THE UNITED NATIONS,

PEACE AND SECURITY

From Collective Security to

the Responsibility to Protect

RAMESH THAKUR

Reviewed By: Birendra B.C.

Roll No: 2 (1st Semester)
Department of Conflict, Peace and Development Studies.

Submitted To: Chiranjibi Bhandari

Submission date: 3rd February, 2022.

Professional Writer Ramesh Thakur has had diverse and proficient career being a former Senior
Vice – Rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo, Assistant Secretary general of the
United Nations and he is also inclusive at Australian National University as a Director of the
CNND i.e. Center for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament. Coming from the bright
academic field, Thakur has a good vision on the UN working modality and about the overall
system how United Nations have come so far since 1990s to the 2000s with fulfilling its
fundamental roles and responsibilities.
Ramesh Thakur’s book “The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to
the Responsibility to Protect” was published in 2006 A.D by Cambridge University Press
where the book mainly captures the policies and plans from that of collective security in 1945
with the most advanced ideas and perspective of the responsibility to protect (R2P) which is a
global political commitment in order to address its four key concerns to prevent genocide, war
crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Therefore, the book covers all these
changes within the United Nations system up to 2016.
Referencing the book, it has shown the brief details on the United Nations Peace and Security
with easy and formal statements. Though the book cover 14 chapters, each one of the chapters
presents meaningful information and analysis of the organization itself. Talking on the very
first chapter of the book, it concentrates on the international organization for keeping the peace
whereas also targets on the historic peacekeeping and collective security roles of the United
Nations. Part 1 also focuses on the soft and hard security issues where the soft security issues
includes terrorism exercised by various extremist groups, all kinds of trafficking in illegal
substances and weapons, international sanctions, and so on. On other hand, hard security issues
reference to the international terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, United Nations
interventions in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya in the past years. Thakur also highlighted on
unilateral US/NATO interventions in Kosovo or Iraq, without UN sanction, and paraphrases
Mark Antony from Julius Caesar for the Iraq incident: “the good that the coalition may have
done lies interred with the bones of the dead in Iraq…,” adding that the harm they caused lives
on in infamy. Well, the NATO has been leading a peace support operation in Kosovo since
1999 in support of wider international efforts to build peace and stability in the area. The
majority of developing countries were strongly opposed to NATO intervention in Kosovo.
Their strongest opposition was grounded in the violation of the norm of non-intervention
without UN authorization. Most NATO countries insisted that their action did not set a
precedent. The Iraq War proves that claim to have been false: the attempt ‘to limit the reach of
the Kosovo precedent did not prevent the advocates of the Iraq war from invoking it to justify
toppling Saddam’. In fact, the writer has briefly discussed on the soft and hard security issues
to transform the UN into more effective way.

Thakur writes on the human security where the United Nations has been instrumental in the
shift in security thinking in three ways. First, as an incubator and generator of new ideas on
key aspects of human security thinking, most notably through the 1994 Human Development
Report and the UNDP’s Human Development Report. Second, a number of UN organs,
including the humanitarian actors like the High Commission for Refugees under Sadako
Ogata’s leadership, were used as forums for debating, articulating and advocating alternative
conceptions of security by states and non-governmental organizations. The UN was used also
as a forum for forming complex coalitions of civil society and state actors on particular issues
like landmines and international criminal justice. And third, parts of the UN system embedded
the new concept in their operations and practices, again including the UNHCR but also
Secretary- General Kofi Annan in the way in which he pushed the envelope of international
intervention to protect civilians at risk of mass deaths. In doing so, the UN system was a key
legitimizing device for the new concept of human security.

Having said that, the main focus of the book lies in the notion of the Responsibility to Protect
or known as R2P. The Responsibility to Protect reinforced sovereignty by helping states to
meet their existing responsibilities. It offered fresh programmatic opportunities for the UN
system to assist states in preventing the crimes and violations and in protecting affected
populations through capacity building, early warning, and other preventive and protective
measures, rather than simply waiting to respond if they fail. Thakur writes that Rwanda or
Cambodia are the major international communities who has experienced a lot of tragedies
though R2P has been a debatable issue, writer shows a hope that it can be implemented and
successfully.
The chapter is divided into five parts. First, Thakur provided the background to the added
value of the independent international commission. Relatively greater attention is paid after
that to elaborating the concepts of the responsibility to protect and sovereignty as
responsibility. The fourth section alludes briefly to other parts of the Commission’s report,
while the final section considers the tension between UN and great power responsibility to
protect deriving from lawful authority and military capacity. Thakur concluding thoughts
around the five themes identified in the introduction: guidelines on the use of force, the
legality–legitimacy gap, the UN–US relationship, the developing–industrial countries divide
and the rule of law. Thakur finishes with the suggestion that the United Nations has to come to
terms with being both a stage for realism where the cynics can feel vindicated, and an actor
pursuing ineluctable ideals so that the sense of excitement and romantic adventure is not lost.

