All Necessary Measures. Carrie Booth Walling
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as a “violation of international peace and security.” China, which is generally resistant to the use of enforcement measures, likewise endorsed this and subsequent resolutions condemning Iraqi behavior, abstaining only from resolutions that authorized “all necessary measures” or addressed the domestic practices of the Iraqi government.49 In fact, the only state on record that objected to the intentional story about the war against Kuwait was Iraq itself. This unprecedented level of unity around an intentional story of conflict made the Security Council’s Chapter VII authorization to use military force possible. Indeed, because the intentional story appeals to principles of justice and international law, its policy implications include protection, interdiction, or punishment. The intentional story persisted in the UNSC throughout Operation Desert Storm.
Security Council endorsement of an intentional causal story softened only when a majority of its members used it to characterize the Iraqi regime’s violence against its own population in April 1991. The move to discuss Iraq’s internal practices was both highly controversial and unprecedented in Security Council practice. Yet a majority of council members (eleven members) articulated an intentional story to describe Iraqi violence against its own Kurdish and Shi’a populations. Seven council members (Belgium, Côte d’Ivoire, France, India, Romania, the UK, and the U.S.) articulated a strong intentional story about brutal repression and the indiscriminate use of force by the Iraqi regime against its Kurdish and Shi’a populations in contravention of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions. These members argued that violations of international humanitarian law constituted a threat to international peace and security.50 For example, France argued that Iraq’s repression of its minorities garnered international interest because it was at such proportions as to be considered a crime against humanity.51 This story was embraced by an additional seven states, primarily European, whose representatives spoke as nonvoting participants during the council meeting.52 Germany advocated a particularly strong version of the perpetrator-victim narrative when it argued that Saddam Hussein’s violence against the Kurdish minority was a harbinger of genocide.53
Four Security Council members (Austria, Ecuador, Russia, and Zaire) articulated a softer version of the intentional story. They agreed that Iraq was violating international humanitarian law but noted that Iraq’s behavior was primarily internal. Nonetheless, because of its external effects, this internal violence warranted international attention and condemnation.54 Presumably for these members, in absence of transborder effects, Iraq’s domestic practices would not have warranted Security Council attention. In contrast, China, Cuba, Yemen, and Zimbabwe argued that the Security Council had no right to intervene in the internal matters of a sovereign state, citing Article 2.7 of the UN Charter. They strongly objected to Iraq’s domestic behavior being discussed at all, yet they did not articulate an alternative story to describe the situation nor did they dispute the cause or character of the regime’s violence, only its relevance to Security Council deliberations.
International Security, Human Rights, and the Purpose of Military Force
Unity in the UNSC around an intentional causal story allowed deliberations to quickly shift from the cause and character of the conflict to the relationship between human rights and international security. After Coalition forces successfully reversed the Iraqi occupation, Security Council members began to debate whether humanitarian and international human rights concerns were relevant to council business, and in turn whether international humanitarian law and international human rights law were changing the purpose of military force. On 5 April 1991, Turkey and Iran requested that the UNSC respond to the mounting humanitarian crisis on their borders. They argued that the rapid flow of refugees out of Iraq and into their sovereign territory threatened to destabilize their regimes and the entire region. The effects of Iraq’s military repression of its civilians, they argued, were a threat to international peace and security. During deliberations, Turkey informed the Security Council that nearly one million Iraqi refugees were heading toward the Iraqi-Turkish border, arguing that no single country could cope with such a massive influx of destitute people. Turkey described the mounting humanitarian crisis as a “grave threat to the peace and security of the region” both because of “the scale of the human tragedy” and because Iraqi mortar shells were landing on the Turkish side of the border.55 Iran asserted that it expected to receive half a million Iraqi refugees in subsequent days. Echoing the concerns of Turkey, Iran argued that the crisis inside Iraq had international dimensions because it threatened the security of neighbor countries with the potential of further destabilizing the entire region. Iran urged the Security Council to deal “both with the cause of the crisis and with its immediate symptoms.”56
Convinced that the effects of Saddam Hussein’s brutal repression were threatening the sovereignty and security of Iraq’s neighbors, the Security Council passed Resolution 688, which defined the consequences of Iraq’s repression of its civilian population as a threat to international peace and security. Resolution 688 demanded that the Iraqi regime cease violating human rights and international humanitarian law and open its territory to humanitarian relief organizations and military observers.57 As Table 2.1 illustrates, Resolution 688 was the most divisive of the key resolutions passed by the UNSC on the situation in Iraq. It received only ten votes in favor in contrast to unanimous support for Resolution 660. Three members opposed the resolution and two others abstained, reflecting division within the council on the relevance of human rights to Security Council work. Nevertheless, the passage of Resolution 688 was monumental—never before had the Security Council defined the effects of a state’s domestic behavior as a threat to international peace and security. Its passage signaled the growing legitimacy of international human rights norms and an emergent Security Council interest in humanitarianism. Yet the appeal to human rights norms was conditional and nuanced. Nearly all council members, even supporters of Resolution 688, reaffirmed their commitment to state sovereignty and noninterference in the domestic affairs of states. Condemnation of Iraq’s domestic behavior was only possible because the Iraqi regime’s sovereignty had already been suspended by the Security Council in response to Iraq’s blatant disregard for international legal norms, including its violations of sovereignty norms and the ban on the use of force without Security Council authorization. With its sovereign authority suspended, there was no direct conflict between sovereignty norms and human rights norms. Indeed, the protection of human rights in this case reaffirmed and protected the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq’s neighbors that were the referents for Security Council action. Resolution 688 simultaneously redefined regional and international security interests to include the protection of human rights and reaffirmed Article 2.7 of the Charter of the United Nations. The Security Council’s demand for immediate and unlimited access to Iraq’s sovereign territory was revolutionary but possible only because Iraq’s domestic repression had destabilizing effects outside its borders.
References to human rights during Security Council deliberations marked a significant change in council behavior, however tentative and nuanced those affirmations of human rights were. The 5 April meeting record shows that a majority of Security Council members and nonvoting participants articulated a direct link between human rights and their national and international interests. Eighteen of the thirty-one participating states described Iraqi human right violations and the resulting humanitarian tragedy as a threat to international peace and security. These states included nine of the fifteen Security Council members—Austria, Belgium, Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador, France, Russia, the UK, the U.S., and Zimbabwe—and nine nonvoting participants—Canada, Denmark, Germany, Iran, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Pakistan, Sweden, and Turkey. Human rights concerns were relevant, they argued, because of the transborder impact of refugee flows. Ten of these eighteen states simultaneously registered their strong support for Charter principles that protect the domestic jurisdiction of states from external interference, which suggests that it was the extraordinary nature of the Iraq situation that justified Security Council action to address the root causes of regional instability within the borders of Iraq rather than a transformation in the normative standing of the nonintervention principle. Council members emphasized the contingencies of the Iraq situation as justification for this unusual deviation. The representative from Belgium summed it up this way: “As far as Belgium is concerned, such support is in this case