This week you will read (in the article by Bosco) and hear (in the lecture on the UNSC) about two different perspectives on the proper function of the UN Security Council: the governance perspective and the concert perspective. The former argues that the UNSC should take primary responsibility for ensuring global peace and security, organizing and taking action to address threats that might emerge throughout the world, be they acts of genocide or civil wars.

The latter perspective views the UNSC as a concert of the Great Powers whose primary function is to ensure that the interests of the Great Powers do not conflict, potentially leading to a great power war. According to this view, preventing great power conflict and protecting the national security interests of the great powers should trump other security concerns, such as civil wars, ethnic conflict or genocide.

Which of these perspectives do you find the most convincing as a model for thinking about how the UNSC should act? Given that these two functions often conflict in practice, which do you think the international community and the US in particular should prioritize, when and why?

250 world response 

Assessing the UN Security Council:
A Concert Perspective

�
David Bosco

This article distinguishes between the UN Security Council’s “governance”
and “concert” functions and argues that the latter is important in assessing
the body’s diplomatic value. It presents data suggesting that serving to-
gether on the Council deepens diplomatic linkages between permanent
members. It also argues that Council membership may offer several bene-
fits for managing relations between the permanent members. Specifically,
the Council provides a mechanism through which permanent members
have slowed the pace of crises that might threaten their relations, used am-
biguity to produce exits from potentially dangerous situations, and miti-
gated diplomatic humiliation. The article contends that many proposals for
Council reform pay little attention to this concert function and, if adopted,
may unwittingly diminish a key benefit of the institution. KEYWORDS: United
Nations, diplomacy, Security Council.

THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL HAS BEEN MORE ACTIVE IN THE PAST TWENTY
years than during any other phase of its existence. The Council has met more
frequently, authorized more peacekeeping and observation missions, and
enacted more sanctions regimes and arms embargos than in its first four
decades. The Council’s move toward the center of international politics has
intensified efforts to assess its role. Yet the metrics for doing so are not
always clear, and a central challenge in analyzing the performance of inter-
national organizations is clarity about what is being evaluated.1

Most scholarly attempts to assess the Council have focused on its broad
external impact or judged the effectiveness of certain Council “products,”
including peacekeeping operations and sanctions regimes.2 In this article, I
seek to shift the focus to intra-Council dynamics and, in particular, to comity
between the Council’s Permanent Five (P5) members. Specifically, I distin-
guish between two methods of assessing the Council. I briefly define gover-
nance and concert approaches, with the former focused on the maintenance
of international peace and security and the latter on fostering major-power
comity. I argue that the P5 in key respects represents a concert of major pow-
ers and that assessing its impact accordingly is appropriate. I then present
data suggesting that serving together on the Council deepens high-level
diplomatic contacts between P5 members. Through illustrative historical
examples, I outline some benefits that the Council structure offers to its per-

545

Global Governance 20 (2014), 545–561

manent members in managing their own relations. By providing an alterna-
tive approach to assessing the impact of the Security Council, this article
offers a new perspective on how the Council should be used and reformed.

The Governance Vision
The UN Charter provides a straightforward metric for measuring the Coun-
cil’s effectiveness: the “maintenance of international peace and security.”3

The Charter outlines a collective security structure in which the Council
should respond promptly to threats or breaches of the peace and acts of
aggression anywhere in the world. In so doing, the Council can meet imme-
diately and draw on the resources of all UN members, with the permanent
members coordinating any UN military operations. The Charter makes no
geographic or qualitative distinction between potential disruptions to the
peace and makes clear that the Council can investigate any dispute it deems
dangerous to peace and security. As Inis Claude argues, collective security in
its ideal form “purports to provide security for all states, by the action of all
states, against all states which might challenge the existing order by the arbi-
trary unleashing of their power.”4 The Charter therefore tasks the Council
with a critical, if rudimentary, governance function: providing the interna-
tional community with security and order.

The content of this governance role has varied considerably over time.
The UN’s founders and many early commentators focused almost exclusively
on the threat of renewed interstate aggression.5 For this reason, the Council’s
response to North Korea’s aggression in 1950 and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait
forty years later are often cited as notable successes. Yet repelling cross-
border aggression is only one possible element in maintaining international
peace and security. Particularly in the post−Cold War era, the Council has
sought to address a broader array of challenges, including intrastate conflict,
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, mass atrocities and geno-
cide, and democratization. Health and environmental issues, including
HIV/AIDS and climate change, have also appeared on the Council’s agenda.
Whatever the precise contours of the Council’s mission, a governance per-
spective essentially judges the Council by its success in confronting external
challenges. (See Figure 1.)

An alternative approach to assessing Security Council effectiveness pres-
ents itself if the body is thought of less as an instrument for providing global
security and more as a grouping of the major powers with the purpose of
facilitating harmony within that elite group, or concert of nations.6 Without
denying the Council’s formal governance function, a concert perspective
shifts the focus from the body’s ability to resolve external challenges to its
impact on relations between permanent members.

