A liberal–realist conception of

international relations: A
pragmatic approach to
understanding the United
Nations

By

Steve Odero Ouma

PhD
1. Introduction

During the drafting of the United Nations (UN) Charter two main conceptions
of the new organisation came to the fore. The first was the realist conception,
which primarily viewed the UN as a military alliance between the Great
Powers, an alliance designed to marshal superior and decisive force against
any actual or potential aggressor in the international system. This conception
was rooted in the founding premise of the realist school namely that
international relations is a struggle for power among competing sovereigns in
an anarchical world. The second was the liberal conception with the image of
the UN as a budding world government, the foundation of an international
legal order that would secure state autonomy and equality in the international
system just as individual autonomy and equality are secured through the
domestic legal system of Western liberal democracies.

In the present day, the typical realist argument is that the UN only works as a
blind for United States (US) power or at most a blind for some other strong
regional power. It provides a cloak of legitimacy but has no autonomous
impact. On the other hand, the liberals say that the UN is a promising entity
which if exploited to the full can realise what it began in 1945, to expand
beyond the circle of Great Powers controlling the Security Council, to
strengthen the foundations of global government by becoming a genuine
global policeman. They readily endorse a move from unilateralism to
multilateralism to supranationalism.

This paper submits that these two schools of thought are equally important for
the study of international relations. None of them is exclusive hence the need
for a balancing act between them to arrive at a truly feasible approach and
understanding of international relations. This feasible approach is important
in any endeavour at reforming the organisation. The starting point is to
evaluate the content of the two schools, their differences and commonalities.
Some of the commonalities between the two are the shared belief that states
are the primary actors in the international system; that states are unitary,
opaque actors undifferentiable on the basis of domestic regime-type; that a

2
uniform set of preferences can be ascribed to all states; and that the primary
constraints on state behaviour flow from the architecture of the international
system.1

This piece will start by tracing the realist and the liberal conception of the UN
through its founding years thereby examining the ways in which both
conceptions are combined in the Charter. Thereafter, an examination will be
done of the two conceptions side by side similarities and dissimilarities, in so
doing setting forth the accuracies and inaccuracies in the schools about the
contemporary international system. In conclusion the study will draws on
both the liberal and realist theories to develop a liberal-realist conception of
the UN. In addition, the study proposes a re-conceptualisation of the
organisation as a forum for global governance as well as reform of the UN
Security Council as the UN’s principal executive organ. In summary it is
argued that a liberal-realist vision of the UN is the best foundation on which to
build for the next half century.

2. Conception of the UN at its formation

2.1 The UN as a Great Power Alliance

There is a lot of truth in the statement that the initial plan for the UN
resembled a classic Great Power Alliance far away from a plan for world order
founded on law. This position prevailed more so because its architects were
not international law experts but victors of a war. The drafters were statesmen
who had witnessed the failure of an international institution (League of
Nations) in the face of state power. Political realism was anchored on the
premise that international relations, as had been proven by the war, is a
struggle for power between states.2 From this point of view, the foundation of
future world peace was not some international legal regime but a collective
security system anchored by an alliance of the Great Powers.3

1 Claude L Jr (1956) Swords into Plow Shares: The Problems and Progress of
International Organisation 80.
2 Morgenthau H (1967) Politics Among Nations 25 at 26.
3 Morgenthau H as above.

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Indeed the earliest indications of the concept of a post war international
organisation envisioned a political and military as opposed to legal, approach.
There is documented evidence to support this position that President
Roosevelt of the United States (US) initially pictured the primary function of
the UN as a monopolisation of military force. 4 The focus was not, as it was in
the run up to the formation of the League of Nations, on disarmament but
rather on the concentration of armaments in responsible hands. Roosevelt
and Winston Churchill were convinced that World War II had been caused
much to the weakness of the democracies and to the aggressiveness of the
Axis.5 Further that the greatest mistake of the victors after World War I had
been precipitate dismantling of their military structure in the name of
disarmament.6 The idea of a Security Council with a policing function
equipped with a Military Staff Committee was designed to ensure that the
international organisation would have sufficient military resources at its
disposal.

