The UN and the Global South, 1945 and 2015 by Thomas G. Weiss & Pallavi Roy

Author:Thomas G. Weiss & Pallavi Roy [Weiss, Thomas G. & Roy, Pallavi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138222922
Goodreads: 32150755
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

Sub-regionalism, global order and Arab conflicts

While the League of Arab States had minimally engaged in the debate of ideas at the UN,28 opting swiftly to focus on its neighbourhood issues, the organisation has developed stronger ties with the world body on security matters. This followed naturally from the UN’s Chapter VIII of enforcement through regional organisations and the League’s initial focus on these questions. Tracing an arc from the 1948 Arab–Israeli conflict by way of the 1956, 1967 and 1973 wars, as well the peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, to the 1990 Gulf war to the 2011 Libyan and Syrian crises, the UN was systematically present, with a continued engagement with the Arab League (and at times joint missions, as was the case in Syria).

Cooperation reached its apex at three important moments: the occasion of the 1990–91 Gulf war; the 2011 intervention in Libya; and the onset of the civil war in Syria in 2011. Following the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Arab League – which was initially divided in its reaction to this event – and the UN joined efforts to adopt an economic embargo against Baghdad, followed by a military operation led by the USA. Also of consequence were several missions throughout the 1990s to keep the country under economic and political containment, notably through the Oil-for-Food Programme and the missions of the UN Special Commission on the Elimination of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Similarly endorsing a resolution initially adopted by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the Arab League took the matter of Libya to the UN Security Council, which led to Resolutions 1970 and 1973 that authorised intervention against the Muammar Qaddafi regime and a military operation led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Finally, in the wake of the uprising against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, the Arab League led a joint observer mission with the UN to monitor the situation in Syria in late 2012 and early 2013.

This association was characterised by a partnership focused on military operations and did not necessarily achieve successful results. Moreover, the cooperation hid the fact that the Arab League itself was, throughout, playing catch-up to sub-regional developments. In addition, the experience confirms the argument that, in spite of the claim that regional organisations have to play an important role in conflict resolution, the record of a number of regional bodies is often not particularly satisfactory.29 As seen earlier, part of this can be traced to the fact that the Arab League has been ‘a conservative stronghold advocating the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of its member states…[and] it did not launch any significant policy within the scope of member-controlled areas’.30

In 1976 the Arab League had set up an Arab Deterrent Force (ADF) with a mandate to help end the strife in Lebanon;31 and in 1989 the Taif Agreement, which ended the Lebanese civil war, was negotiated diplomatically by Saudi Arabia and Syria. The 1990–91 Gulf war lastingly reoriented the scene and introduced the militarisation of the League’s approach to diplomacy.

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