The utility of a concert perspective rests largely on the distinction
between great-power comity and international security more broadly. It is not

546 Assessing the UN Security Council

obvious that these should be considered distinct. As was evident during the
Cold War, great-power tension often fosters conflict around the world. Con-
versely, insecurity outside the great-power community can lead to tension,
and perhaps even conflict, within this group.7 Yet various local conflicts have
begun and ended without major powers being drawn into the conflict directly.
Moreover, relative comity between the major powers, as has existed for most
of the post−Cold War period, has not led ineluctably to stability elsewhere.
The end of bipolar tension helped reduce the occurrence of some types of
civil conflict, but may have also increased the vulnerability of certain states
to internal challenge.8 It is possible to make a meaningful, if not airtight, dis-
tinction between global security and great-power comity. (See Figure 2.)

While several scholars have discussed the conflict mitigation effects of
concert-style diplomacy, that insight has not been deployed to explore the
Council’s impact.9 The major-power peace that has prevailed since the end of
World War II between permanent Council members suggests that it may be
illuminating; in the more than sixty years that the Council has been operating,
there has never been a sustained military clash between permanent mem-
bers.10 There are multiple possible explanations for this, not least the fact that
all of the P5 are nuclear powers. Yet the possibility that the Council structure

David Bosco 547

Interstate conflict

Human rights violations

Civil conflict

Security Council
Piracy

WMD proliferation

Terrorist financing

Figure 1 Governance Perspective

Russia

United States

France
Security Council

China
United Kingdom

Figure 2 A Concert Perspective

has helped to maintain peace between its permanent members merits exami-
nation. Before considering the evidence, however, it is essential to expand on
the notion of a concert and to demonstrate that the Council’s permanent
membership should be evaluated as such.

Characteristics of a Concert
The concept of a great-power concert is familiar in diplomatic history, with
the Concert of Europe as the paradigmatic example. That loose arrangement
of the major European powers has often been credited with stabilizing great-
power relations in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and avoiding major con-
flict for at least several decades.11 The notion of a great-power concert has
received less systematic attention in the international relations literature, but
several scholars have identified key attributes of a concert structure. I argue
below that Council’s permanent membership can be considered a great-power
concert nested within the broader framework of the Council.

The first attribute of a concert is that its membership is limited to the
major powers. Richard Elrod argues that an underlying feature of concert
diplomacy during the nineteenth century was the creation of a privileged
place for great powers that limited lesser powers to a peripheral role: “Lesser
states were occasionally consulted when their interests were involved, but
they possessed few rights and certainly not that of equality.”12 The UN Char-
ter offers a similar privileged status to key powers. As the dominant Allied
powers, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom
secured permanent seats for themselves. They in turn offered seats to France
and China in the expectation that these countries would assume, or reassume,
great-power status. There was significant debate between the three Allied
powers about whether this expectation was reasonable, but almost none about
whether it was appropriate to give great powers, however defined, a unique
place and special privileges.13 In practice, the Council’s permanent members
have usually operated as a distinct community within the Council. Particu-
larly in recent years, they have often met separately from the rest of the
Council and negotiated many draft resolutions among themselves before pre-
senting them to the rest of the membership. Permanence and possession of
the veto power create a critical status difference with the elected members,
even those (e.g., Germany, India, and Japan) who are major powers in their
own right.14

Second, a concert operates by consensus rather than by majority or
supermajority voting. No major decision can be made without the agreement
of all concert members. In the Concert of Europe, according to Elrod, “una-
nimity rather than majority rule prevailed.”15 Charles A. Kupchan and Clif-
ford A. Kupchan argue that decisions in a concert “are taken through informal
negotiations, through the emergence of a consensus.”16 As a whole, the Coun-
cil operates by supermajority; nine of fifteen votes are necessary to pass a

548 Assessing the UN Security Council

resolution. But among the permanent members, the veto ensures that the
Council is consensus based. The Charter allows for permanent members to be
outvoted only on procedural issues, and the Council cannot make substantive
decisions without P5 acquiescence. In analyzing the Council as an “elite
pact”—a concept similar to a concert—Erik Voeten emphasizes this nonma-
joritarian quality of the Council’s operations.17

Third, a concert is political rather than legal in nature and “entails no
binding or codified commitments to collective action.”18 The issues that a
concert considers are resolved by political negotiation rather than legal obli-
gation. If, in the face of some external crisis, the concert members decide not
to act, they are not necessarily violating the purpose of the arrangement. In
this respect too, the Council’s permanent membership fits the criteria for a
concert. For all its admonitions about the necessity of preserving the peace,
the UN Charter creates no commitments for Council members to act. While
the Council is tasked with maintaining peace and security, it alone has the
power to determine whether a crisis constitutes a “threat to international
peace.”19 Even when the Council decides that this threshold has been
reached, the Charter gives its members complete discretion as to the appro-
priate course of action. Moreover, the existence of the veto power implicitly
acknowledges that the Council should not act when the permanent members
are unable to reach consensus. While the Charter’s drafters hoped that the
Council would respond in the face of a security crisis, they did nothing to
compel the body to act.

