Peace be with you, and welcome to the Washington State Model United Nations of 2006! My name is Alex Kim and I will be the chair of the Security Council this year. This is my third year of being a WASMUN staff member – last year I chaired the Commission on Human Rights, and the year before that, I moderated the European Union. This is my third year at the University, and it’s also my third year in the Department of Anthropology as an honors student. After college, I’m interested in the Teach for America program and later either attending graduate school in anthropology or going to seminary to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. We’ll see what happens - let me know if anything I’ve said interests you, I’d love to talk about it.
Tony Benn said, "All war represents a failure of diplomacy." We see conflict all around us, and especially in our present age, it seems that diplomacy is failing more and more often. Despite this, young people like you and I are volunteering our time and energies towards understanding the diplomatic process and getting a taste for cross-cultural understanding on a level that most people never think to consider. Everyone I work with here at WASMUN is committed to providing a world-class simulation where well-prepared delegates can truly get a feel for internationalism at its core.
My pledge to you is an authentic and rigorous simulation of the Security Council – I love drama, I love conflict, I love politics, and I love the Model United Nations because it blends all three. I want you to be able to focus on the issues and representing your countries – I’ll take care of the committee itself. What I need you to take care of is coming to the conference prepared – this means knowing, inside and out, the issues the world is dealing with and your country’s stance on them.
This document is not meant to be a comprehensive reference. It is meant merely to get you thinking about the topics we will discuss, and to give you a foundation upon which to begin your research and build your positions. Please read through it carefully and take note of specific instructions. As leaders, I hold you to a higher standard, and that means I expect you to read directions fully.
That said, I am of course more than happy to help you in any way I can. If you ever have any questions or comments, please feel free to e-mail me at . I check my e-mail religiously – I’ll be sure to respond to you.
Once again, thank you for taking the first step. Here’s to a fun conference!
Yours truly,
Alex Kim
Chair
I. Introduction to the United Nations Security Council
Sixty years ago, humanity was just beginning to scrape itself off of the ground after having survived the two World Wars – hardly any part of the planet had not felt the reach of these unprecedented expressions of our destructive capability, culminating in the first and so far only use of atomic weapons in combat. The mark of war, the vision of violence, the memory of malice was branded into the minds of this generation.
Just prior to this moment, Allied leaders, sensing a turning of the tide and the coming downfall of Hitler and his Axis, began meeting to discuss the post-war world order. American President Franklin Roosevelt first used the term “united nations” to refer to the countries whose soldiers were fighting alongside his own. In late 1944, diplomats from the Allied states met in Washington to elaborate the notion of a peace-time organization that could mediate the relations between the nations of the world. This meeting, called the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, outlined some initial ideas for the purposes of this new “League of Nations” – to maintain peace and security, to develop better relations between states, and to foster broader cooperation in dealing with economic and social problems, among others.
It was at Dumbarton Oaks that the idea and structure of a Security Council first emerged – it was a way for this hypothetical organization, elephantine in stature, to act quickly on matters that needed to be dealt with faster than a 150-member assembly probably could. It was at Dumbarton Oaks that the idea of five permanent members was first put forth – incidentally, the only nations present at Dumbarton Oaks were the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and the Soviet Union. The document emerging from the conference made specific provisions for each of these nations’ permanent seats on the Council – “and, in due course, France.”
About a year later, this time on the other side of the United States in San Francisco, the representatives of fifty nations signed the draft U.N. Charter and finally, the memory of the war that killed 4% of all Homo sapiens still freshly hot in their minds, the people of the nations of Earth brought into existence the United Nations on October 24, 1945. The preamble to the Charter clearly reveals the heavy but hopeful heart with which the remainder of the document follows:
“WE THE PEOPLES of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small…”
Chapter V of the Charter describes the Security Council – this section differs little from the original drafts established at Dumbarton Oaks, though the original eleven seats on the council were later expanded to today’s fifteen seats. The five permanent members (U.S., U.K., Russia, France, and China) each hold veto power, meaning that any one of these nations can, by itself, defeat a resolution or action of the Security Council. Usually, the threat of a veto is enough to cause the rest of the Council to go back to the drawing board.
The ten non-permanent members are elected to the Council by the General Assembly, which considers the Council to be acting on its behalf. The Charter calls for the non-permanent members to be elected with “due regard… to equitable geographical distribution.” By custom, the General Assembly elects five non-permanent members from Asia and Africa, two from Latin America, one from Eastern Europe, and two from Western Europe or anywhere else not already mentioned.
The Security Council exists primarily to respond to breaches of international peace and security – in all likelihood, the General Assembly, due to its size and infrequent meetings, is not as able to act with haste. The tools and powers that can be used by the Security Council in order to do this are laid out in Chapters VI and VII of the Charter – unfortunately, it has never been quite as simple as following the instructions. The practical interpretation of the words of these two chapters has been the subject of an entire field of academics: international law. Different nations have different views on what exactly the Council can, can’t, should, or shouldn’t do. In the past, the Security Council has established trade embargoes (to protest apartheid in South Africa), forced economic sanctions (against Libya and Iraq, for example), sent peacekeeping forces (Somalia, Rwanda, East Timor), authorized force (in Kuwait to expel Saddam Hussein’s invasion force), and set up tribunals (to investigate and try war crimes in the Balkans).
