Collective security and the use of force

THE Iraq war has put the usefulness of the UN in a very difficult spot since its inception in 1945. After the Iraq war was launched by the US-led forces in March 2003, many questioned the need for a new institutional framework and vision that could marry prudent anticipatory self-defence against immediate (not perceived) threat to states.
The US and the UN provoked the question of legitimacy of the Iraq war. The US called it legitimate while the UN declared it illegal. The lack of legal clarity that it raised diminished the authority of the UN and to great extent the credibility of the US.
The US should have realized that a UN approval-seal on the Iraq war would have made US servicemen and women less vulnerable. The US went alone with Britain and Australia and a few others. Large powers of Europe such as Germany and France opposed the war. Furthermore, the majority of people across the world including those of the US, Britain and Australia opposed the war.
Iraq war has no international legitimacy. International legitimacy demonstrates how the twin dimensions of legitimacy--principles of rightful membership and of rightful conduct--have been thought about in international affairs.
Legitimacy is not to be discovered simply by straightforward application of other norms, such as legality and morality. Instead, legitimacy is an inherently political condition. What determines legitimacy or not is as much the general political contemporary condition of international society at any one moment as the conformity of its specific actions in terms of rules of law.
Collective Action
The UN is the arena for collective action. That means any illegal armed attack on a member-state is considered to be an attack on all member-states and they take collective action.
It corresponds to "neighbourhood watch" program. All the neighbours feel threatened if a neighbour of a suburb is attacked and they take collective action. Articles 39 to 49 of Chapter VII of the UN Charter spell out the nature of collective action of the member-states against use of force of a non-member state through the Security Council.
Changing nature of threats
Out of the Iraq war, a larger question of the changing nature of threats in the modern world, the inadequacy of existing norms and laws in being able to address such threats, and thus the need for new "rules of game" to replace them comes up.
The nature of armed conflicts has changed. In recent times the line between war as a "political act" and organized criminality has become increasingly blurred. Former US President Clinton on 10th September 2001 spoke to a select gathering in Melbourne:
"The biggest security threat of the next 30 years, I think, is likely to be not countries going to war with each other or even lobbing missiles at each other. It is likely to come from non-national actions from terrorists, narcotics, traffickers, organized criminals armed with sophisticated weapons."
Another factor of concern that has emerged is the resurgence of ethno-nationalism, often taking a violent form. Some ethnic groups have been prepared to pursue their claims for self-determination within the framework of existing states treating them essentially as claims for minority human rights protection but many others have made clear that they will be satisfied by nothing less than their nations becoming states. The proliferating availability of weaponry of every degree of sophistication has provided a new edge to these concerns.
Since the end of the Cold War, failed or fragile states have arguably become the single most important problem for international order.
It has been seen in many such states, extremist elements exist and promote their distorted version of ideology through terrorism. These states often are sources of many of the world's most serious problems, from poverty to drugs to AIDS.
Failed or fragile states are those that suffer from poor governance and incapability. Often their legitimacy of governments is questioned. Instability is largely caused by lack of democracy, and pluralism or meaningful popular political participation.
Lack of state capacity in countries has come to haunt the developed world much more directly. State collapse or weakness stretching from the Balkans through Caucasus, the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia, had created major humanitarian crisis.
Failed or fragile states undermine sovereignty because the problems that such states generate for themselves and for others vastly increase the likelihood that some powerful states will be tempted to intervene in their affairs against their wishes to forcibly fix the problem.
Another fact is that the world order is in transition. Although the US is the most powerful nation in the world, it cannot unilaterally force its action. For example, the US had to negotiate with North Korea on nuclear proliferation. It has serious constraints to take action on Iran.
Other nations also are powerless to act to change the events globally without the US. Some say the world order is in a status of hiatus or transition. It is neither unipolar nor multipolar world.
The basis of world order has arguably has come under increasing strains in recent years due to the following among others:
(a) growing gravity of threats rooted in elusive non-state actors including but not limited to terrorists
(b) inter-connectedness of today's threats to security
(c) absence of legitimate criteria for use of force
(d) absence of agreed definition of terrorism
(e) the growing access to weapons of mass destruction by non-state actors
(f) threats originating from environmental degradation
(g) disparity between the distribution of military, political and economic power in the world. For example, Japan and Germany, the second and third largest economies of the world have no permanent place in the Security Council of the UN.
(h) the gap between the source of problems that are global and resources that are available are vested in states.
(i) the disparity of income of people between rich and poor countries and within countries
(j)the lack of unity in the Security Council among the veto-wielding permanent members
Against the background, the real challenge is how to institute and operate a workable collective security system. There are some intrinsic difficulties with the concept of collective security against elusive and unidentifiable non-state aggressors in advance.
Conclusion
The UN panel of wise men constituted by the UN Secretary General in 2003 came up with its report in 2005 on the use of force against a state. The panel makes the point that the use of force is not only legal but also is legitimate.
Instead the panel proposed five criteria of legitimacy of use of force: (i) seriousness of threat, (ii) proper purpose, (iii) last resort, (iv) proportional means and (v) balance of consequences.
Any use of force against a state must be tested with these five bench-marks. In other words, international legitimacy must be maintained in any action of use of force.

The author is former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva