The Mandate and the (In)Effectiveness of the United Nations Security Council and International Peace and Security

The Contexts of Syria and Mali

Bibliographic Data

ID3948811
AuthorsDebidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra (University of Massachusetts Boston, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume21
Issue1
Pages43-68
Publication date2016-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650045.2015.1116066
OpenAlexW2313260781
LanguageEN
Citations received5

The article examines the (in)effectiveness of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as an enforcer of peace and security in the post–Cold War global order and teases out the tensions between the mandate and its enforcement. Through an examination of the cases of Syria and Mali and the related UNSC resolutions, the article demonstrates that the council’s role is primarily guided by the geopolitical visions and interests of its veto-wielding permanent members (P5). The action or inaction of the council depends on whether a particular situation is tangential or core to the concern of a permanent member or a group of members. Geopolitical visions guiding the interests of the permanent members dominate the UNSC-mandated concerns of international peace and security. While the conflict situations in Syria and Mali posed similar problems, the council emerged largely effective in the later and ineffective in the former owing to the clash of geopolitical visions. In the case of Syria the clash of visions eclipsed the global concerns for peace, while in the case of Mali the absence of the clash enabled the council to enforce peace. AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank J. Samuel Barkin, Robert Weiner, Colin Flint and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.Notes1. David Miliband, ‘Ditchley Lecture: After the “Decade of War,”’ 14 July 2013, available at .2. Navi Pillay, ‘Security Council Must Unite to Protect Civilians in Conflict Zones – UN Officials’, 12 Feb. 2013, available at .3. James N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990).4. Yves Lacoste, ‘Rivalries for Territory’, Geopolitics 5/2 (2000) p. 152.5. Gearoid O’Tuathail, Simon Dalby, and Paul Routledge, Geopolitics Reader (London: Routledge 1997) p. 1.6. V. D. Mamadouh, ‘Geopolitics in the Nineties: One Flag, Many Meanings’, GeoJournal 46/4 (1998) p. 242.7. Sami Moisio, ‘Geopolitics/Critical Geopolitics’, in John Agnew, Virginie Mamadouh, Anna Secor, and Joanne Sharp (eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Geography (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2015) pp. 220–234.8. Klaus Dodds, Merje Kuus, and Joanne Sharp, The Ashgate Research Companion to Critical Geopolitics (Farnham: Ashgate 2013) p. 1.9. Charles B. Hagan, ‘Geopolitics’, The Journal of Politics 4/4 (1942) pp. 478–490.10. See Denis Rataille, ‘Geopolitics in History’, Geopolitics 5/2 (2000) pp. 35–51; and Brian W. Blouet, Geopolitics and Globalization in the Twentieth Century (London: Reaktion Books 2004).11. H. J. Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, Geographical Journal 23/4 (1904) pp. 421–444; H. J. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality (New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1962); A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Powers on History: 1600–1783 (Boston: Little Brown & Co. 1890); N. Spykman, America’s Strategy in World Politics (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1942). For an elaborate view of various schools, see Colin Flint, Introduction to Geopolitics (New York: Routledge 2012); O’Tuathail, Dalby, and Routledge (note 5); Klaus Dodds, Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction (London: Oxford University Press 1997); and John Agnew, Geopolitics: Revisioning World Politics (London: Routledge 1998).12. Dodds, Kuus, and Sharp (note 8) p. 3.13. Gearóid Ó Tuathail, ‘Introduction: Thinking Critically about Geopolitics’, in Gearoid O’Tuathail, Simon Dalby, and Paul Routledge, Geopolitics Reader (London: Routledge 1997) p. 3.14. Dodds, Kuus, and Sharp (note 8) p. 8.15. Agnew (note 11) p. 2.16. Stuart Elden, ‘Secure the Volume: Vertical Geopolitics and the Depth of Power’, Political Geography 34 (2013) pp. 35–51.17. 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