[Music] the drafters of the United Nations Charter were very much influenced by the Strategic command structure that had been put in place to win the second world war the establishment of a true United Nations Army was not contemplated but it was envisaged that all members of the United Nations would under take to make their Armed Forces available to the security Council upon its request under article 43 of the charter special agreements would be concluded for that purpose between the members the member states and uh the UN furthermore under article 45 immediately available National contingents were
to be put at the disposal of the UN a military staff committee was established under article 46 and 47 of the charter to advise and assist the security Council in matters relating to military enforcement measures the military staff committee was to be composed of the Chiefs of Staff of the permanent members of the security Council and it was in charge of the Strategic direction of national troops put at the disposal of the UN in order to implement through military coercion the decisions uh of the security Council while this plan never worked in practice the military
staff committee met only a few on a few occasions just after the charter entered into Force as the Cold War Began it quickly appeared that it would never function properly and the military staff committee stopped to meet and it has been a dormant body of the UN ever since it was never reactivated and it is unlikely that it be ever reactivated the Korean War epitomized the cold war between 1950 and 1953 When The War erupted in June 1950 the security Council met and determined that the attack by North Korea on the Republic of Korea constituted
a breach of the peace and that is resol ution 82 of 1950 the council also I quote recommended that the members of the United Nations furnish such assistance to the Republic of Korea as may be necessary to repel the armed attack and to restore International Peace and Security in the area that's resolution 83 furthermore the council recommended that those National troops made available to a unified command under United the United States of America and the council also authorized the UN unified command to use the UN flag that's resolution 84 because the military operations to repel
the North Korean Invasion were conducted under the UN flag the Korean war is often seen as a war by the UN but when you look at it closely those operations under the UN opes were based on a rather ambiguous legal construction the council determined a breach of the peace but it did not mention chapter 7 and two days later it recommended to the member states to use force in defense of of South Korea a recommendation is an exhortation to do something which by and of itself is already legal so the use of force under the
UN flag during the Korean war was a kind of a mix between chapter 7 enforcement measures decided by the city council and Collective self-defense that does not need to be authorized or decided in any way by the UN furthermore the security council's resolutions were not vetoed by the USSR because the Soviet representative was absent during the council meetings Stalin had decided to practice the empty chair diplomacy out of protest against the fact that at that time China was not represented at the UN by the ma communist government of Beijing by but by the pro Western
changai Czech government and this only changed in 1971 at the UN but in 1950 the Soviets hoped to block the UN by being absent however and as you've learned they soon discovered that their absence and therefore abstention at the security Council was not considered as a veto the resolutions were adopted and the Soviet representative quickly came back to New York and from then on the cold war was in full swing Moscow and Washington began to conduct Wars by proxy in different corners of the globe and it soon appeared that the city council would continue to
be V vetoed by one side or the other if ever the use of force against one party protected by a big player were contemplated so through all throughout the Cold War the UN was left with one option that it had already experimented uh twice before the war in Korea and that option is not using force in order to win Wars and make peace but using Force solely in order to keep the peace and let us turn now to peacekeeping [Music]