Roosevelt originally envisioned two separate organisations, one dedicated

solely to military peacekeeping by the Great Powers. In this picture all the
non-security functions would be performed by another organisation similar to
the defunct League of Nations which would be located in Geneva or by various
other agencies located at various points around the globe.7 The primary
organisation which would be based in New York would exercise an
international police power essentially by the Great Powers on small States,
who would have no choice but to accept it. The policing powers would include
a threat to quarantine the offending state and if that was not sufficient there
was an option of military action.8 President Roosevelt pledged to be tough
and have the approach of a dictator but not centred around himself as an
individual but that of the former great powers the US, Great Britain, the USSR
and China.9 These countries would have a monopoly of armed force thus there

4 Nicholas H G (1967) The United Nations as a Political Institution 28.

5 Nicholas H G as above.
6 Nicholas as note 4 above.
7 Russell B R and Jeannette Muther (1958) History of the United Nations Charter 165.
8 Same as above.
9 Eichelberger C M (1977) Organising for Peace: A Personal History of the Founding
of the United Nations 236 to 237.

4
would be no need for and international force or base elsewhere in the world.
The rest of the world had no option but to be content with this “four-power
dictatorship”.10 This realist dimension of the UN were very evident in the
drafting of the UN Charter at San Francisco. The San Francisco conference
was committed to achieving open covenants, openly arrived at and to this end
the voting procedure was employed.11 Analysts of the drafting process of the
Charter have agreed that the voting power of smaller states were influenced by
an understanding of what was already a latent veto power by the Great
Powers. Even then, their acceptance and role in the drafting process was
essential to its success.

The delegates at the conference acknowledged the existence of a “Great Power

Conference” inside the larger Conference.12 The Great Powers had worked
together as a sort of Global Executive Committee in preparing the blueprints
for adoption at San Francisco and they continued in this capacity at the
Conference. Although, a two-thirds voting rule prevailed formally, the
informal collegiality of the “Big Five” operating behind the scenes at San
Francisco had the ultimately decisive voice in the formulation of the Charter.13
The powers accorded to the Security Council at Dumbarton Oaks were actually
strengthened in San Francisco. The Security Council could call on parties to
use armed force to enforce its resolutions. Reflecting on these developments,
Evan Luard describes the UN as an organisation conceived and created by the
great powers. Its form and structure clearly reflected this birth. That is, it is an
organisation created by the Great Powers as one where they would have the
dominant say, and as an engine through which they could prevent any positive
action of which they disapproved.14

Great Power status in the UN meant dominion over small powers. But true to
realist school of international relations it also meant stalemate vis-à-vis other
Great Powers. The veto power blocked UN action in any situation contrary to a

10 Luard E A (1982) History of the United Nations: The Years of Domination 1945-1955
at 21.
11 See Nicholas H G as note 4 above at 28.
12 Nicholas H G as above.
13 Luard E A as note 7 above 11 at 44.
14 Evan supra note seven

5
Great Powers’ interest, including conflicts with other Great Powers. American
statesmen and the conference in general dealt with this fact in quintessential
realist fashion, openly acknowledging that if one of the Great Powers chose to
break its pledge of abstaining from the use of force, the game was over. When
considering the possibility of one of the permanent members becoming an
aggressor and using its veto to block Security Council action against itself,
then US Secretary of State Stettinius plainly asserted that “a major war would
result, no matter what the membership and voting provisions of the Security
Council might be.”15 The upshot of this was a collective security system
enforced by the Great Powers for the world at large and no organised security
system among the Great Powers themselves. They presumably had to rely on
the classic realist balance of power.16

