Conflict, the UN Security Council and NATO
Why conflicts start, how fifteen countries decide whether to act and why one of five can stop them, and what a defensive alliance can do that a near-universal body cannot.
Use it, the way the marks are given
Free interactive practice at using the material, which is what the marks are for.
Start revising freeWhat you'll cover
Two bodies, two different jobs
This topic covers why conflicts happen and what two international bodies do about them. Before anything else, get the two bodies straight, because confusing them is the most common error. **The United Nations** was founded in **1945**, after the Second World War, to maintain international peace and security. Almost every country in the world belongs, and its **Security Council** is the body with primary responsibility for peace. **NATO** was founded in **1949**, early in the Cold War. It is a **military alliance** of North American and European states, formed for collective defence of its own members. **So they are not rivals doing the same job.** One acts on behalf of the international community; the other defends a particular group of members. An answer that treats them as competitors has gone wrong in its first sentence.
Why conflicts start
The specification names five kinds of cause. Most real conflicts involve more than one.
Match each cause to its situation
- Two neighbouring states each increase their armed forces, each saying they are only responding to the other
- A region with its own language and history demands the right to govern itself, and the government refuses
- Two countries dispute control of an area containing valuable mineral deposits
- A leader facing serious criticism at home takes a hard line in a foreign dispute, and domestic support rises
- The desire for security: each side's defensive step looks like a threat from the other side
- The desire for independence: a group wants self-government and the state will not give up territory
- Economic factors: control of a resource that only one of them can have
- A leader's quest for popularity: the dispute is doing work at home rather than abroad
War for the sake of popularity
Why does the specification list a leader's quest for popularity as a cause of conflict in its own right?
- Because a conflict can serve a purpose inside a country rather than outside it: opposition tends to quieten and support to rally, so a leader in trouble at home may have reasons to escalate abroad
- Because all wars are started for this reason
- Because leaders profit financially from wars
- Because wars are generally popular with the public
How one country blocks fifteen
The Security Council has **15 members**. Five are **permanent** - China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States - and ten are elected by the wider UN membership for two-year terms. **A substantive resolution needs 9 of the 15 votes in favour. But it also needs no permanent member to vote against it.** **That is the veto.** Any one of the five can stop a resolution regardless of how many countries support it. Fourteen votes in favour and one permanent member against means the resolution fails. **Why it exists, and why it is criticised**, are two halves of the same answer. It was built in so that the most powerful states would join and stay, having watched the League of Nations fail without them. The cost is that the Council cannot act where a permanent member does not want it to, and that limitation is designed in rather than accidental.
What the Security Council can do
Select the TWO accurate statements about how the Security Council tries to maintain peace.
- It can mediate between the parties, impose sanctions such as trade or arms embargoes, deploy peacekeeping missions, and authorise the use of force
- It has no standing army of its own, so any force it deploys is contributed by member states
- It commands its own permanent army, ready to deploy at short notice
- It can act without any resolution if a majority of members privately agree
The UN and NATO compared
Setting them side by side is the quickest way to stop treating them as rivals.
Match each NATO term to what it means
- Article 5
- The North Atlantic Council
- The Military Committee
- Decision by consensus
- The collective defence commitment: an armed attack on one member is treated as an attack on all of them
- The principal political decision-making body, on which every member state is represented
- The senior military authority, which advises that political body on military matters
- No vote is taken; a decision is reached only when no member objects, so every member can hold it up
Peace and its machinery
The United Nations was founded in _____, and its Security Council has _____ members, of whom five are permanent. Any one of those five can block a resolution by using its _____. NATO, founded in _____, is a defensive alliance whose _____ commits its members to treat an attack on one as an attack on all. Its principal political decision-making body is the _____, which decides by consensus.
What Article 5 actually says
Article 5 is the heart of the NATO treaty. Which statement about it is accurate?
- It commits members to treat an armed attack on one as an attack on all, and it has been invoked once in NATO's history, after the attacks on the United States in September 2001
- It is invoked routinely whenever a member is involved in any conflict
- It gives NATO authority over United Nations decisions
- It means every member must automatically send troops to fight
Judging the Security Council
**"How effective is the United Nations Security Council at maintaining peace? (12 marks)"** "The Council's record is genuinely mixed, and the two sides of it point at the same underlying cause. **Sierra Leone** is the case usually cited as a success. A large peacekeeping mission was deployed with the backing of the permanent members, combatants were disarmed, and the country returned to stable elections. Where the Council agrees and resources follow, it can do a great deal. **Rwanda** is the case usually cited as a failure. A UN mission was already present when the crisis began, but its mandate and resources were inadequate for what was happening, and the Council did not strengthen it. Member states were unwilling to commit troops, and the mission was reduced rather than reinforced. **The common factor is not the Council's intentions but its dependence.** It has no army of its own, so it can only act when member states supply the forces, and it cannot act at all against the opposition of a permanent member. Its effectiveness therefore tracks the political will of its most powerful members rather than the severity of the crisis." **Two things to copy.** The answer explains each case by what the INSTITUTION did or failed to do, not by judging any country. And it finds a single explanation linking success and failure, which is what lifts an answer above a list of one good example and one bad one.
Facts drill: UN and NATO
Five questions on the facts this topic expects you to have exactly. Three lives.
From talking to force
Put the Security Council's responses in order, from the least forceful to the most.
- Mediation: helping the parties negotiate, without compelling anyone
- Sanctions: trade restrictions or arms embargoes, applying pressure without troops
- A peacekeeping mission, usually deployed with the consent of the parties involved
- Authorising the use of force, which member states then carry out
Why the Council did not act
A summary of a Security Council failure. Tap the TWO details that explain it as an INSTITUTIONAL failure rather than a matter of intentions.
- A United Nations mission was already present in the country when the crisis began.
- Its mandate did not permit it to act on the scale the situation required, and the Council did not change that mandate
- . Reports reached New York and were discussed.
- Member states were unwilling to contribute the troops any larger mission would have needed, and the UN has no forces of its own
- . The mission was subsequently reduced in size rather than reinforced.
A crisis reaches the Council
A conflict breaks out and is brought before the Security Council. Work through what happens.
- A resolution authorising a peacekeeping mission is drafted. Thirteen members support it, one permanent member votes against. What happens?
- A revised resolution passes. The Council now needs peacekeepers. Where do they come from?
- A student writes that "this shows the UN is weaker than NATO". How would you improve that?
Your turn: how effective are they?
Explain how the UN Security Council and NATO try to maintain peace, and assess how effective each is.
- Name two causes of conflict and explain how each can lead to it
- Explain how the Security Council reaches a decision, including what the veto does
- Explain what Article 5 commits NATO members to, and how NATO's decision-making differs from the Council's
- Assess the effectiveness of ONE of the two bodies, using a success and a failure, and give a single explanation that accounts for both