Can the World Be Governed?: Possibilities for Effective Multilateralism

International Institutions and Collective Authorization of the Use of Force

The authors of the United Nations Charter proposed that the organization should seek to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Understandably, they had in mind avoiding world wars and other large interstate conflicts. Sixty years later, there have been hardly any “hot wars” among the militarily strongest states. This fortunate outcome probably has had less to do with the functioning of the United Nations system than with the perceived costs of interstate war in the nuclear age and with increasing doubts about the economic advantages of conquest. The major threats to international peace and security today are radically different from those anticipated by the framers of the UN Charter. They also differ, broadly speaking, in the North and the South.1 For the advanced industrial economies, the principal security threat in the coming James D. Fearon * * * International Institutions and Collective Authorization of the Use of Force This essay draws heavily on a much longer paper, “Reforming International Institutions to Promote International Peace and Security” (Fearon 2006). I thank the International Task Force on Global Public Goods and its Secretariat for support for the research. 1. In this essay, I will take “security” to refer to freedom from risk of violent death, injury, or coercion at the hands of some organization. This is not, however , to rule out broader interpretations. years will most likely be terrorists’ use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in major urban areas (especially nuclear attacks). By contrast, for much of the rest of the world, the principal security threats will be internal war, state collapse, and consequent personal insecurity; violently abusive government; and, in some cases, risk of attack by strong states or neighbors. How should these threats to peace and security be addressed in the next several decades? I argue that the UN system, or a redesigned or alternative system with similar basic commitments, is potentially more valuable for promoting peace and security now than it ever was during the Cold War. The main claim is that, given the nature of the security threats to the major powers and the relative absence of reasons for them to fight each other, there are greater gains to be had from a system for collectively authorizing and coordinating the use of force. Whether the UN’s members will be able to coordinate on reforms to improve the current system is another question, and a difficult one that would require a lot of speculation to try to answer. Instead, I focus first on making the case that the major security threats in the coming years will require multilateral coordination and authorization to handle effectively, and second on some of the major problems with the current UN system for authorizing the use of force. I analyze these problems by way of discussion of a normative question: if one could start over, from scratch, what would be the best institutional design for a UN Security Council-like body for authorizing the use of force in international politics? I then discuss the main obstacles and possibilities for moving the UN in this direction, closing with a brief discussion of alternatives to the UN. Twenty-first Century Security Threats The destructive power of a technologically advanced military, along with the deepening of democracy and international trade, has made the citizens of the major powers safer from attack and invasion than they have ever been before. Many of the benefits of peace among the major powers have extended to the smaller and militarily weaker states in the system as well, since they are less subject to annexation or direct control exercised by major powers playing “great games” or fighting wars with each other. International Institutions and Authorization of the Use of Force I 161 Nonetheless, the same technological advances that have helped bring about major power peace have created new security threats that will grow worse as technology improves and scientific knowledge spreads. Interstate war is generally disfavored by weapons of mass destruction, but the horrific destructive potential of these weapons makes them attractive for terrorist use by nonstate or state-supported actors, and also a vastly greater concern. The risk of nuclear explosions in NewYork, Paris, London, Moscow, and other major cities is an existential threat for modern societies and economies. Further, because the knowledge will spread and the technological ease of making WMD will grow over time, the threat is long run: it will remain long after al...