By John Amoda
NOTHING in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.

Measures by members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security”.

In other words until the Security Council is sufficiently strong to take on the role assigned it in Article 39, member states can exercise their inherent right of self-defence.

Article 51 shows that the Charter had in view the protection of the United Nations united against aggressions and reinforces the responsibility and authority of an able Security Council.

Threats to the peace was not envisaged as intra-United Nations and or intra-Security Council.

Chapter VII was crafted as an inter-state instrument. The Cold War shattered the very foundations of the Security Council and the history of the United Nations both during and after the Cold War has been one of shoring up the foundation to prevent the collapse of what was built on it.

Of the several consequences of the Cold War two are note worthy, namely:

i.The shift of the maintenance of global peace from the Security Council to the bipolar alliances of NATO and Warsaw Pact- thus marginalising the Security Council and rendering its Chapter VII mandate inoperative.

ii.Theimprovisations of mechanisms for resolving intra-United Nations and intra-member state disputes that do not threaten the world with another global carnage. Peace-keeping was one of such mechanisms, an improvisation not contained in Chapter 6, 7 and 8 of the Charter.

Peace support operations are mandated by the Security Council as a function of its Article 39 responsibilities and are the evidence that the Allied Powers were yet to establish the international peace and security which was to be protected and maintained in the face of threats to that peace.

The Cold War between the capitalist West and the Socialist East exposed the fact of ideological contestation for global dominance within the Security Council itself.

The movements for independence from colonial domination showed that the United Nations was not a collective security alliance of liberal-democratic societies but an organisation divided by ideological differences and sovereignty contestations.

These disputes have revealed the difference between the United Nations of the Charter and the United Nations of Post World War II international and anti-imperialist politics.

Peace support operations have in this historical contexts been devised:

i.To maintain the relevance of the United Nations of the Charter, especially that of its main organ, the Security Council;

ii.To manage the consequences of armed conflicts amongst member states and within member states.

These two purposes are answer to the second task that is, indicating the present beneficiaries of peace support operations. Peace support operations whether authorised by the Security Council or legitimised by it, are supportive of the Article 39 relevance of the Security Council.

The Security Council has proven incapable of resolving disputes among its Permanent Members by means other than diplomacy; it has not been able to prevent armed conflicts among the United Nations Membership.

Where consensus among the Permanent Members of the Security Council has been possible, it has been able to mandate conflict management peace support operations among the member states of the United Nations Generally Assembly.

The history of peace-keeping validates the observation that they serve only to manage conflicts and not to solve them.

Peace-keeping have been mandated after conflicts have had the most devastating consequences for the afflicted societies and the Security Council has yet to develop the capacity to prevent the escalation of conflicts into mass armed conflicts as is evidently the case in its African region of member states.

Promise of the United Nations anchored in Article 39 remains what it is, promise yet to be fulfilled.

Member states whose societies have been devastated by conflicts have not provided lessons learnt cases for their neighbours. Conflict prevention remains the main strategy for peace support globally and regionally.

With such an appreciation of the constructive purpose of peace support operations the Ministry of Defence Seminar on Peace Support Operations assumes an Article 39 significance and relevance.

This is the case when the question addressed is how international and intra-national politics are to be constitutionalised to lessen recourse to wars for the settlement of disputes and to encourage the use of diplomacy in the place of war for the resolution of intra-state or inter-state conflicts?

Thus operationalised, the MOD seminar should address the problematic of how to prevent conflicts from escalating in intensity to the extent that makes interventions through peace support for the managing of the consequences of conflicts necessary.