2.2 A liberal conception at inception

Despite the foregoing account of the climate that preceded the formation of
the UN, there was a collateral conception of the UN that was far from the
realist one. Various statements from government representatives and heads of
state indicated that that the founding states were keen on forming a world
polity if not some form of a world governments system.17 This polity was to be
in the image of US and other Western democracies; a conception of states, like
individuals, equal before the law. These attributes formed the core of the
liberal conception of the UN looking less to power than to individuals, private
groups and the law. Through a series of statements to the American people,
Roosevelt reassured them that the proposed organisation would not be a
world government by brute force and indicated a retreat from a
characterisation of the organisation as a political-military alliance dominated
by the Great Powers.18 The voices of other “freedom-loving” peoples would
also have to be heard.19

15 The Charter of the United Nations, Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign
Relations: United States Senate, 79th Cong., 1st Session 216 (1945) (Statement of
Secretary of State Stettinius), cited in Luard E A as note 7 above 11 at 150.
16 Claude L Jr as note 1 above at 274.
17 Hulen B D “Hull Reports to Congress Moscow Pact Speeds Peace” New York Times
November 17th 1945.
18 “Public Papers” cited in Russell B R and Jeannette Muther R as note 7 above at 165.
19 Russell B R and Jeannette Muther as above.

6
In this vein, international power was going to have to be exercised by consent
and cooperation. Further, its exercise would be limited to preventing war and
by implication, preserving state autonomy. Herein lay the foundation for the
liberal conception of the UN as an organisation analogous to a democratic
government that does not interfere too deeply in the personal autonomy of its
citizens. This conception was gradually constructed from several key
components today known as liberal values: sovereign equality, sovereign
autonomy guaranteed through self-determination and non-intervention,
universality of membership, and the international rule of law. Each of these
are the quintessential elements attributable to individuals in a liberal
democratic society.

This foregoing finds expression in article 2(1) of the UN Charter which

provides that: “The organisation is based on the sovereign equality of its
members.” At the Quebec Conference of August 1943 the US and Britain
agreed on the text of a declaration for which they hoped to gain the
endorsement of the USSR and China. Contained in this document, was a
provision that the four governments would “recognise the necessity of
establishing at the earliest practicable date a general international
organisation, based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all nations
and open to membership by all nations, large and small, for the maintenance
of international peace and security.” 20As conceived by the drafters of the UN
Charter, the principle of sovereign equality is the source of a host of other
rights and obligations. According to the drafting commission, it comprises the
following precepts:

(1) that states are juridically equal;

(2) that each state enjoys the rights inherent in full sovereignty;

3) that the personality of the state is respected, as well as its territorial

integrity and political independence;

20 Luard E A as note 7 at 21.

7
(4) that the state should, under international order, comply faithfully with its
international duties and obligations.21

3. The Alchemy of the UN Charter

Despite their apparent differences the realist and liberal conceptions both
played a part in the configuration of the final document. Contrary to public
opinion on the UN, the reality is that elements of both conceptions coexist
albeit uneasily in the UN Charter. Indeed, neither conception on its own
would have mustered the support necessary of the prospective members of the
UN. Taken together the two complement each other and this is the trite way
the UN should be conceived. The liberal perspective takes up some
approximation of the monopoly of force that underlies the rule of law in
domestic society whereas the realist conception is regulated by harnessing
power to the international rule of law classical to the liberal school.

Evidence of this can be found in the UN Charter where the framers juxtaposed
seemingly contradictory provisions. The most familiar tension said to be
between the provision for sovereign equality in article 2(1) and the provision
for permanent membership on the Security Council and an accompanying
veto for five Great Powers in Chapter V.22 Scholars have different views on
how the two conceptions balance out in reality. Goodrich and Hambro for
example adopt an equilibrium approach by developing a definitional
distinction that accepts the underlying gap between “equality before the law”
and equality of “power and political influence.”. They note that this equality
before the law or juridical equality does not necessarily mean that states are
equally capable of getting their rights respected in a world which still permits
individual states to use power for exclusively national purposes. Nor does
equality, thus conceived, mean political equality. Cuba is not the equal of the
US in political power and influence, nor is Finland the equal of the Soviet

21 United Nations Documents 944 I/1/34(1) 6 United Nation Charter International

Documents 457 (1945) (hereinafter U.N.C.I.O. Docs.) cited in Leland M, Goodrich
and Edward H (1945) Charter of the United Nations: Commentary and Documents
29.
22 UN Charter articles 1, 2, 3, 23, 27.