The measures of the Security have been varyingly successful – East Timor, with the U.N.’s vigilance, is now a fledgling independent democracy, while the 1994 genocides of Rwanda are still, for many, symbolic of the Council’s impotence. Criticism of the Council, both its actions and its structure, abound from all angles. Some view the Council as toothless and gutless, unable to enforce its own resolutions and unwilling to challenge those who would defy it. Others view the Council as the privy of the powerful, where domination and dictation by permanent members is institutionalized by the very way the Council is set up. Recently, the invasion and conquest of Iraq, unauthorized by the Security Council, has hung very large questions in the air above the Council’s chamber in New York: these questions concern the legitimacy of a Council crafted, as it were, by the victors of an old war. Should such a Council really have the authority to determine the military policies of sovereign nations? It seems the United States, in its appointment of John Bolton as U.N. Ambassador, knows the answer: no.
And yet, with all the debates over authority, legitimacy, and efficacy swirling like a storm around these fifteen unassuming seats, the Security Council remains the only body like itself – a round table where all nations are welcome to attempt resolving the irresolvable. How the Security Council, and indeed the entire United Nations, defines itself in the new millennium depends on the dialogues concerning the questions posed above. These dialogues must occur all while painful conflicts and injustices throughout the world continue to bubble and boil, regardless of whether the Council does anything or not. Clearly, the situation is complex and the solution far in the future. Nevertheless, we should try to imagine how searing the mark of war must have been for the generation of World War II that they would create an impossible organization and bequeath it to us. We, who lack the memory of conflict and suffering except for what is blandly described in textbooks, will decide what this inheritance means for those who follow.
II. Current Controversies
The WASMUN Security Council has an open agenda – this means that rather than the normal routine of having two topics to discuss, we will choose our own topics and work towards resolutions on those. Hopefully, you will bring to the committee a very good knowledge of world affairs and how your country would view them – otherwise, we’re just not going to have a very fun time.
Now, the natural tendency is usually to gravitate towards the two big issues: the reconstruction and security of Iraq and the proliferation of nuclear technology in North Korea. In recent times, no two countries have been talked about more with more worry and concern from everyone in the conversation. I will not, nor am willing to, discuss the issues surrounding Iraq and North Korea because I would expect that anyone assigned to the Security Council, the most advanced of all WASMUN committees, should already be very familiar with these regions of the world.
Our committee could easily spend the entire conference discussing these topics, and it would probably be very engaging for everyone. That said, however, I want to encourage you to explore some lesser-known issues which also pose huge challenges for the international community, at least today as I write this.
Kashmir is a mountainous region that straddles the northern border of India and the eastern border of Pakistan – in its rather uncomfortable position between two nuclear powers, it is a source of continual tension. A “line of control” was established in 1972, ending the first war between Pakistan and India following their mutual independences from the British Empire. This would probably be fine, except that in the part of Kashmir administered by India, a large majority of the population is Muslim. Some Kashmiris have been working politically to either be joined to Pakistan or to gain independence altogether. Other Kashmiris have been working violently to accomplish these ends, and this has been the source of the Indian government’s irritation, to put it lightly. Pakistan maintains that Kashmir-under-Pakistan is what the people really want, while India would like the international community to recognize the “line of control” as an official border. Currently, U.N. peacekeepers monitor the line of control.
Syria (at the time of this writing) is fast becoming the center of global diplomatic attention. On Valentine’s Day 2005, the former Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri, was traveling in a beachfront motorcade when a truck filled with explosives blew up nearby: Hariri was killed. He had been a critic of Syrian involvement in Lebanese affairs and had recently resigned due to differences with the Lebanese president, who was officially backed by Syria. As the police-work proceeded, what was initially thought of as an act of terrorism was uncovered to be an assassination, and the U.N. began an inquiry into who was responsible – this inquiry was short and inconclusive, and the Lebanese government protested, demanding a longer, more comprehensive investigation (with U.S. support). Finally, in late October 2005, the U.N. report was completed – and it directly implicated Syria in the killings. Additionally, the report found that some Lebanese officials also participated in the plot. The permanent members are now split on what to do from here: some are even threatening economic sanctions.
Iran has recently been another focus of attention (as if more were needed) in the Middle East due to its development of nuclear energy. In September 2002, Russian technicians helped Iran to build a nuclear reactor despite complaints from the United States. Since then, Iran has run into conflicts throughout the international community concerning its nuclear program. The nuclear energy monitoring arm of the U.N., the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), began investigating whether Iran was simply developing nuclear energy or whether its ultimate aim was weaponry. About a year later, under pressure from the diplomatic community, Iran put its uranium-enrichment activities on hold and allowed IAEA inspectors into its facilities – they found no evidence of weapons development and enrichment continued. In mid-2004, Iran came under fire because it was not cooperating fully with continuing U.N. inspections of its nuclear facilities – this became the source of heightened tension around Iran. The European Union was able to strike a deal with Iran wherein Iran would stop its enrichment program, but the deal was temporary only. In April 2005, Iran resumed enrichment again, and newly elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vehemently said that Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy is “inalienable.” The E.U. and the U.S. have continued to express concerns about Iran’s nuclear intentions – the Security Council (at the time of this writing) is due to discuss the matter shortly.