。     

The UN and the African Union in Mali and beyond: a shotgun wedding?

The United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) have collaborated in building a viable African Peace and Security Architecture and have worked together in a number of armed conflicts over the past decade. Examples include the peace operations in Burundi and Somalia, and the hybrid peace operation in Sudan's Darfur region which is perhaps the most prominent illustration of this collaboration. Although the UN Security Council authorized the intervention in Libya, which was approved by leading regional organizations (the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Gulf Cooperation Council), it was opposed initially by the AU although the three African states in the Security Council voted for it. Relations cooled as a result and have grown colder still as the UN snubbed the AU and its initial efforts to engage in post‐conflict stabilization in Mali. While the AU sought to prove itself as a capable security provider and partner on the continent with its operation AFISMA, France's Opération Serval and the UN's peace operation for Mali, MINUSMA, bypassed the African Union. This article explores the underlying fault‐lines between the two organizations by examining interactions between the UN and AU since the latter's launch in 2002, but focusing on the Mali case. The fault‐lines emerging from the analysis are different capabilities, risk‐averse vs risk‐assuming approaches to casualties, diverging geopolitics and leadership rivalry.     

The United States,Great Britain,and the Creation of the Iranian Oil Consortium, 1953–1954

This article examines the attitudes of US, British, and Soviet policy-makers as they planned for the forthcoming peace during the Second World War. It charts how they moved from planning a ‘peace by dictation’ of the great powers, to planning one which would be based on a model of collective security involving all members of the United Nations alliance. The latter plan would reflect both the great powers’ special responsibilities for maintaining international peace and security and the stake which lesser powers had in such a venture. In addressing these historical developments the article employs two concepts familiar to International Relations scholarship, namely concert and hierarchy. It shows how the understandings which the principal post-war planners had of these concepts – and crucially of their inter-relationship - changed over time and the consequences of these changes. The article makes two core claims: firstly, that as post-war planning progressed, the attitudes of the Big Three towards the acceptable nature of the great power–lesser power hierarchy changed radically; and secondly, that the structure and nature of today's United Nations Organisation is in significant part a consequence of these changes.     

Re-examining risk factors of genocide

This article assesses the risk factors of genocide. Drawing upon previous research on genocide and the United Nations’ Atrocity Prevention Framework, it employs an event history analysis of over 150 countries between 1955 and 2005. While existing frameworks emphasize general upheaval, this article disaggregates the type of upheaval, finding that economic upheaval—such as resource scarcity or population pressure—does not influence the odds of genocide. Instead, political upheaval that enables a repressive leader to come to power (including coups, assassinations, civil wars and successful revolutions) and political upheaval that directly threatens those in power (including coup attempts, campaigns against the state, unsuccessful revolutions and civil wars that do not coincide with regime change) have the strongest influence on the onset of genocide. These findings are consistent with previous findings that emphasize political upheaval and threat but specify numerous indicators of these broad phenomena. This article also highlights the role of discrimination and exclusion, although it casts doubt on many other risk factors included in recent case studies and in the United Nations’ Atrocity Prevention Framework.     

Economic and Social Thinking at the UN in Historical Perspective

This article begins to examine the history of economic and social ideas launched or nurtured by the United Nations (UN). In 1999, the United Nations Intellectual History Project was initiated, to analyse the UN as an intellectual actor, and to shed light on the role of the UN system in creating knowledge and in influencing international policy‐making: this article is based on the first five books and the oral histories from that Project. The starting point is that ideas may be the most important legacy of the UN for human rights, economic and social development, as well as for peace and security. For the authors, this ‘intellectual history’ provides a way to explore the origins of particular ideas; trace their course within institutions, scholarship, and discourse; and in some cases evaluate the impact of ideas on policy and action.     

International law and the 'war against terrorism'

This article analyses some of the international legal issues arising out of the events of 11 September 2001. Those who perpetrated the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were guilty of serious offences under United States law and possibly also under international law. The fact that their conduct was a crime does not, however, preclude it also being a threat to international peace and an armed attack. The author argues that the United States and its allies were entitled to respond to that attack and the threat of future attacks by using force against Al-Qa'ida and that, in the circumstances, it was also legitimate to take military action against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan which had sheltered Al-Qa'ida and permitted it to conduct operations from Afghan territory. The article also examines the application of the laws of armed conflict to the ensuing fighting and the status and treatment of those captured and held at Guantanamo Bay.     