8
Union.23 Others seek to rationalise the contradiction on either liberal or realist
terms. On the liberal side, Nincic notes that the oligarchic features of the UN
Charter were not wholly accepted in a bluntly realistic way but were
rationalised on the need of establishing a proper relationship between rights
and responsibilities between the influence states are permitted to exercise
within the UN and their actual capability of discharging their
responsibilities.”24 Another scholar Nicholas, by contrast, offers a more realist
account. According to him, as an encroachment upon earlier concepts of
sovereignty, the UN Security Council was given the right and responsibility of
taking decisions on behalf of other members of the UN and by the provisions
of Chapter VII of the Charter of making these decisions binding upon other
members. All this undoubtedly reflects an awareness from a world still
rocking with the war struggles of the titans that sovereignty, in any Austinian
sense, has become for most states largely a fiction and reflects also an
admission that if all states are equal some states are certainly more equal than
others.25 A larger and more general tension arises between the images of
sovereign autonomy under article 2 and the apparent restrictions on
sovereignty inherent in Chapter VII. Here again, the justifications flow from
either a realist or a liberal conception of the UN as a whole. Senator
Vandenberg offered the liberal justification, arguing that membership in the
UN is based on consent and therefore is an exercise, and not a violation, of
sovereignty principles. Consent was implied by ratification.26 The more realist
justification is that the encroachment on national sovereignty envisioned in
Chapter VII is only permissible to the extent that there is danger of breach of
the peace. Nicholas writes again “the Charter does not give to the world
organisation any power to impose a settlement of its members’ disputes.

It provides an elaborate adaptable machinery for settlement which it expects

them to use but no organ of the UN not even the UN Security Council is
empowered to impose a decision. In the event of the dispute developing into a

23 Goodrich L M and Hambro E Charter of the United Nations: Commentary and

Documents 100.
24 Nincic D (1970) The problem of sovereignty in the Charter and in practice of the
United Nations 25
25 NICHOLAS, supra note 8, at 37.
26 NICHOLAS, supra note 6, at 27.

9
threat to international peace and security the Security Council can certainly
act but again not to impose a decision but only to preserve the peace. The UN
is not a world government.27

Goodrich and Hambro also emphasise the limits imposed by the obligation to
maintain international peace and security but in a way that envisages
relatively discrete spheres of law and politics. Referring to the requirement
under article 2(4)28 that disputes be settled so as not to endanger
international peace and security, they note that even long-running disputes
may remain in the realm of purely political or even military settlement. So
long as the continuance of such disputes is not likely to endanger the
maintenance of international peace and security or the parties themselves do
not bring them before the appropriate organs of the UN by procedures which
they have accepted, the UN has no basis for action.29 The realist and liberal
conceptions of the UN reflect the conventional dichotomy between politics
and law, a dichotomy that may often be blurred or even dissolved in the
domestic sphere but that remains strong in the international realm.
Nonetheless, the UN was born as both a Great Power alliance and a universal
international legal regime with many of the elements of a domestic
government. Elements of both conceptions proved to be mutually reinforcing,
politically if not always logically. Further, in using elements from both
conceptions in the construction of the UN Charter, the drafters were able to
take advantage of a common paradigmatic foundation.

4. The fundamental unity between the two conceptions

While it may appear self evident both the liberal and realist conceptions of the
UN share a common ontology of the international system. They rely on the
same assumptions concerning the primary actors in that system and the
source of the actor's motives and constraints. They disagree as to the actual
and potential content of those motives and constraints. But the area of

27 Nicholas as note 4 above at 27.

28 "All members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a
manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered."
29 Goodrich L M and Hambro E as note 23 above at 102.

