Voeten, Erik. "The Political Origins of the UN Security Council's Ability to Legitimize the Use of Force". International Organization, Vol.59, No.3 (2005): 527-557.

Voeten, Erik. "The Political Origins of the UN Security Council's Ability to Legitimize the Use of Force". International Organization, Vol.59, No.3 (2005): 527-557.

• The UN, particularly the UNSC, remains the primary authority for dispensing legitimacy upon state actions. Even countries like the USA, which has demonstrated its willingness to act without UNSC approval, still spend large amounts of time and money to obtain the approval of the UNSC (527-528).
• The position of the UNSC as the main guarantor of international legitimacy for the use of force should not be taken for granted, as Inis Claude in 1966 thought that the UNGA would fulfill this role. Furthermore, the UNSC is a deeply political and partisan institution, without clear governing laws, eliminating the body's legal or moral sources of legitimacy (528).
• The author contends that the UNSC has become such a centerpiece of legitimacy in the international system precisely because it is a political body, as states do not want a legalistic or moral approval of their actions, they want a political guarantee that they will not face severe consequences for those actions (528).
• The Charter of the UN provides two cases when the use of force is permitted: Article 51 allows states to use force in self-defense, as confirmed by the UNSC in supported NATO intervention in Afghanistan; and Chapter VII, which permits the UNSC to authorize force in response to threats to international peace (529).
• Between the late 1960s and 1989, the role of the UNSC in legitimizing violence was greatly diminished, as both superpowers regularly intervened in conflicts without UN approval. This was most prominently the case in the US invasions of Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989, which were condemned internationally with complaints ignored by the USA (531).
• The UNSC roared back into action in the 1990s following the success of the US-led coalition in liberating Kuwait and defeating Saddam Hussein. It becomes the primary organ for assembling willing coalitions to deal with regional threats, and issues a number of orders for intervention as well as several third-generation peacekeeping missions (531).
• This rapid increase in the activities of the UNSC does not, however, indicate a newfound friendship between its members, as Russia and China usually abstain rather than support interventions and including dissenting comments. Coalitions remain projects of the US, for which it usually bribes Russia and China with favors to secure that they will not block its actions (531-532).
• While the existence of the NATO intervention in Kosovo and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 demonstrate that UNSC approval is not needed for military action, all sides generally feel that not receiving UNSC approval made those conflicts more costly, and discouraged allies from joining (533).
• Americans and citizens of other major nations feel that the approval of the UNSC is a necessary precondition for military action. Some, like Japan, Germany, and India, have essentially restricted their military involvement to UN-approved missions, while others just strongly prefer receiving a UNSC mandate (532).
• The ability of the inconsistent and deeply political UNSC to be recognized as a political authority means that legitimacy in the UN is an entirely subjective notion, not derived from any set of procedures or positive outcomes, but from a belief that the UNSC can do things and its ability to enforce that belief (534).
• Many works defining the UNSC's legitimacy focus on its ability to define instances of legal use of force that fit a system of collective security underpinned in customary international law. This assertion, however, ignores the fact that the UNSC is deeply politicized and has never been consistent in its interpretation of international law (535-536).
• Another group of scholars claim that the UNSC derives legitimacy as a consequence of forcing public deliberation of issues, which causes states to justify their arguments in terms of common interests and legal principles. The principles invoked, however, are shallow and do not necessarily relate to the issue. The body certainly fails to meet the criteria for deliberative legitimacy as outlined by Jürgen Habermas (537).
• Some have suggested that similar to democratic procedure creating legitimacy at the national level, fairness and openness in UN bodies gives them procedural legitimacy. The actually practices of the UNSC meet few standards of procedural legitimacy, and do so much less than the less-powerful UNGA (538).
• Another source of legitimacy may be ends-based, derived from the ability of the UNSC to successfully protect public goods and enforce norms supported by status quo powers. Because enforcing international norms is costly, the existence of the UNSC is justified by its ability to distribute those costs among members (539-540).
• This claim also has a number of issues. Namely that after the notable failures in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Somalia, states have questioned the ability of the UNSC to achieve these positive ends. Moreover, this does not explain why states seek UN authorization for actions they do not need assistance with or why its power does not shift to a more functional institution (540-541).
• The author endorses an alternative, realist, view of the UNSC as a pact among elite nations which helps organize cooperative efforts in an anarchic system, which explains why the UNSC has such legitimacy despite doing a pretty shitty job at enforcing collective security (541).
• Although normally found in multipolar system, a coalition can also be useful in the contemporary unipolar system under which states have substantial common interests in enforcing certain norms or defeating terrorists (541).
• The coalition system is useful for the hegemon, but it is also a useful tool for other powers to restrain the hegemonic state by providing an institutions which can credibly coordinate their efforts to enforce certain norms. These red lines that even the US cannot cross, however, remain debated, as the invasion of Iraq has shown (542).
• For citizens, the UNSC provides a simple reflection of the support of the major powers for a particular use of force. Whereas most people would not be able to describe each country's position, UNSC approval indicates that not negative consequences are likely to result from military action (543).
• "This conception of legitimacy corresponds best to those classical realists who did not consider power and legitimacy to be antithetical, but complementary" (551).
• The 'elite pact' model of the UNSC provides insights into some of its behavior, including an explanation of why its powers have changed over time. Since to function it must constitute a recognize agreement between great powers, which existed after WWII and after the Cold War, but not during the 1970s or 1980s (545-546).
• The UNSC, rather than the UNGA or other more representative international organizations, has continued to play such a major role in legitimizing violence because it recognizes and accounts for the interests of the great powers through the veto system. The UNSC's organization reflects the reality of power better than other organizations (547).
• The UNSC plays a major role in the enforcement of international norms because it delineates the limits of acceptable actions and thus informs nations about what actions they can take without fearing collective retaliation. Despite the capriciousness of UNSC judgements, they are the major factor in risk-calculations regarding the use of force (549).
• This understanding the UNSC as a realist institution reflecting the interests of great powers means that the two commonly cited issues with the UNSC, its deviation from previous legal rulings and its opaque procedures, are not issues which fundamentally impact its legitimacy, because they are not its primary sources of legitimacy (552).