Finally, a leading goal of a concert is preservation of the group’s internal
harmony. Members of the Concert of Europe “focused on regulating relations
among each other” and had limited ambitions to preserve peace more com-
prehensively.20 A concert does not seek to eliminate competition among the
powers included in the group, but it does aim to manage the competition and
prevent it from reaching outright conflict. This internal focus is the one respect
in which the Council’s permanent membership does not clearly match the cri-
teria for a concert. The UN Charter gives the P5 the same global security
responsibilities that the Council as a whole has, and nothing in the Charter
suggests that the body should serve an intra-P5 conflict resolution function.
The historical record is not clear on whether key diplomats expected the
shared Council membership to serve that purpose. Inis L. Claude concludes
that “it was assumed that the harnessing of the Big Five into a team responsi-
ble for the successful operation of the new organization might help to promote
the maintenance of their indispensable unity.”21 Yet that assumption was rarely
made explicit. More often, the Charter’s drafters suggested that comity
between the permanent members would be a prerequisite to—rather than a
product of—the Council’s operations. “The only hope for the world is the
agreement of the Great Powers,” said Winston Churchill, and that sentiment
was widespread among observers of the new organization.22 Because I seek to

David Bosco 549

demonstrate that the Council has in practice had an internal impact, however,
I do not consider the absence of an explicit internal focus as disqualifying.

Conceiving of the Council’s permanent membership as a political con-
cert rather than as part of a governance body generates a different set of
potential tests for effectiveness. Instead of asking whether the Council has
maintained peace and security by resolving external conflicts and challenges,
one might focus on whether it has deepened diplomatic relations between the
permanent members, increased harmony between them, and provided these
states with exits from crises that threaten relations with other P5 members. I
now turn to quantitative and historical evidence suggesting that serving
together on the Council has in fact deepened diplomatic relations between P5
members and, in several important cases at least, helped to manage tensions
between them.

Denser Diplomatic Relations
As a forum for regular meetings, the Council by its very nature increases
diplomatic density between the permanent members. During the Cold War
the Council normally met several times a month, and during certain crises
much more frequently. In the past two decades, the intensity of contact has
increased dramatically. The Council now consults informally on a nearly
daily basis and produces a steady stream of resolutions, presidential state-
ments, and press releases. While it has declined somewhat recently, the Coun-
cil’s activity level has been high since the end of the Cold War. Every year
since 1992, the Council has met formally or consulted informally more than
200 times. The P5 also consult periodically separate from the other Council
members, usually in one of the P5 missions, although data on how often these
meetings occur is not available.23 (See Figure 3.)

Yet how far beyond the UN diplomatic community does this increased
contact extend? Frequent contact between the UN diplomats of P5 members
may be of little relevance if it does not produce greater contact at higher lev-
els. There is anecdotal evidence that the practice of Council consultations
produces contact at different levels of P5 governments. Issues considered by
the Council often draw in officials and experts outside of UN missions and
create diplomatic contacts and linkages that might not otherwise exist. One
longtime French ambassador recalled that “we often discuss from capital to
capital issues on the council agenda, trying to reach agreement or at least nar-
row the gap.”24 Non-P5 ambassadors have noted that the P5 interact dis-
tinctly. According to a former German ambassador, the P5 “have to make
constant deals, whether it’s the election of the new Secretary-General or a
Chapter VII Resolution. [They] need each other all the time and I think it
affects also the way [they] behave in bilateral relations.”25 Council matters
also sometimes produce increased contact at the highest levels of govern-
ment. In certain cases, P5 foreign ministers have met directly to discuss

550 Assessing the UN Security Council

Council strategy and vote on resolutions. During the deliberations that pre-
ceded the Iraq War, for example, the Council met at the foreign-minister level
multiple times in the space of a few months.

A more systematic test for whether the Council increases high-level
diplomatic contacts between permanent members is to assess whether P5 for-
eign ministers interact with each other bilaterally more than they do with the
foreign ministers of other major powers. Visits at the foreign-minister level
require substantial investments of time and diplomatic resources and can
plausibly be seen as a signal of the importance of the relationship between
the countries in question. My examination of travel patterns by US secretaries
of state over the past two decades suggests that there is in fact a “P5 prefer-
ence.” For the purposes of this analysis, I excluded personal travel and offi-
cial travel primarily for multilateral conferences, as neither of these cate-
gories would necessarily speak to the bilateral relationship. I included a
control group of major powers without permanent Council seats for compar-
ison purposes. (See Table 1.)