10
agreement, when viewed from the perspective of alternative visions or
understandings of the international system, overshadows the area of
disagreement. To excavate the ontology of the international system underlying
these two principal conceptions of the UN is to undertake a quest for the
political science of the drafting of the UN Charter just as many constitutional
scholars set out in the 1980s to excavate the political science of the drafting of
the American constitution.30 Both the realist and the liberal conceptions of the
UN proceed from the following assumptions about the international system:

 States are the primary actors in the international system. They are the
units of the international system and international society, the
members of international organizations and the subjects of
international law;

 States are unitary actors, closed spheres within which governments

enjoy exclusive jurisdiction at home and sole representation abroad;
 States are opaque and functionally identical. They are indistinguishable
from one another on the basis of domestic political differences;

 From the above assumptions it follows that the preferences attributed

to States must be the same across all States; they cannot vary as a
function of domestic regime-type or any other internal differences. It
remains possible to posit a range of preferences, from the absolute
quest for power to the pursuit of a range of cooperative interests, but
not to derive them on a State by State basis;

 The constraints on State behaviour in the international system are

external constraints, imposed by some properties of the system itself.
The constraints of power and the constraints of law are equally
external.

30 Symposium on “The Republican Civic Tradition” 97 (1988) Yale Law Journal 1493.

11
The realist-liberal convergence on these assumptions is well illustrated by the
debate over article 2(7) of the Charter, which provides that “Nothing
contained in the present Charter shall authorise the UN to intervene in
matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or
shall require the members to submit such matters to settlement under the
present Charter but this principle shall not prejudice the application of
enforcement measures under Chapter VII.” This provision was the subject of
much debate in San Francisco during the drafting process.

The sponsoring governments successfully proposed that it be placed in the

statement of principles in article 2 thereby becoming applicable to the entire
UN Charter.31 Support for and opposition against poured in from several
sources. It is noteworthy, however, that to the extent the principle at stake
concerned the relative parameters of international and domestic politics,
leading in turn to the potential undermining of domestic authority over affairs
legitimately within the domestic sphere both sides agreed on a principle of
protection for the exclusivity of this sphere. The realist conception was well
represented by the Great Powers who pushed Article 2(7) through. It
comprised two key elements. First was a commitment to maintain a relatively
restricted function and mission for the UN itself. Intervention in domestic
jurisdiction necessary to keep the peace was explicitly authorised. Beyond that
the organisation had no legal mandate and could do no political or military
good. The structure of Article 2(7) is instructive in this regard: domestic
jurisdiction is protected from UN intervention except with respect to Chapter
VII operations, those operations determined and approved by the Great
Powers on the Security Council to maintain peace and security. Once that
realm of activity was safeguarded, the Great Powers actively sought to bolster
the protection accorded domestic activity that did not endanger peace and
security. For instance, they replaced the word “solely” within the jurisdiction
of a member State to “essentially” thereby widening the scope of the article
2(7) protection.32

31 The sponsoring governments were the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, United States,
and China.
32 Rajan M S (1961) The United Nations and Domestic Jurisdiction 44-45.

12
A second element of the Great Power position on article 2(7) was an objection
to expanding the scope of international law to constrain a sovereign's ability to
determine its national interest. A number of smaller countries sought to
amend article 2(7) to provide that the question whether something was
essentially within domestic jurisdiction should be decided with reference to
international law. Other countries went further seeking to refer this question
of interpretation to the International Court of Justice. The Great Powers
unanimously opposed these proposals with the US declaring that, if such
provisions were included it would not ratify the Charter.33 This reaction is one
of a Great Power determined to reserve its prerogatives in the international
system. It cannot be squared with a vision of the UN as an embryonic
government under law.

