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The United Nations organ with primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. It was established in 1945 with 11 members, five of whom were permanent members: Britain, China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (with the breakdown of the USSR in 1991 Russia inherited this seat), and the United States. As from 1966 the Council\'s membership was increased to 15 by raising the number of non-permanent members from six to ten. These members are elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms.
Any decision of the Council (which votes by show of hands) has since 1966 required nine votes; before that date the required number of votes was seven. On a non-procedural matter it is also necessary that none of the permanent members casts a negative vote. (This represents a very early de facto amendment of the UN Charter, which specifies that non-procedural draft resolutions require the concurring votes of the permanent members to pass.) Any such vote on a non-procedural draft resolution which would otherwise have been passed (because it received the requisite number of positive votes) is informally called a veto, in that it prevents the adoption of the resolution. In the UN\'s early years the phenomenon of the double-veto was also encountered. Where there was disagreement over whether a proposal was procedural, that question would first be voted on, and was treated as non-procedural; thus a permanent member could first veto the claim that a draft resolution was procedural, and then veto the substantive resolution - hence the ‘double-veto’.
The UN Charter made provision for the Security Council to have armed forces at its disposal so that it could take enforcement measures in support of the principle of collective security and, in the event of such forces being used, for them to be controlled by the Council\'s Military Staff Committee. However, member states declined to place any forces in the Council\'s hands, so this whole scheme for the implementation of collective security foundered. Instead, what the Council has occasionally done in response to aggression (where the political circumstances have also been appropriate) is either to invite states to place forces under its command or to authorize certain states to take action on its behalf. (In practice there has been little difference between these two modes of action.)
During the Cold War the division between East and West resulted in the Council rarely acting in the manner which the Charter anticipated, and vetoes abounded. However, it did utilize and extend the device of peacekeeping. Since the end of the Cold War the Council has become much more involved in both peacekeeping and peace-enforcement - a consequence of the greater political harmony in the Council and the concomitant sharp decline in the use of the veto. But it should not be assumed that this pattern is now fixed. The Council\'s effectiveness is chiefly a function of relations between its permanent members. Any general deterioration in those relations will be reflected in the Council\'s activity. See also informal consultations. |
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