UN

B

Korea

Korea, which had been under Japanese control since 1905, was divided after World War II at the 38th parallel in the Korean Peninsula. Separate governments were formed—the one in the north sponsored by the USSR and the other by the United States. UN efforts to unify Korea through nationwide free elections failed. When North Korean forces attacked the South on June 25, 1950, the Security Council declared the attack a breach of the peace and called for withdrawal of North Korean troops north of the 38th parallel. In two other resolutions, the council established a UN command under US auspices and asked member nations to provide military units to assist in repelling the armed attack on the Republic of Korea.

Two elements of the Korean case were unusual. The first was the USSR's absence from the Security Council. Six months earlier, the Soviet representative had left the council in protest against the continued presence of the Nationalist Chinese delegate in the seat designated for China, despite the defeat of the Nationalists and the establishment of a Communist government on the mainland. The USSR thus was not present to veto the council's actions against the Soviet-sponsored North Korean regime. When the Soviet delegate returned to the council in July, he declared the Korean action illegal because it was undertaken without the agreement of all the permanent council members. The United States responded that the issue had been decided with the agreement of those permanent members who were present and voting. In this argument, the USSR took a “strict” interpretation, and the United States a “broad” interpretation, of the charter's provisions, each motivated by political interests.

A second unusual element in the Korean case was the establishment of a UN command that was, in effect, a United States military command, composed of troops from 16 member nations and the Republic of Korea. Because no previous agreements had been reached to provide military forces to the UN, the Security Council took ad hoc action by asking the United States to use its already established military structure as the base for UN action. Otherwise, the UN would have been unable to act quickly and expeditiously.

The conflict continued for more than three years; on July 27, 1953, an armistice was signed. By the beginning of the 21st century, the country was still divided despite acceptance by both sides of the principle of reunification. The Korean question has remained on the General Assembly agenda. Resolutions have been passed urging the two sides to replace the long armistice with a stable peace. In 1991 North Korea and South Korea were admitted to the UN.

One major consequence of the Korean conflict was the “Uniting for Peace” resolution. After the USSR returned to the Security Council, the United States presented to the General Assembly a resolution authorizing the assembly to consider cases that threaten peace when a veto has prevented council action. This “Uniting for Peace” resolution, adopted on November 3, 1950, made explicit an expansion of General Assembly authority in matters of peace and security.

C

UN Peacekeeping Forces

Since the early 1950s the UN role in maintaining peace and security around the world has expanded. UN-sponsored forces have been especially active in areas where decolonization has led to instability. In many cases, the withdrawal of the former colonial power left a political vacuum, and a struggle for domination ensued. In response, the UN developed a strategy of what Secretary-General Hammarskjöld called “preventive diplomacy”—the deployment of peacekeeping forces with two main purposes: to separate antagonists, providing time and opportunity for negotiation, and to keep local conflicts from spreading over an entire region. In 1988 the peacekeeping forces were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

UN peacekeeping operations have been carried out in the Middle East since 1956 and in Cyprus since 1964. In Africa a force was maintained in the Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) from 1960 to 1964; since then, peacekeeping missions have been sent to Angola, Western Sahara, South Africa, and Mozambique. In 1992 the UN began a major operation in Somalia, involving about 30,000 troops by early 1993, to provide protection for humanitarian operations—particularly food deliveries to areas of famine. Two other major areas of UN involvement in the early 1990s were Cambodia, where the UN monitored elections, and the former Yugoslavia, where civil war among Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in the republics of Croatia and Bosnia has left tens of thousands of people dead and millions homeless. Under the rules originally formulated by Hammarskjöld, the great powers were excluded from UN peacekeeping forces, preventing them from advancing their own interests under cover of the UN flag. With the end of the Cold War, British and French troops had prominent roles in the former Yugoslavia, and a large US force was initially sent to pacify Somalia. In 1992 a contingent of Japanese troops joined the Cambodian operation. In September 1999 an Australian-led force was deployed to restore order in Timor-Leste, in South East Asia, after the territory's overwhelming vote to support independence from Indonesia had led to weeks of violence.

D

Middle East

The first UN peacekeeping force was organized in the Middle East in response to the Suez crisis of 1956. The Middle East had been an area of bitter rivalries since 1948, when hostilities broke out between the Arab countries in the region and the new nation of Israel, created in accordance with a UN plan that partitioned Palestine into two separate states, one Jewish and one Arab. In 1949 a UN mediator, acting under the authority of the Security Council, negotiated a series of armistice agreements between Israel, on the one hand, and Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, on the other. A United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) was formed to help the parties supervise the terms of the agreements; for a time the region remained in a state of uneasy truce.

D

1

Suez Crisis

Fighting broke out again on October 29, 1956, when Israel moved troops into the Sinai Peninsula, forcing Egyptian soldiers back to the Suez Canal. Earlier that year, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized the canal, evoking concern in Great Britain and France that the canal might be closed to their shipping. The Middle East situation was complicated greatly when the British and the French attacked Egypt on October 31, landing forces in the Suez Canal area. Britain and France also vetoed a Security Council resolution that called on Israel to withdraw its forces behind the 1949 armistice line.

Under the authority of the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, the General Assembly, in a series of resolutions, urged an end to hostilities and set up a United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) to supervise compliance by all parties. By late December, British and French forces had withdrawn from Egypt, and by March 1957 arrangements had been made for the withdrawal of Israeli troops. The first UNEF unit arrived in Egypt on November 15, 1956, and by February 1957 some 6,000 troops from ten member states were positioned in three zones: along the frontier between Egypt and Israel; in the Gaza Strip; and near the Strait of Tiran to monitor passage into the Gulf of Aqaba, which was vital for Israeli shipping.

D

2

Further Hostilities

In May 1967 UNEF was withdrawn at the request of Egypt, and on June 5 Israel launched what became known as the Six-Day War, a coordinated attack on all fronts to secure stronger defensive positions along its borders. By June 10 Israel occupied the Sinai and the Gaza Strip, the territory on the West Bank of the River Jordan, and part of the Golan Heights on the Syrian border. The Security Council on November 22 unanimously approved Resolution 242, setting down a series of principles for securing peace in the region. In essence, the resolution proposed that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories in return for recognition of its independence by the Arab states and the establishment of secure borders.

Hostilities broke out once again in October 1973, when Egypt attacked Israeli positions in the Sinai, and Syria struck against those along the Golan Heights. The Security Council, after calling for a ceasefire, again urged the parties to seek a broader settlement of their dispute by implementing Resolution 242. In the Sinai, a new peacekeeping force, UNEF II, was set up to patrol a buffer zone between Israeli and Egyptian troops. By March 1974 both sides had disengaged. In the north, along the Golan Heights, sporadic fighting continued until June, when a United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) was put into place. However, the sources of the Arab-Israeli conflict remained unchanged.

Since 1974 the Middle East has been an annual item on the UN agenda. Yet another peacekeeping force was set up in March 1978 to help stabilize the situation in southern Lebanon after Israeli forces crossed the border to retaliate against a Palestinian raid. A United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was established with 6,000 troops from ten countries.