The liberal position on article 2(7) was more complex including both support
and opposition. The supporting side argued that the UN should be far more
than a Great Power alliance but because it was taking on the functions of a
government, its scope of power had to be sharply delineated. Further, its
subjects, the sources of its information, and its interlocutors, had to be states.
State autonomy required nothing less. John Foster Dulles, for instance,
related his support for article 2(7) to his understanding of article 2(4), noting
that “the organisation we are working to build now is an organisation which
is going to have functions which, we believe, will enable it to eradicate the
causes of war and not merely, or even primarily, to deal with international
disputes after they arise.” 34 Because of this wider scope of concern, he
continued, “leaders were faced with the totally different problem of the
nature of the basic relationship of this new organisation to the member-
states. Is it going to be an organisation which deals essentially with the
governments of member-states, and through international relations? Or is it
going to be an organisation which is going to penetrate directly into the
domestic life and the social economy of each one of the member-states? None
of us had the idea that the Economic and Social Council, acting through a
majority of ten persons, was going to have the right to decide itself what

33 Rajan M S as above at 43.

34 Rajan M S as note 42 above at 42-43.

13
patterns of social order it wanted, and go behind governments to intervene
directly to impose that pattern on each one of the 50 member-states.” 35

Other adherents of the liberal conception of the UN opposed article 2(7) on

the ground that it weakened the role of law in the new organisation, and
opened the way to arbitrary acts based on considerations of expedience and
national interests.36 The Belgian delegate pointed out that the vagueness of
the provision as finally enacted created the risk that each country would
finally be the judge of its exclusive jurisdiction. The Uruguayan delegate
expressed hesitation toward article 2(7) in its final form noting that until then:
there were two great conquests in the international order: One, the
substitution of the jurisdictional organ for the anti-juridical criterion of
judgment by the interested party and second the substitution of the technical
juridical opinion for political opinion. Accepting the rule was going to be a
great step backwards namely the definition of the question according to
domestic law made by the interested member itself, made according to a
political criterion and not according to a juridical criterion.37

This position reflected the liberal commitment to establishing an international

rule of law. The subject matter of interest in this piece is not the fact of
opposition but its nature. The arguments advanced did not oppose the
protection of an exclusive sphere of domestic jurisdiction per se but rather
argued that the specific provision of such a sphere would be too easily abused
to shield matters of legitimate international concern. Opponents of article 2(7)
wanted an independent determination of the respective limits of international
and domestic jurisdiction. All sides in this debate supported a sharp domestic-
international distinction and a circumscribed sphere of exclusive domestic
jurisdiction. It is that sphere that defines state power for realists and state
sovereignty for liberals. Disagreement arises over the size of the sphere, but all
agree that the sphere itself is impermeable and opaque. Conversely,
disagreements arise about the extent to which the UN as an international
organisation composed of these spheres, each speaking with one voice, can

35 Rajan M S as note 42 above at 43.

36 6 U.N.C.I.O. Docs. 457 (1945) at 108-113, cited in Rajan M S as note 41 above at 46.
37 U.N.C.I.O. Docs. as note 36 above.

14
impose external constraints on state autonomy. Any other conception of the
state, or of the constraints on state interaction in the international system,
would have been simply unintelligible.38

5. Reforming the UN in line with the liberal-realist conception

There are three important elements of any program for reforming the UN.
First is the conceptualisation of the organisation itself, its identity and scope
of action. Part of this reconceptualisation would involve rethinking the line
between domestic and international politics imposed by article 2(7). The
second two relate to its two most important functions: the provision of short
and long-term security. Under the heading of short-term security, the most
important consideration is the composition of the Security Council, as it is the
Security Council that remains charged with immediate response to imminent
or actual breaches of international peace and security. Under the heading of
long-term security are issues involving funding priorities and the composition
of the General Assembly. Each of these issues includes a long list of sub-
issues; I will simply sketch the outlines of an approach informed by liberal
theory.