Samoa on the World Stage: Petitions and Peoples before the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations

One of the innovative aspects of the mandates system of the League of Nations, the oversight regime applied to the former German and Ottoman territories seized by the Allied Powers in the First World War, was that it included a right of petition. Inhabitants of any territory governed under mandate, or any interested outsider, could petition the League of Nations if they believed that the stipulations laid down in Article 22 of the League Covenant or in particular mandate texts were being violated. This article explores the origins, development, politics and scope of the practice of petitioning under the mandates system, arguing that it was much more significant, extensive and consequential than has previously been recognised. Petitions rarely offered petitioners redress; instead, they made visible the assumptions about racial and civilisational hierarchies, and the realities of power, on which the system was based. Yet petitions were not only revelatory of political relations but also altered those relations in turn, as petitioners used the opportunity of appeal to learn the skills of claim-making, international lobbying and political mobilisation. The article looks closely at one dramatic case—that of the mass movement against New Zealand's administration of the mandated territory Western Samoa in the late 1920s, which involved numerous petitions to the League—to illustrate these points.     

Gender,Nations and States in a Global Era

Abstract. Nations and national projects are gendered in different ways. Feminist theory has raised important questions about the conceptualisation of ‘difference’. This article develops the conceptualisation of the different ways in which nations and national projects are gendered, arguing for a mid‐level conceptualisation of gender relations. It argues against, on the one hand, the excessive fragmentation of gender, and on the other, too simple dichotomies of mordless unequal gender relations. This draws on a theorisation of gender relations which connects the different dimensions into specific kinds of gender regimes, either public or domestic gender regimes. This enables us to conceptualise different national projects as having a more or less public or domestic gender project. The conflicts between different national projects and with other polities, such as states, are then conflicts between differently gendered projects. The usefulness of this mid‐level conceptualisation is demonstrated through examples of the competing relations between the UK, Ireland, the EU and the Catholic Church in a global era.     

Gender as national interest at the UN Security Council

The United Nations Security Council has often been identified as a key actor responsible for the uneven trajectory of the international Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. It is, however, the Council members—who also seek to advance their national interest at this intergovernmental forum—that are pivotal in the Council's deliberations and shape its policies. Yet, little attention has been paid to this aspect of deliberative politics at the Council in feminist scholarship on WPS. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature. It notes that gender has increasingly become part of foreign policy interests of UN member states, as evidenced by practices such as invocation of ‘women's rights’ and ‘gender equality’ in broader international security policy discourse. The article demonstrates that this national interest in gender has featured in WPS‐related developments at the Security Council. Using specific illustrations, it examines three sets of member states: the permanent and non‐permanent members as well as non‐members invited to take part in Council meetings. The main argument of this article relates to highlighting member states’ interests underpinning their diplomatic activities around WPS issues in the Security Council, with the aim to present a fuller understanding of political engagements with UNSCR 1325, the first WPS resolution, in its institutional home.     

Powerful State,Powerless Mediator: The United States and the Peace Efforts of the Palestine Conciliation Commission, 1949–51

The Arab–Israeli War of 1948 produced complex questions that needed to be solved to obtain peace. Whereas the Arab states suffered humiliating defeats, Israel was the undisputed winner, expanding and solidifying its power. For the Palestinians, the outcome was catastrophic. Between 600,000 and 760,000 Palestinians fled, becoming refugees on the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and in surrounding Arab states. Palestinian society collapsed and Palestine became divided between Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, leaving the borders undecided. The Palestinians’ dreams of statehood were crushed. After the war, Israel used diplomacy to achieve its goals, defending the post-war status quo to preserve its expanded territory and resisting the return of Palestinian refugees. Through its membership in the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC), established by the United Nations (UN) in 1948 to solve these problems, the United States was deeply involved in the negotiations. The United States became the informal, yet undisputed leader of the PCC, thus, it would seem, empowering it with the muscles of a superpower. After three years of struggling for peace the PCC had toadmit failure. Knowledge about these negotiations gives important insights into how mediators approached the conflict and shows that power asymmetry may explain why the belligerents could not obtain peace.     

The Women,Peace and Security agenda and Australian leadership in the world: from rhetoric to commitment?