I also conducted a probability probe that compiled the travels of the
British foreign minister from January 1990 through September 2013. Consis-
tent with the findings for the United States, British foreign ministers also
made approximately twice the number of bilateral visits to P5 countries than
they did to the non-P5 major powers.26

These patterns suggest that there is a significant diplomatic premium
accorded to other permanent Council members. It is notable that both Britain

David Bosco 551

Figure 3 Council Meetings and Consultations, 1970–2013

Source: Author’s correspondence with the United Nations Security Council Affairs Division.

and France received more US visits than the much larger and more econom-
ically powerful Germany. That China led Japan is also striking, given the
closeness of the US-Japan strategic relationship. China received more visits
even between 1990 and 2000, before the country’s economic rise became as
obvious and as urgent a priority for the United States. The P5 preference
endured—and sometimes became more pronounced—when economic
strength (as measured by share of world gross domestic product [GDP]) and
military spending (as measured by share of world military spending) were
included in the analysis. France and Britain retained their edge over simi-
larly situated Germany when GDP and military spending were taken into
account. China’s advantage over Japan also endured. (See Table 2.)

Evidence that the P5 members interact more intensively with each other
at high levels than with other major powers is notable. In other areas, schol-
ars have suggested a relationship between high-level contacts and peaceful
outcomes. In the context of regional organizations, for example, Yoram Haf-
tel has found evidence that “regular meetings among top-level policymakers
. . . appear to promote a peaceful resolution of political tensions.”27 Jennifer
Mitzen argues that face-to-face conference diplomacy produces what she
terms “forum effects” that in turn help avoid violence.28 These lines of
research suggest that Council encouragement of more frequent high-level
meetings may itself be an important contribution to P5 comity.

The diplomatic history of the Council suggests that the institution’s work
has had other more specific benefits to P5 relations. At several important
moments, the P5 have employed Council procedures and mechanisms to help

552 Assessing the UN Security Council

Table 1 Bilateral Visits by US Secretaries of State, 1990–2013

Number of Visits

Other P5 members
China 27.0
Russia 42.0
France 30.0
United Kingdom 26.0
Average 31.5

Non-P5 major powers
Brazil 12.0
Japan 19.0
Germany 22.0
India 14.0
Average 16.75

Source: Records of the travels by the US secretary of state are recorded by the US Depart-
ment of State, Office of the Historian. The current secretary’s travels can be accessed at
www.state.gov/secretary/travel while the travels of former secretaries are archived at http://history
.state.gov/departmenthistory/travels/secretary.

manage their relations. Methods have included using the Council to facilitate
quiet deliberations, to slow the pace of crises, as a vehicle for “constructive
ambiguity,” and to avoid the humiliation of a P5 member. None of these diplo-
matic methods is uniquely a product of the Council, and it is conceivable in
each case discussed below that the key players could have achieved similar
results through other means. That is far from certain, however, and the Coun-
cil’s processes appear at least to have facilitated major-power accommodation.

It is important to acknowledge several important limitations to this his-
torical evidence of Council’s internal conflict mitigation benefits. At a
methodological level, isolating the Council’s impact on the course of
events—and on P5 relations in particular—is difficult and ultimately relies on
counterfactual analysis. Moreover, the examples outlined below must be set
against broader patterns of Council activity on issues important to relations
among P5 members. Many of these issues never reach the Council because
no P5 member sees value in employing the body. Even when the Council is
engaged, it has in many cases (particularly during the Cold War) done little
beyond providing an opportunity for P5 members to exchange well-rehearsed
rhetoric. Recent Council diplomacy on Syria and Ukraine has provided a
reminder of that tendency. I do not claim here that the P5 routinely use the

David Bosco 553

Table 2 US Secretary of State Visits, Controlling for Share of World
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Share of World Military Spending

Average Visits
Average Share of Visits Divided by
Share of World Military Divided by Share of

Number of World GDP, Expenditure, Share of World Military
Visits 1990–2013 1990–2013 World GDP Expenditure

Other P5 members
China 27.0 4.98% 4.71% 5.42 5.73
Russia 42.0 1.72% 4.24% 24.42 9.91
France 30.0 4.59% 4.98% 6.54 6.02
United Kingdom 26.0 4.34% 4.14% 5.99 6.28
Average 31.25 3.91% 4.52% 10.59 6.99

Non-P5 major powers
Brazil 12.0 2.28% 2.06% 5.26 5.83
Japan 19.0 11.99% 4.47% 1.58 4.25
Germany 22.0 6.46% 3.96% 3.41 5.56
India 14.0 1.71% 2.3% 8.19 6.09
Average 16.75 5.61% 3.20% 4.61 5.43

Sources: Records of the travels by the US secretary of state are recorded by the US Department of State, Office
of the Historian, http://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/travels/secretary. GDP data for this analysis was drawn
from the World Bank World Development Indicators, http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development
-indicators, in current US dollars. Military expenditure figures were calculated using the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Military Expenditure Dataset, www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/milex
_database.

Council to manage their own differences or that the body can only have that
effect; I do seek to identify several ways in which it has served that function
and to highlight this mostly ignored facet of the Council’s performance.

