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The United Nations and Global Security: The Norm is Mightier than the Sword*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Abstract

Barnett argues that the United Nations, by operating on the principle of the consent of the parties, can encourage the development of a more stable and cooperative security architecture. The articulation and transmission of norms and the establishment of mechanisms can encourage transparency in interstate and internal matters. After the Cold War some entertained the possibility of increasing United Nations involvement in security affairs and making it a muscular security organization. Such visions, however, outstripped either what the United Nations was immediately capable of accomplishing or what the member states were willing to support. These developments demand a more pragmatic assessment of the United Nations to learn what it can do well, what it cannot do well, and how it can become more effective.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1995

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References

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26 The increased importance of these human rights norms underscores how different constitutive norms can conflict; specifically, the respect for human rights and the principle of noninterference clash in the area of humanitarian intervention. That the norms of society, whether domestic or international, might occasionally conflict is not surprising. Moreover, it is expected that there will be greater tension between the interstate and domestic constitutive norms with a growing interdependence and a blurring of the distinction between the domestic and the international. See Rosenau, James, Turbulence in World Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 211–16Google Scholar.

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