> Alexander Thompson.  Channels of Power: The UN Security Council and
> U.S. Statecraft in Iraq.  Ithaca  Cornell University Press, 2009.  x
> + 261 pp.  $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8014-4718-1.
>
> Reviewed by Dominik Zaum (University of Reading)
> Published on H-Diplo (November, 2009)
> Commissioned by Christopher L. Ball
>
> Understanding Iraq?
>
> The United Nations Security Council has elicited an extensive
> literature since the United States sidelined it over the Iraq war in
> 2003. With some authors boldly declaring the irrelevance of the
> council and others habitually emphasizing its centrality to
> governance in a globalized world, a third group has soberly and
> systematically analyzed its role and functions in a changing
> international order since the end of the cold war. Fortunately, this
> book falls into the final category.
>
> Alexander Thompson is interested in the puzzle of why very powerful
> states at times work through international organizations when
> deploying force coercively, while acting unilaterally at other times.
> To that end, he examines U.S. policy in the Security Council with
> respect to a single case, Iraq from 1990 until 2003. Like other
> recent analyses of Iraq, he treats the two American-led invasions and
> the interim regime of sanctions and inspections as a single long
> war.[1] The book explores the reasons for the variation in U.S.
> approaches, ranging from the reliance on a broad, UN-authorized
> coalition in 1991, to a narrow U.S.-led coalition in 2003 without a
> Security Council mandate. The book does not offer any new empirical
> insights into America's Iraq policy at the Security Council, but then
> this is not its main aim. Instead, it deploys a particular
> theoretical lens, institutionalism, through which it explores the
> reasons why powerful states use or eschew international
> organizations.
>
> Working through the Security Council imposes costs and constraints on
> powerful states, but can also yield substantial benefits. It
> constrains them by reducing their flexibility in deciding when and
> how to use force and for what ends--regime change, for example, has
> remained an objective of statecraft that has found limited support
> among most members of the United Nations. It might subject the
> military activities of great powers to the scrutiny of an
> international body to which they need to report and that might hold
> them accountable--though the ability of the Security Council to
> monitor or even control a state using force is rather limited, as the
> experience of both the Korean War (1950-53) and the 1990-91 Iraq war
> suggest. However, obtaining authorization from the Security Council
> not only can reduce the political cost of using military force, but
> also can create opportunities to share both the risks and burdens of
> an intervention, as the example of the 1990-91 Gulf War
> highlights.[2] Authorization confirms that the Security Council is a
> useful instrument for powerful states pursuing their national
> security interests, but to maintain the utility of the institution,
> states also have to accept the constraints it imposes.
>
> Many authors link the benefits from working through international
> organizations to their power of political legitimation.[3] From his
> institutionalist perspective, Thompson instead argues that
> international organizations are useful to powerful states intending
> to use force coercively because their approval of the use of force
> transmits information to two audiences, and this helps to limit the
> cost (political and other) of coercion. Firstly, it communicates
> restraint and benign intentions to other governments; secondly, it
> signals to the publics of other states that the use of force is
> justified and that its consequences are desirable, reducing the
> domestic opposition to the use of force in these countries. Thompson
> lays out the argument and the evidence with eloquence and clarity,
> developing six related hypotheses that he tests through detailed
> process tracing of U.S. policy in the Security Council on Iraq during
> the three periods of the conflict. He highlights both what the George
> W. Bush administration perceived to be the costs of going through the
> United Nations in 2003 and the costs of the unilateral use of force.
>
> While the case studies provide ample evidence for Security Council's
> information-transmission role, a question that remains largely
> unexplored is why exactly Security Council endorsement of coercive
> use of force does send these kinds of signals. Why would Security
> Council approval suggest desirable consequences of a military
> intervention? One possibility is that the Security Council has unique
> epistemic capacities to assess the outcome of any use of force, i.e.,
> it has the authoritativeness of experts with regard to matters of
> peace and security.[4] While the Security Council over the last
> decade has tried to develop such capacities through the establishment
> of expert bodies, such as sanctions committees and the Counter
> Terrorism Executive Directorate, and through its regular missions
> into conflict areas, it does not have the structure or the resources
> to make credible claims to unique expertise. Furthermore, practices
> like its fact-finding missions have often been deeply politicized,
> with member states divided over the scope and the terms of reference
> of such missions. Many of the nonpermanent members have neither the
> time nor the resources to build up expertise across the wide range of
> issues the council now discusses, leaving it dominated by the
> permanent five members (P5).
