China in the UN Security Council Decision-Making on Iraq: Conflicting Understandings, Competing Preferences, 1990-2002 by Suzanne Xiao Yang

Author:Suzanne Xiao Yang [Yang, Suzanne Xiao]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780415617697
Google: EAkgARUG2YgC
Goodreads: 12576780
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-01-15T07:03:47+00:00

6 China and the UN sanctions regime against Iraq, 1991–2002

The UN’s sanctions regime in Iraq from 1991 to 2002 began with high hopes for a revival of the collective security mechanisms envisaged in the UN Charter. The comprehensive sanctions imposed on Iraq, as set out in SCR 661 (6 August 1990), were aimed at forcing Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. This sanctions regime was the first ever established by the UN Security Council in the post-Cold War era with the intention of reversing aggression by one sovereign state against another.1 Nevertheless, the sanctions policy in Iraq was characterized by constant disagreement among the P-5 about the indefinite duration and rigidity of the sanctions regime, about its relaxation, alteration, suspension and lifting, and compromises between humanitarian concerns and the strategic goals of disarming Iraq. The policy registered a rather mixed record of success and failure.

With the adoption of the cease-fire resolution SCR 687 (3 April 1991), the sanctions policy evolved as a stick and carrot (the removal of it) used by the Security Council to make weapons inspections work. As the Council moved forcefully to use sanctions as a measure to enforce its mandate to maintain international peace and security by disarming Iraq, the lack of precision of the sanctions processes yielded adverse side effects causing severe humanitarian suffering among the innocent and vulnerable population in Iraq. In fact, the lack of preparedness for the wide-ranging impacts of these measures paradoxically undermined another UN mandate, which is to enhance the human condition. Added to this quagmire was the fact that the high compliance bar the Security Council had set for Iraq produced little political compliance on the Iraqi part.2 Moreover, despite all the mechanisms the Council had for containing Iraq, Hussein’s government found it possible to turn the sanctions regime to its advantage, both in consolidating domestic support for the government in defying the sanctions and in creating black markets for the proceeds of oil exports, leaving the vulnerable sections of Iraqi society to bear the dire consequences of the sanctions. The Council had to launch the Oil-for-Food Programme to alleviate the humanitarian suffering in Iraq.

Despite a number of efforts made to design new modalities and to reform the sanctions regime from the mid-1990s,3 the policy was subject to legal controversies and marked by power struggles among the P-5 members. As Malone observed, ‘[t]he sanctions regime against Iraq stands as a paradigm of both the virtues and vices of the sanctions approach’ (Malone 2006: 134). Over the decade, the sanctions policy of the Security Council was increasingly accused of becoming a tool of the USA and, to a lesser extent, the UK, to achieve their foreign policy goal of regime change in Iraq (Cortright and Lopez 2004: 175–76).

New to China as it was to every other state, at the outset the UN sanctions policy won wide support including China’s. With the growing division within the Council, however, China leaned towards sharing perceptions and positions more with Russia and France. These countries

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