Was the 1991 Gulf War a successful exercise in collective security?

The Gulf War was heralded by many analysts as setting a new paradigm in post-Cold War international relations. No longer was the world to be subject to the forces of balance of power, with the two superpowers engaged in a face-off with one another that carried the threat of nuclear annihilation at any moment. Instead, a new concept of international order seemed applicable, one based on the international society approach that places weight on the importance of international conventions, laws, and treaties, but more than this one that incorporated the idea of collective security, a system whereby nations will co-operate with one another to deter and if necessary, punish aggression, thereby promoting greater stability and international co-operation than in the realist world. Retrospective analysis and subsequent events have instead promoted the view that the Gulf War was a unique event, and that a collective security system is as unlikely to emerge now as it was in the Cold War. Whether or not this view is excessively pessimistic is the topic of this investigation.

The idea of collective security is not new, and attempts to set up such a system have been made in the past, most notably by the League of Nations in the aftermath of W.W.I; President Wilson was a strong supporter of it at the time. The key features of such a system are that the governments of all states would join together to prevent any of their number from using coercion to gain advantage (and especially with regard to the conquering of one state by another). Thus any attempt to execute forceful policies that would fundamentally disturb peace and security would be treated by all governments as an attack on them all; any aggressor would realise this, calculate that they would not be able to withstand the combined force (either diplomatic or military) of the rest of the world, and would be forced to resolve their disputes peacefully. The importance of force is highlighted by Claude: in contrast to balance of power analysis, which depends on subtle calculations of equilibrium that could be misjudged and thereby lead to catastrophe, in the collective security system, the preponderance of power would be available to all nations for defensive purposes, but no nation for offensive purposes. In this way, aggression would be deterred without concentrating power on any state or group of states that would be tempted to use it for their own purposes. He also illuminates other differences between the two hypotheses. Firstly, balance of power is a system of competitive alliances, whereas collective security implies a general, universal alliance and avoids the entanglement of organised rivalries. Secondly, balance of power looks primarily outwards, with alliances being formed in response to external threats. Collective security is in many ways an enclosed system because it is assumed to be encompassing on most states, but also because it provides security for its members against any of their number who might contemplate aggression. Mearsheimer also draws another distinction between the two; the proper management of military power is a crucial consideration, and by achieving this through institutions, states' trust of one another is increased, and the simple zero-sum trade-off of security that is a feature of the balance of power system is overcome. Both provide security, but in balance of power, this is a coincidental (but also inevitable) result of the system, whereas for collective security, this is co-operative and an explicit goal (in balance of power, states are competing for security).