The Value of Proximity: The Berlin Blockade
One of the Council’s key attributes is that it places senior major-power diplo-
mats in close proximity to each other. In some cases, that proximity has gen-
erated diplomatic breakthroughs on issues that threatened relations between
the permanent members. Perhaps the clearest example of that dynamic
occurred early in the Council’s history. In 1948, as the crisis over the status of
Berlin threatened conflict between the superpowers, diplomacy between them
appeared to be nonexistent. After considerable debate, the Western powers
chose to hold formal Council debates on the crisis. Over strenuous Soviet
objections, they placed the Berlin blockade on the body’s agenda. The formal
sessions that followed produced vituperative speeches, but little diplomatic
headway. A Western-backed resolution met a predictable Soviet veto.29

Several months later, however, the mechanism of the Council did provide
valuable diplomatic space. After a quiet opening from the Soviets, US and
Soviet diplomats met on the margins of a Council meeting to explore a solu-
tion. Deputy US ambassador Philip Jessup and Soviet ambassador Yakov
Malik emerged as key interlocutors on the crisis. US secretary of state Dean
Acheson (no fan of the UN overall) saw the informal contact that the Council
meetings allowed as particularly valuable. “We concluded that a highly secret,
casual approach to the Russians could better be made by Jessup at the United
Nations than through the embassy in Moscow or by the [State] Department to
the Russian Embassy.”30 During the ensuing months, that diplomacy contin-
ued in New York and was critical to a resolution of the crisis.

The Soviet Union and the United States each had reasons to seek an exit
from the Berlin crisis and they might well have found another mechanism for
achieving it. However, there were formidable obstacles to arranging a high-
level meeting. One attempt by President Harry Truman to do so foundered
when Secretary of State George Marshall and several other senior officials
objected.31 As Acheson acknowledged, the easy proximity of senior diplo-
mats at the Council facilitated quiet bilateral deliberations. As UN Secretary-
General Trygve Lie wrote later, “The electric tension that the Berlin Blockade
generated between two non-negotiating worlds was very great. Had there
been no United Nations, it might have been so great that the electricity would
have shot across the gap, setting both sides afire.”32

The Value of Delay: The Cuban Missile Crisis
The Council’s inability to respond quickly and unambiguously in the face of
developing crises is often cited as an institutional defect. From a governance
perspective, these attributes of Council diplomacy may be pernicious. But in
the context of an evolving crisis in which the permanent members desire to

554 Assessing the UN Security Council

limit their own involvement, delay and ambiguity can become virtues. Pro-
longed deliberations allow the body to give the appearance of action. This
appearance can be helpful to the permanent members when one or more of
them is being pressured by non-Council members, activist groups, or domes-
tic actors to take more assertive steps. The Council has served the interests of
great-power comity on several occasions by simply filling time and slowing
the diplomatic pace of international crises.

The Cuban missile crisis is a notable example of this function. The
Council debates on that crisis lasted for more than a week. They occurred
while President John F. Kennedy’s advisers were considering courses of
action, and when several influential voices inside and outside government
were urging immediate military strikes. At certain moments during these
debates, the president appeared to use the fact of the ongoing Council debate
to fend off calls for prompt military action. As he considered whether to order
the forcible boarding of a Soviet ship on 25 October, for example, President
Kennedy pointed explicitly to the Council process under way as a rationale
for delaying the decision to do so.33 The chances of substantive Council
action were vanishingly small throughout the crisis. Yet the process of
extended debate may have been important; key participants such as Secretary
of State Dean Rusk later argued that the Council served a critical delaying
function. “Although the Cuban Missile Crisis was directly resolved between
Washington and Moscow, it was very important that the Security Council
[took] it up,” Rusk wrote. “Prolonged discussion lessened the chance that one
side would lash out in a spasm and do something foolish. The UN earned its
pay for a long time to come just by being there for the missile crisis.”34 Rusk
was a strong backer of the UN throughout his career, and his views should be
judged accordingly. Still, the broader record of the crisis suggests that the
Council process served as one of several factors that helped prevent quick US
military action.

The Value of Ambiguity: The 1967 and 1973 Middle East Wars
If delay can be a potent virtue from a concert perspective, so too can ambi-
guity. Council resolutions are intricately worded documents that are usually
the product of lengthy deliberation. The resulting documents are often diffi-
cult to interpret, and this lack of clarity is in some cases intentional. From a
governance perspective, this ambiguity can be devastating. Peacekeeping
commanders, for example, need clear guidance on how to pursue their man-
dates and often have been frustrated by confused Council instructions. At the
broader political level, however, the lack of clarity in Council resolutions can
have positive effects. As Michael Byers argues, ambiguity in Council reso-
lutions “is a legal safety valve that helps to buy time.”35

The Council’s most famous resolutions on the Israel-Palestine crisis,
Resolutions 242 of 1967 and 338 of 1973, offer an important illustration of
how Council ambiguity can serve the interests of comity between the perma-