The fifth and final strand in the fabric of Thakur’s analysis is the central importance of the rule
of law, and hence of a rules-based order centered on the United Nations, as the foundation of a
civilized state of international relations. Established to provide predictability and order in a
world in constant flux, the United Nations – a bridge between power and principles, between
state-based realism and universal idealism – is at once the symbol of humanity’s collective
aspirations for a better life in a safer world for all, a forum for negotiating the terms of
converting the collective aspirations into a common programme of action and the principal
international instrument for the realization of the aspirations and the implementation of the
plans. Thakur says, the world has been a better and safer place with the UN than would have
been the case without it. Its primary purpose is the maintenance of international peace and
security. The incidence of war in human society is as pervasive as the wish for peace is
universal.

Thakur detailed about the peacekeeping operation by UN where Peacekeeping has been one of
the most visible symbols of the UN role in international peace and security. The number of UN
operations increased dramatically after the end of the Cold War as the UN was placed center-
stage in efforts to resolve outstanding conflicts. However, the multiplication of missions was
not always accompanied by coherent policy or integrated military and political responses. The
history of UN peacekeeping is a mirror to the record of the organisation’s own evolution: the
initial high hopes, the many frustrations on the ground and the sometimes-bitter
disappointments in the end. Another thread that is common to both the UN and its peacekeeping
ventures is the failure of states to make full use of the international machinery available to them
for the avoidance of war and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.
Thakur identified the observers of the United Nations into two broad groups: the romantic and
the cynical. For the former, the global organization can do no wrong and is the solution to all
the world’s problems. He says they do not believe it is possible for some nations to have wealth
and jobs while laying waste to the human spirit of many peoples in other parts of the world.
They point to the UN Charter as the moral compass that identifies the international civic with
the global human community. They do not deny the reality of the failures of Bosnia, Rwanda
and Darfur. Rather, they insist that the failures must be seen in context. First, a lot of good is
done even in some ‘failed’ operations, resulting in the saving of hundreds of thousands of lives.
Second, there are many other operations that are acknowledged to be overall, if partially
flawed, successes, such as Namibia and Cambodia. Third, there are other parts of the UN
system that are generally efficient and worthwhile. Most importantly, say the ardent UN
groupies, the failures of the UN are really failures of its member states who find in it a
convenient scapegoat for their own shortcomings, weaknesses and lack of political will.

The book has been perceived from different angle by the critiques because of the good, bad
and ugly information regarding the UN system but Thakur has openly revealed the overall UN
policies and provided a holistic image to the readers on the hopeful of UN works in future.
Thakur writes the record of the United Nations shows a surprising capacity for institutional
innovation, conceptual advances, policy adaptation and organizational learning. This can be
shown with respect to peacekeeping and peace operations, human security and human rights,
sanctions and the use of force, and so on.

Thakur concludes with the statement that the establishment of the United Nations was a small
but symbolically important step on the journey of aggressive, unlawful and unjustified force as
a means of settling quarrels among different members of the human family scattered across the
globe. Thakur reiterates the words of the former UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold in
his reminder that the United Nations was “not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in
order to save us from hell’.

In the book, we can find different footnotes with primary and secondary sources which helps
to take a glance in historical evidences as well. His argues that the UN has adapted to a dynamic
world over seventy years by transitioning from merely collective security (a security
arrangement in which each state accepts a “one for all and all for one” policy) earlier to the
R2P today is logical and the research is exhaustive.
United Nations has been working on to end the humanitarian atrocities and has an important
role to prevent interstate war. This book examines the transformation of UN operations,
analyzing its changing role and structure. Ramesh Thakur asks why, when and how force
may be used, and argues that the growing gulf between legality and legitimacy is evidence
of an eroded sense of international community. He also highlights the tension between the
United States, with its capacity to use force and project power, and the United Nations, as
the center of the international law enforcement system. He asserts the central importance of
the rule of law and a rules-based order focused on the United Nations as the foundation of a
civilized system of international relations. This book will be of interest to students of the
United Nations and international organizations in politics, law and international relations
departments, as well as policymakers in governmental and non-governmental international
organizations.
References:
i. Thakur, R. (2006). The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective
Security to the Responsibility to Protect.

ii. Thakur, R. (2006). Peace operations and the UN–US relationship. In the United
Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to
Protect (pp. 48-68).

iii. Thakur, R. (2006). Soft security perspectives. In the United Nations, Peace and
Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect (pp. 69-70).

iv. Thakur, R. (2006). Hard security issues. In the United Nations, Peace and Security:
From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect (pp. 157-158).

v. Thakur, R. (2006). Conclusion: At the crossroads of ideals and reality. In the United
Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to
Protect (pp. 343-369).

vi. Banerjee, A. (2017). "Book Review of "The United Nations, Peace and Security:
From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect" by Ramesh Thakur.
Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.7290/ijns030115.