Do the events surrounding the Gulf War then provide justification for the belief that the actions taken were indicative of such a collective security system? As was alluded to, at the time it was thought that they did, but this view has since been revised. Parsons' narrative describes the reaction of member states of the UN to the invasion, and the successive resolutions that were passed that indicated that there was an almost universal consensus agreeing with the illegality and unacceptability of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait (UN Resolutions 660 and 662). The rush to bolster Saudi Arabia's defences against encroachment by Iraqi forces under Operation Desert Shield was coupled with resolutions passed by the Security Council imposing economic sanctions on Iraq and mandating a naval blockade be established to supervise compliance (Resolution 665). As it became clear that these would not be sufficient on their own, and successive rounds of diplomacy failed to have any effect on the Iraqi position, the Security Council turned towards considering formally authorising the use of force to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait and enforcing compliance with all the previous resolutions. This action had not been taken since North Korean troops invaded South Korea in 1950. Article 42 of the UN charter provided for military units to be used to carry out such operations, but other provisions such as the direction of the forces by a Military Staff Committee (MSC) comprising the permanent members of the Security Council to supervise the operations had not previously been used, and the question was whether they were to be activated were any hostilities to occur. In the end, they were not, and indeed the UN had little impact on the conduct of the war or the terms on which it might be concluded, for several reasons. Firstly, the US and other nations that would supply the military forces were not prepared to hand over control of operational procedures to any outside body, let alone one that had never met before and would be working on the basis of a fifty year old document. The unpredictability and uncertainties of multi-national committees such as the MSC were unacceptable to domestic political leaders. Secondly, and in any case, they felt that the UN had enough moral (not to mention legal) justification to take action in this, the most clear-cut case of aggression by one state against another in the organisation's history. Taylor and Groom maintain that the naval blockade provided for in Resolution 665 was going to happen even if the resolution was not - the question arises as to whether this was the case with Resolution 678, which provided for the use of "all necessary means ... [to] restore international peace and security in the area." This is obviously impossible to answer definitively, but if the feeling among the British and American leaders is as Taylor and Groom maintain, i.e. that they felt the dawn of a new era of liberal internationalism, then this provides evidence for thinking that unilateral action was a possibility. There would also be the worry that the UN's credibility would be undermined greatly if it failed to act in such a situation, where there was so much in its favour in terms of international backing, the clear breach of international legal and moral codes by Iraq, and indeed the strategic geography of the theatre of operations where the engagements would take place, the open Arabian desert being massively more straightforward a location to fight a war than the jungles of South-East Asia or the mountains of the Balkans, as Parsons rightly points out. Finally, there is the oil issue to be dealt with. As Ayoob puts it, Washington used the UN to achieve its own objectives in the Gulf (namely to ensure a stable and plentiful flow of oil) under the pretext of ensuring a new world order where aggression would not be tolerated. The two coincident factors that allowed the war to take place were the perceptions that vital national interests were at stake, and the US' accession to unipolar status. This criticism is cynical and unnecessarily harsh, but does highlight the importance of the fact that the control of one sixth of the world's oil reserves was in doubt. However, it seems hard to believe that Western leaders would allow the transfer of such large oil reserves to any nation, let alone one lead by a dictator who had demonstrated his brutality numerous times before. Secondly, even if oil was not involved, it seems to this author that the weight of feeling against the invasion would have been enough for military action to have gone ahead (at least in this theatre) without national interests being directly threatened: Kuwait was a pro-Western and friendly government that needed assistance. In President Bush's words, "this was not about oil, it was about naked aggression, pure and simple."

There were undoubtedly many coincident factors that explain the smoothness and inevitability of the action that this author remembers from the time. There was an anti-Iraqi international mood, stemming from the fact that the sovereignty of Kuwait had been flagrantly breached. The military superiority of the Coalition, enhanced by the friendly terrain, lead to and fed off favourable domestic political considerations about committing troops to such a venture. The US had the military means to defeat the occupation force, reaping as it was at this time the benefits from the period of elevated defense spending under Reagan throughout the 1980s. The techniques for managing and co-operating with different armed units from many different armed forces had taken from those that were pre-existing under NATO as they provided a convenient framework for consultation between the Allies.

It is the preponderance of such factors that explain both the success of the Gulf War and failure since to follow up on this with similar operations in other conflicts. A true collective security system is one in which, according to Claude, states identify any breach of international order as against their self-interest, and will thus act against it. Conversely, a balance of power system allows the luxury of picking which conflict a country wishes to get involved in. Clearly, the former does not exist yet, but neither does a pure balancing world any more. Wilenski argues that moves could be made toward a true collective security community by increasing the UN's credibility of deterring aggression, through structural changes that would not only encourage peace-making diplomatic channels available to the UN, but would also allow a pool of armed forces to be continually available to that organisation to back up its demands with the constant threat of military force. Taylor and Groom also highlight the importance of the UN being given impartial intelligence information on which to proceed. In the end, the Gulf War was less a success for the UN than for its members, and if a collective security system is to become a reality, it would require that the UN not only legitimated, but also directed the use of force on its behalf, a prospect that at this time seems unlikely to be given a very warm welcome in the states that would have to contribute the bulk of the armed forces required. Perhaps then Mearsheimer's caution when he claims that institutions have little impact on state's behaviour, and thus hold little promise for increasing stability in the post-Cold War world is, whilst undoubtedly sobering, at the same time justified by events since the Coalition triumph in the Gulf.