David Bosco 555

nent members. Both resolutions emerged in response to fighting that threat-
ened to draw in the superpowers and, in both cases, the superpowers were
deeply involved in the drafting process. Resolution 242’s key provision—that
Israel exchange occupied land for Arab recognition—included one central
ambiguity: the resolution was not clear about whether Israel should withdraw
from all the Occupied Territories. The English and French versions of the res-
olution led to different interpretations. The uncertainty was intentional, and it
allowed the United States to argue that it had defended the interests of Israel
while giving the Soviet Union room to interpret it as requiring a full Israeli
withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, which its Arab allies demanded.
As Henry Kissinger wrote of the Council’s phrasing, “What it lacked in pre-
cision, it made up for in flexibility. It was well suited for beginning a negoti-
ation in which reconnecting the different interpretations of the parties would
be one of the objectives.”36

US and Soviet diplomats drew on that fragile and ambiguous consensus
during the 1973 war, which was in some respects even more dangerous for
the superpowers. At one point during the crisis generated by that conflict, the
United States changed the Defense Readiness Condition (DEFCON) level for
the first time since the Cuban missile crisis.37 As fighting continued, the
United States and the Soviet Union drafted a joint Council resolution reiter-
ating the formulation in Resolution 242 and insisting on a cease-fire. After
several anxious days, the Council’s demand had the desired effect. In both
cases, the superpowers effectively used Council ambiguity as a tool for man-
aging their bilateral relations. As subsequent events have demonstrated, the
Council’s formulation did little to resolve the underlying conflict, but it did
help limit the chances that the superpowers themselves would be drawn into
the fighting.

The Value of Face-saving:
Russia’s Decline and the Kosovo Conflict
In several situations, the Council has been used to smooth over diplomatic
tension arising when a member of the P5 has suffered a diplomatic or geopo-
litical reverse. Elrod argues that the Concert of Europe had the avoidance of
great-power humiliation as a central goal: “Excessive weakness as well as
superabundant strength of an essential member posed a serious menace to the
system.”38 A similar recognition has been evident in Council behavior at sev-
eral points, and particularly in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In late 1991, the Council members faced the question of how to respond insti-
tutionally to the Soviet Union’s dissolution and the emergence of the Russian
Federation. The UN Charter accords a permanent seat to the USSR, not to the
Russian Federation. That reality might have prompted a full debate on how to
adjust the Council’s membership to new realities. Instead, the other P5 mem-
bers endorsed simply transferring the Soviet permanent seat to the Russian

556 Assessing the UN Security Council

Federation. Several factors militated in favor of a substitution. The P5 had a
joint interest in avoiding a broader debate on Council reform that likely
would have brought scrutiny to their own privileges. Yet it is evident that
another motive for the quick substitution was softening Moscow’s geopoliti-
cal fall and boosting its new government. “Russia will remain a great power,”
said the Soviet foreign minister as it became clear that Russia would retain
the USSR’s permanent Council seat. “It may not be a superpower, but it will
still be a great military power and part of the global strategic balance.”39

Almost a decade later, the Council mechanism helped to mitigate some
of the consequences of Russia’s geopolitical decline. In 1999 Russia endured
a diplomatic defeat when the NATO alliance initiated military action to com-
pel Serbia, a Russian ally, to cede control of the restive province of Kosovo.
In so doing, the Western powers circumvented the Council and launched
strikes without its authorization. The bombing campaign, which lasted for
more than two months, produced a significant deterioration in relations
between the West and Russia. In the wake of the NATO campaign, however,
a divided Council managed to assemble a resolution authorizing a postcon-
flict stabilization force. Russia, publicly bruised by its inability to protect its
ally, was intent on returning the Council to the center of the diplomatic
process. During the process of drafting a new resolution, it managed to
extract several concessions from the Western powers. Russia’s Council veto
therefore had the effect of restoring a formal equality between the great pow-
ers that the NATO air campaign had demonstrated did not exist in military or
diplomatic terms. “Formulated as a resolution of the UN Security Council,”
Russian president Boris Yeltsin wrote later, “the [Serbian] surrender ceased to
be humiliating.”40 Even as Russia recovered from a diplomatic setback, the
Council process provided space for its diplomats to secure minor diplomatic
victories and to reassert, at least in a symbolic sense, its prerogatives as a
major power.

Implications of a Concert Vision
In this article, I have presented evidence that the Council may deepen high-
level diplomatic contacts between its permanent members and that Council
processes can help the P5 manage their own relations in several ways. I have
shown that a concert approach produces a different perspective on the body
and its utility. It encourages seeing the P5 itself as a distinct institution
embedded within the broader framework of the Council. With this perspec-
tive, it emphasizes the Council’s political rather than its legal role. It encour-
ages an understanding of the body as a politically driven consensus body, the
value of which extends beyond its ability (or inability) to consistently enforce
international law or even respond promptly to many security crises. A concert
view emphasizes that increased contact and comity among the permanent

David Bosco 557

members is itself a key product—perhaps the most important product—of the
Council’s work.