5.1 Reconceptualising the UN

5.1.1 The UN as a forum for Global Governance

Ever since the tenure of Koffi Anan as the Secretary General of the UN there
has been a concerted effort at seeing a reform of the organisation. It is
submitted that the liberal-realist theory advanced in this paper offers a sound
frame work to conduct such reforms. Indeed the first task in any reform
program is to revise working conception of that which is to be reformed. In
this case a reworking of the UN’s conception is in order. From the liberal-
realist conception the UN is neither a Great Power alliance nor the prototype
of a global democracy composed of equal and identical sovereign units. It is

38 Slaughter Anne Marie (1993) “International law and international relations theory: A
dual agenda” 87 American Journal of International Law 205.

15
proposed that a better image is a forum for global governance: an organisation
of States that are themselves embedded in and representative of individuals
and groups in domestic and transnational society to varying degrees. Global in
this context refers to both individuals, groups of individuals and states.
Governance on the other hand has many meanings: the coordination of group
activity so as to conduct the public business consistent with sovereignty;39
non-institutionalised or at least less institutionalised systems of rule;40 the
horizontal allocation of values and resources across borders rather than the
vertical allocation within a State.41

Liberal-realist theory reconceptualises the state in relation to the

transnational society. The state is still accorded a primary role in the
international system and remains the basic unit of governance, strong enough
to provide its citizens with basic services, including physical protection and
minimum sustenance. States are thus primary but permeable not
impermeable as classic realist theory would suggest. Building on this
conception of the state, global governance is the process whereby states and
groups of states represent and regulate individuals and groups in
transnational society. The UN is a forum for this process in multiple ways.
First, the UN continues to exist as an inter-governmental organisation
dedicated above all to the survival of its members as states strong enough to
fulfil their basic state functions. To this end, it must confront direct threats to
the security and integrity of its members. It is noteworthy that in fulfilling this
function, state actors are very nearly unitary. Although the legislative
branches of some of the permanent members do take an active interest in the
positions taken by their governments in the Security Council witness the
efforts of the US Congress to restrict the role of US troops in UN peacekeeping

39 Kratochwil F and Gerard Ruggie J (1986) “International organisation: A state of the

art or an art of the state” 40 International Organisations 753, 754.
40 Rosenau James N and Czempiel E (eds) (1992) Governance Without Government:
Order and Change in World Politics 15.
41 Kumar C “Studying Transnational Governance: Ideas and Institutions in the
Information Age” in (1994) Macarthur International Peace and Security Program
Newsletter 9.

16
security politics in a world in which military conflict remains possible, if not
likely, has long justified centralised domestic decision-making.42

Second, the UN provides a site for transnational activity and pressure by

transnational groups on their home governments through the various UN
sponsored inter-governmental conferences, on issues from the environment to
human rights. These have in turn sparked parallel NGO conferences in which
activists and interest groups from around the world have met to coordinate
their strategies for pressuring their home institutions. Albeit in an informal
fashion, introduction of issues on the inter-governmental agenda in the UN
General Assembly and the Security Council can focus domestic attention on
these issues and allow domestic interest groups to call their governments to
account through legislative, executive, or even judicial pressure. The results of
such UN sponsored initiatives can and have percolated into domestic
systems.43

Thirdly, many of the independent UN agencies work directly with individuals

and groups in transnational society. These agencies are directly linked to
intergovernmental politics in that the decision making process at this level
hardly free from intergovernmental politics. They are funded through an
intergovernmental decision making process and must often work at the
sufferance of the governments of the individuals they seek to help.
Nevertheless, they can act as focal points for transnational "epistemic
communities" of technical and scientific experts, communities that can
themselves have a transnational impact on governmental policy-making.
Further, their ultimate targets--from hunger to health, to population and
environmental concerns are behind the veil of State sovereignty. They work to
ameliorate or even instigate the basic social conditions that are the
preconditions for domestic and transnational society.

42 Franck T M and Glennon M J (1993) Foreign Relations and National Security Law:
Cases, Materials and Simulations 92-107, 523 559.
43 A good example might be use of the findings of the El Salvador Truth Commission, a
committee of experts working under UN auspices mandated on January 16th 1992, as
evidence in a US Federal Court in Modesto California 2004 against ex-Captain Alvaro
Saravia a former Salvadoran government official for alleged human rights violations.