What is the ‘Women, Peace and Security agenda’ and why is it relevant now for Australia? During 2013–14, Australia is a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and, with a growing foreign military, peacebuilding and aid presence around the world, the country must play a role in preventing conflict, in protecting women and girls from violence before, during and after conflict, and in encouraging the participation of women in these peace and security decisions in order to create the structural, gender-equal conditions for lasting peace. This article highlights the promises made by Australia during the campaign for the Security Council seat. It evaluates the credibility of the campaign commitments by assessing Australia's foreign policies and overseas aid spending on women and peacebuilding in Asia and the Pacific; exploring the avenues for government-funded research on women, peace and security issues to influence government policies and programs; and taking stock of the government's record of engaging with civil society in developing and carrying out its National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. The article suggests concrete actions that would allow Australia to fulfil its promises and progress its international leadership on the major pillars of the Women, Peace and Security agenda.     

The United States, The United Nations and Iraq: 'Multilateralism of a kind'

Much is made of the need for any second war against Iraq (following Desert Storm of 1991) to be sanctioned by a resolution of the UN Security Council, approved necessarily by all five Permanent Members. Yet only two of the five, the USA and the UK, show any enthusiasm for renewed war in the Persian Gulf; and British policy is undeniably following rather than leading American actions on the diplomatic and military fronts. What are the sources of this American policy? Some critics say oil; the latest arguments of proponents invoke humanitarian concerns; somewhere between the two are those who desire ‘regime change’ to create the economic and political conditions in which so‐called western political, economic and social values can flourish. To understand the present crisis and its likely evolution this article examines American relations with Iraq in particular, the Persian Gulf more generally and the Middle East as a region since the Second World War. A study of these international relations combined with a critical approach to the history of American actions and attitudes towards the United Nations shows that the United States continues to pursue a diplomacy blending, as occasion suits, the traditional binaries of multilateralism and unilateralism—yet in the new world‐wide ‘war on terrorism’. The question remains whether the chosen means of fighting this war will inevitably lead to a pyrrhic victory for the United States and its ad hoc allies in the looming confrontation with Iraq.     

Lord Castlereagh's return: the significance of Kofi Annan's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change

This article suggests that the Annan High Level Panel that reported in December 2004 has produced the most important strategic document to be published by the UN since 1945, eclipsing the now distinctly dated Millennium Development Goals. It documents how it is unusually cogent and candid for a Blue Ribbon exercise. This article starts by describing both the long wave and the immediate events within which the Panel's work exists. The world is now plainly moving through the biggest change of course since the late eighteenth century, which the Panel also discusses, and which was punctuated in 2002–3 by a specific crisis over Iraq. The aftermath of that crisis was the occasion for the secretary-general of the United Nations to establish a High Level Panel with a wide mandate, to describe the new environment of international peace and security and to recommend changes to refurbish the United Nations in order to face new threats, challenges and change. The article analyses the Panel's strategy to obtain action on its key recommendations. These are to make routine the exercise of the responsibility to protect individuals at risk in failed or collapsed states by 'full spectrum' UN interventions embracing peace-enforcement, -keeping, -making and -building. The mechanisms recommended are described and the judgement made that the shrewd presentation of the brokerage of different interests gives a modest but real chance of success. The Panel also addresses the matter of membership of the Security Council but in a way which will enable the likely deadlock over that question later this year to be contained so as not to impede action on other matters. In sum, the High Level Panel promises to be Kofi Annan's best legacy.     

Between Internationalism and Empire: Ireland,the ‘Like-Minded’ Group,and the Search for a New International Order, 1974–82

This article examines the response of a group of small and medium-sized states to the Global South's demands for a new international economic order in the 1970s and early 1980s. Reading that experience through the eyes of the group's smallest state, Ireland, it describes the rise of a loosely organised collective whose support for economic justice was based on three pillars: social democracy; Christian justice; and a broadly held (if variously defined) anti-colonialism. Internationalism, and in particular support for the institutions of the United Nations, became another distinguishing feature of ‘like-minded’ action, and was an attempt by those states to carve out a space for independent action in the cold war. Détente and the decline of US hegemony helped in that respect, by encouraging a more globalist reading of the world order. Once the United States resumed its interventionist policies in the late 1970s, the room for ‘like-minded’ initiatives declined. Yet the actions of the ‘like-minded’ states should not be understood solely in terms of the changing dynamics of the cold war. This article concludes by arguing for the prominence of empire, decolonisation, and the enduring North–South binary in shaping international relations in a post-colonial world.