It may be asked whether these concert benefits could not be obtained
through a mechanism other than the Council, with all its formal responsibili-
ties and legal power for maintaining peace and security. The diplomatic land-
scape is littered with consultative groups that allow for informal consensus
building between different groups of states. The dilemma is that there appears
to be a symbiotic relationship between the Council’s governance and concert
functions. The council meets regularly and consults intensively because of its
responsibility to manage the dozens of active UN operations in the field,
supervise the work of subsidiary bodies it has authorized, and monitor sanc-
tions it has enacted. If those burdens were formally or informally shifted else-
where, its concert benefits would likely be diminished.

Barring some kind of catastrophic international event, the Council will
remain often at the center of international security efforts. Its conspicuous
failures notwithstanding, states and international public opinion will continue
to ask the Council to fulfill its mandate for preserving peace and security.
Discussion will continue about how to make this core institution more effec-
tive. In this environment, the governance view will dominate, but the Coun-
cil’s concert benefits should not be forgotten.

The Council’s working methods have come under intense scrutiny during
the past several decades. A number of voices have argued that the Council
needs to increase its transparency.41 The body’s informal consultations—
where most major decisions are made—have been a particular focus of criti-
cism. These meetings, which became standard practice in the late 1970s,
occur without any record of discussion and often without a formal agenda.
In response to persistent criticism, the Council has agreed to provide regular
updates on its informal meetings and to create certain avenues for civil soci-
ety input. From a governance perspective, this emphasis on transparency is
understandable. A legitimate governing body’s methods and procedures must
be clear to the public. Whether transparency is unambiguously beneficial
from a concert perspective is less clear. Some of the Council’s most effective
moments have resulted from off-the-record informal consultations, particu-
larly between permanent members. A relentless transparency drive that dis-
courages, for example, regular consultations among the permanent members
might sacrifice important Council benefits on the altar of good governance.
As Voeten argues, “Successful reforms to make the Security Council more
transparent may actually have adverse effects in that powerful states may flee
the forum.”42

Finally, a concert approach offers a different perspective on the perennial
question of Security Council reform and enlargement. Those who argue for
significant Council expansion often cast these arguments in terms of legiti-
macy and respect for the Council’s decisions. A more representative Coun-

558 Assessing the UN Security Council

cil, it is asserted, will command greater respect and ultimately be more effec-
tive. Arguments in favor of Council reform therefore lean heavily on a gov-
ernance conception of the Council’s role and usually pay little heed to its
concert utility. From a concert perspective, Council reform might be quite
beneficial if it extends the benefits outlined above to other major powers. Yet
membership reform might also pose a danger to the concert dynamic. Some
proposals would significantly expand the number of nonpermanent seats and
produce a total membership of up to thirty members. Reform of this type
might alter the diplomatic balance considerably and discourage major powers
from using the Council as often as they do now. If so, the push for a more
representative and effective Council could inadvertently undermine one of
the institution’s hidden values. �

Notes
David Bosco is assistant professor at American University’s School of International
Service, where he teaches international law and organizations. He is author of Five
to Rule Them All: The UN Security Council and the Making of the Modern World
(2009) and Rough Justice: The International Criminal Court in a World of Power
Politics (2014).

1. Tamar Gutner and Alexander Thompson, “The Politics of IO Performance: A
Framework,” Review of International Organizations 5, no. 3 (2010): 239.

2. For examples of the former, see Edward C. Luck, UN Security Council:
Practice and Promise (New York: Routledge, 2006); for notable examples of the lat-
ter, see Virginia Fortna, Does Peacekeeping Work? Shaping Belligerents’ Choices
After Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

3. Charter of the United Nations, Article 24.
4. Inis L. Claude, Power and International Relations (New York: Random

House, 1962), p. 110 (emphasis in original).
5. Mary Ellen O’Connell, International Law and the Use of Force: Cases and

Materials, University Casebook Series (New York: Foundation Press; Thomson
West, 2005), p. 225; Anthony C. Arend and Robert J. Beck, International Law and
the Use of Force: Beyond the UN Charter Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1993),
pp. 33–34, 37.

6. It is not clear that the diplomats who negotiated the United Nations con-
ceived of the Council itself as a tool for managing major-power relations. Instead,
comity between the permanent members was generally seen as the predicate for the
body’s broader role in maintaining the peace.

7. For an examination of the role of major-power involvement in local conflict,
see Benjamin Miller and Korina Kagan, “The Great Powers and Regional Conflicts:
Eastern Europe and the Balkans from the Post-Napoleonic Era to the Post–Cold War
Era,” International Studies Quarterly 41, no. 1 (1997): 51–85.

8. Stathis N. Kalyvas and Laia Balcells, “International System and Technolo-
gies of Rebellion: How the End of the Cold War Shaped Internal Conflict,” Ameri-
can Political Science Review 104, no. 3 (2010).