>
> A second possibility, which seems closer to Thompson's understanding
> of the council, is that it offers a collective judgment on the
> consequences of the use of force. This is less an assessment of the
> likelihood of success or failure of any particular use of force or
> its consequences for the specific conflict or crisis that it
> addresses, but more a judgment on the degree to which the use of
> force challenges the existing international order. As the discussion
> of the Iraq cases in the book shows, those objecting to the use of
> force mostly do not do so out of concern over the consequences this
> might have for Iraqi society or the utility of force. Instead, they
> object because of the perceived consequences for the regional or
> global balance of power or for important norms governing
> international society. Such judgments, however, are made with
> reference to particular conceptions of order, suggesting that the act
> of Security Council approval itself communicates that an action is
> broadly legitimate, as it complies with the norms of international
> society. The functions of international organizations in Thompson's
> model might thus be closer to what he calls the "weak" legitimacy
> argument of constructivist scholars, in which states strategically
> work through international organizations to increase support for
> norm-based reasons, than his overall argument might suggest (pp.
> 40-41).
>
> Does Security Council endorsement necessarily suggest self-restraint
> and benign intentions? Had the opponents of the United States in the
> Security Council given up their resistance in light of substantial,
> and quite open, economic and political pressure, would this have
> allayed the fears of states concerned about U.S. intentions in Iraq
> and the wider Middle East? It seems likely that had the Security
> Council authorized the use of force in Iraq in 2003, it would
> certainly not have been perceived as politically independent, a
> perception that is central to its ability to transmit such
> information to other states. Thompson argues that its composition,
> "fifteen members, representing various geographical regions and
> levels of development," , and its voting rules (especially the veto)
> are central to the perception of the Security Council as politically
> independent (p. 37). However, the dominance of the P5 over actual
> Security Council decision making, for example, through such practices
> as the drafting of key resolutions in informal, closed meetings of
> the P5, arguably compromises this.[5] The limitations of the Security
> Council's ability to signal that the recourse to force is just and
> will have desirable consequences is highlighted by the levels of
> support for the use of force at the eve of the Iraq war. While public
> support for the use of force in Iraq authorized by the United Nations
> was higher in all countries polled than support for the use of force
> without UN authorization, only in very few cases did this lead to a
> majority of people supporting the war--most people continued to
> oppose it.
>
> The former British diplomat Peter Marshall once suggested that a
> concluding article should be added to the UN Charter, stating that
> "Nothing in the present Charter should be allowed to foster the
> illusion that power is no longer of any consequence."[6] This book
> confirms Marshall's observation, and offers important insights into
> the complex relationship between powerful states and the Security
> Council and the way in which it mediates the relationship between
> great powers and wider international society. It is a welcome
> addition to the growing literature on the multifaceted politics of
> the Security Council.
>
> Notes
>
> [1]. David Malone, _The International Struggle over Iraq: Politics in
> the UN Security Council 1980-2005_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
> 2007).
>
> [2]. Nico Krisch, "The Security Council and the Great Powers," in
> _The United Nations Security Council and War: The Evolution of
> Thought and Practice since 1945_, ed. Vaughan Lowe, Adam Roberts,
> Jennifer Welsh, and Dominik Zaum (Oxford: Oxford University Press),
> 133-153.
>
> [3]. For a classic statement of this position, see Inis Claude,
> "Collective Legitimization as a Political Function of the United
> Nations," _International Organization_ 20, no. 3 (Summer 1966):
> 367-379.
>
> [4]. On the concepts of legitimacy, authority, and authoritativeness,
> see Allen Buchanan, "Political Legitimacy and Democracy," _Ethics_
> 112 (July 2002): 689-719.
>
> [5]. The dominance of the P5 in Security Council decision making is
> well documented. See, for example, Jane Boulden, "Double Standards,
> Distance, and Disengagement: Collective Legitimization in the
> Post-Cold War Security Council," _Security Dialogue _37, no. 3
> (2006): 409-423; and Chinmaya Gharekhan, _The Horseshoe Table: An
> Inside View of the UN Security Council_ (Delhi: Longman, 2006).
>
> [6]. Peter Marshall, _Positive Diplomacy_ (Basingstoke: Macmillan,
> 1997), 68.
>
> Citation: Dominik Zaum. Review of Thompson, Alexander, _Channels of
> Power: The UN Security Council and U.S. Statecraft in Iraq_. H-Diplo,
> H-Net Reviews. November, 2009.
> URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24808
>
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
> Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
> License.

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