Reflections on Sovereignty and Collective Security

47 Pages Posted: 15 Jul 2004 Last revised: 8 Jun 2021

See all articles by Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Stanford Law School

Abstract

Countries make decisions affecting their security and international relations against a backdrop including not only geopolitical pressures and economic imperatives, but justifications rooted in international law. This article focuses on the United Nations Charter and related doctrines emphasizing the importance of national territorial sovereignty to explore the limited but important role of international law in shaping global security, as well as the constraints that countries and international organizations sometimes encounter when interpreting or applying public international law. I analyze the Charter system's promise and limitations in dealing with certain persistent international security problems, including the existence of states that appear to ignore international legal norms, non-state actors that pose transnational security threats, and normative challenges to expansive conceptions of national territorial sovereignty. I report data indicating that the United Nations framework - initially designed primarily to prevent aggressive war - has largely failed to contain violent international crises or to grapple with increases in the prevalence and intensity of civil war. To assess the importance of dealing with internal civil conflict in addition to aggressive war, I estimate the average length and intensity of civil wars taking place during several periods in history. The length of an average civil war has increased from just over 20 months in the 1901-1950 period to about 60 months in the period from 1951-1992, and intensity (measured by the number of battle deaths per hundred thousand people in the population of the country in question) has increased from under 3 (in the 1901-1950 period) to over 6 (1951-1992). I then review theories supporting the claim that international law can contribute to security despite the continuing extent of global conflict and violence, and conclude by discussing strategies to reform the United Nations system and enhance international law's contributions to peace in light of those theories. In particular, I emphasize the importance of two sets of issues that can shape our understanding of how key actors shaping global security understand and interpret international law. The first concerns the need for more empirical analysis of how disputes arising under domestic law become sensitive to interpretations of international law. The second implicates how various interpretations of international law structure the choice between imposing constraints or taking actions that effectively operate as collective sanctions and using more targeted remedies that limit the extent of collateral harm but require more precise information, operational capacity, and justification.

Keywords: United Nations, international security, international law and domestic politics, nonstate actors, regulation of conflict, collective sanctions, sovereignty, civil conflict

Suggested Citation

Cuéllar, Mariano-Florentino, Reflections on Sovereignty and Collective Security. Stanford Journal of International Law, Vol. 40, No. 211, 2004, Stanford Public Law Working Paper No. 95, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=564984

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar (Contact Author)

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ( email )

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Stanford Law School ( email )

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