9. See, in particular, Jennifer Mitzen, “Reading Habermas in Anarchy: Multi-
lateral Diplomacy and Global Public Spheres,” American Political Science Review
99, no. 3 (2005): 401–417.

David Bosco 559

10. The direct clashes between China and the United States (in Korea) and
between China and the Soviet Union (border dispute) occurred before China assumed
the Council seat, which to that point was held by the government in Taiwan.

11. Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Richard B. Elrod, “The Concert of
Europe: A Fresh Look at an International System,” World Politics 28, no. 2 (1976):
159–174 ; Georges-Henri Soutou, “Was There a European Order in the Twentieth
Century? From the Concert of Europe to the End of the Cold War,” Contemporary
European History 9, no. 3 (2000): 329; A. J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in
Europe, 1848–1918, Oxford History of Modern Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1954).

12. Elrod, “The Concert of Europe,” p. 163.
13. Robert C. Hilderbrand, Dumbarton Oaks: The Origins of the United Nations

and the Search for Postwar Security (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1990).

14. B. Urquhart, “International Peace and Security: Thoughts on the Twentieth
Anniversary of Dag Hammarskjöld’s Death,” Foreign Affairs 60, no. 1 (1981): 14;
David L. Bosco, Five to Rule Them All: The UN Security Council and the Making of
the Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 137–139. For an
in-depth look at how permanent members of the Security Council worked infor-
mally outside of the Council to develop the resolution leading to the cease-fire in
the Iran-Iraq War, see Cameron R. Hume, The United Nations, Iran, and Iraq: How
Peacemaking Changed (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 89–91,
94–97, 100–103.

15. Elrod, “The Concert of Europe,” p. 167.
16. Charles A. Kupchan and Clifford A. Kupchan, “Concerts, Collective Secu-

rity, and the Future of Europe,” International Security 16, no. 1 (1991): 120.
17. Erik Voeten, “The Political Origins of the UN Security Council’s Ability to

Legitimize the Use of Force,” International Organization 59, no. 3 (2005): 527–557.
18. Kupchan and Kupchan, “Concerts, Collective Security, and the Future of

Europe,” p. 120.
19. Charter of the United Nations, Article 39.
20. Kupchan and Kupchan, “Concerts, Collective Security, and the Future of

Europe,” p. 123.
21. Inis L. Claude, Jr., Swords Into Plowshares: The Problems and Process of

International Organization (New York: Random House), p. 76.
22. Prime Minister’s Personal Minute, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Road to Vic-

tory: Winston S. Churchill, 1941–1945 (London: Heinemann, 1986), p. 1170.
23. Bosco, Five to Rule Them All, pp. 149–151.
24. Ibid., p. 251.
25. Ibid.
26. The data was compiled using major news sources. It excludes visits to Ger-

many and France because regularized European Union meetings make these diffi-
cult to track.

27. Yoram Z. Haftel, “Designing for Peace: Regional Integration Arrangements,
Institutional Variation, and Militarized Interstate Disputes,” International Organi-
zation 61, no. 1 (2007): 217–237.

28. Mitzen, “Reading Habermas in Anarchy,” p. 411.
29. For an account of Western diplomacy at the Council, see Philip Jessup, “The

Berlin Blockade and the Use of the United Nations,” Foreign Affairs 50, no. 1
(1971): 163–173.

560 Assessing the UN Security Council

30. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department
(New York: Norton, 1969), p. 269.

31. James Reston, “Truman Blocked in Move to Send Vinson to Stalin,” New
York Times, 9 October 1948, p. 1. See also Wilson D. Miscamble, “Harry S. Tru-
man, the Berlin Blockade and the 1948 Election,” Presidential Studies Quarterly
10, no. 3 (Summer 1980): footnote 50.

32. Trygve Lie, In the Cause of Peace: Seven Years at the United Nations (New
York: Macmillan, 1954), p. 218.

33. Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the
White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1997), pp. 404–405.

34. Dean Rusk as told to Richard Rusk, As I Saw It, 1st ed. (New York: Norton,
1990), p. 236.

35. Michael Byers, “Agreeing to Disagree: Security Council Resolution 1441
and International Ambiguity,” Global Governance 10, no. 2 (2004): 181.

36. Henry Kissinger, Crisis: The Anatomy of Two Major Foreign Policy Crises
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), p. 273.

37. Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1992), pp. 529–531.

38. Elrod, “The Concert of Europe,” pp. 166–167.
39. David Remnick, “In New Commonwealth of ‘Equals,’ Russia Remains the

Dominant Force,” Washington Post, 21 December 1991, p. A39.
40. Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, Midnight Diaries (New York: Public Affairs,

2000), p. 265.
41. See, for example, High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, “A

More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility,” UN Doc. A/59/565 (December
2004), pars. 246–260.

42. Voeten, “Political Origins,” p. 552.

David Bosco 561