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A liberal-realist conception of the UN proposed here thus depicts a forum for
global governance, an organisation with multiple roles and multiple
constituencies, an organisation that is simultaneously an intergovernmental
organisation and a focal point for decision-making in transnational society,
whose members are both rational unitary actors and disaggregated loci of
differentiated governmental authority. This reconceptualisation of the UN’s
identity rests on a different understanding of the relationship between the
international and the domestic, one that no longer recognises states as closed
spheres of exclusive jurisdiction.

6 Reform of the Security Council in this light

The liberal-realist theory advanced herein acknowledges that in a

heterogeneous world composed of States with widely varying ideologies and
regime-types, the probability of military conflict remains high. Even in
conflicts between liberal and non-liberal States, in which the political
architecture of the liberal State is designed to check the rush to war, the game
is typically played by non-liberal rules.44 The liberal realist theorist
acknowledges that power plays and will continue to play an important role in
international politics.

In the world as described above, UN Security Council must have the capacity
to halt direct aggression. At this juncture the realist dimension of the liberal-
realist theory proposed in this paper, takes centre stage emphasising the
importance of both military and economic strength. On the military side and
to act as a safety valve on the realist perspective on the composition of the UN
Security Council, its current membership should be augmented by the
addition of regional military powers, such as India, Nigeria, South Africa, and
Brazil. Germany, Japan, and the European Union. This regional kind of
representation in the Security Council serves to act as a check and balance
against excesses. To augment this regional balance, the composition of the
Council should reflect the its proclivity to impose economic sanctions.

44 Maoz Z and Russett B “Normative and structural causes of democratic peace 1946-
1986” 87 (1993) American Political Science Review 624.

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Research in political science suggests that sanctions are most likely to be
successful if powers imposing them are willing to bear the economic costs they
inflict on the neighbours or principal trading partners of the sanctioned
nation.45 From this perspective, Germany, Japan, and the European Union
should gain membership on the basis of economic power alone. To this point
the liberal-realist school does not seem to recommend anything novel but it
offers a coherent theoretical foundation for existing proposals.

7. Conclusion

The San Francisco delegates, lawyers politicians and diplomats retold their
tale in the traditional sharp dichotomy of realism versus liberalism. In
creation of the UN Charter, they compromised with each other standpoints.
Irrespective of ones personal inclination it ought to be accepted that each
these dichotomies capture a useful element of the competing visions of the
world. They reflect different positive assumptions about the structure of the
international system and the nature of the basic units within it and normative
aspirations for what it might become. These positive assumptions and
normative aspirations frequently overlap. It is time to update both the
political science and the legal philosophy of the UN. Many international
relations scholars understand the world through a one ended lens of either
liberalism realism or constructivism. State behaviour is determined by the
preferences of individuals and groups in domestic and transnational society as
represented, whether fully or partially or just barely, by State institutions in
interaction with other State institutions. A conception of the UN based on
liberal-realist international relations theory assumes a much more composite
architecture for the international system than was embedded solely in either
the realist or the liberal conceptions. According to this conception, states
remain the primary actors and sometimes continue to interact as unitary
actors with unitary interests. In other relations, however, state institutions can
be disaggregated, each serving as an island of authority in a sea of social
relations within and across borders. These relations are subject to multiple
levels of governance: local, regional, national and supranational. The UN can

45 Martin L (1992) Coercive Cooperation: Explaining Multilateral Economic Sanctions.

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have an impact on all these levels. It can provide a forum for traditional inter-
state bargaining, a target and catalyst for nongovernmental activity in
transnational society, and a source of basic services for individuals and groups
whose governments have failed them, either temporarily or permanently.
These are all aspects of "global governance" in a system in which states are the
primary actors but are simultaneously transparent and embedded in
transnational society.

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