UN Charter Art. 2:4 aims to protect states from forcible encroachments by other states, but it does not stand in the way of the Security Council taking or authorizing states to take enforcement actions under Art. 42 and did so in the case of Korea 1950 and Iraq in 1991.It may take or authorize enforcement actions – even inside states – under Art.2:7 and 42. It may also under Art. 53 authorize the use of force by regional organizations – and has done so. The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine envisages the use of force to remedy extreme internal situations, such as genocide or massacres, but only within the rules cited requiring approval by the Security Council. The veto is often criticized as hindering action by the Council. It may, indeed, be excessively used but may sometimes be only a signal from one of the permanent members that it may be ready to use its power to resist an action proposed. Post WWII, force has been used by states – but only rarely – to acquire territory while ignoring the Security Council, notably by North Korea in 1950, Iraq against Iran in 1980 and against Kuwait in 1990, Russia against Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.

Many interventions have been undertaken since WWII for familiar reasons such as regime change. They have almost invariably been judged as breaches of the UN Charter prohibition of the interstate use of force and the claimed justifications of self-defence and protection of nationals have been rejected. Examples are the cases of the US interventions in the Dominican Republic (1965), Grenada and Panama (1989) and the Russian interventions in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014 and 2022-). Even Viet Nam’s intervention in Kampuchea (1978) removing the blood-stained Pol Pot regime was judged critically by the UN General Assembly. In 1999, Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a speech that even though the principle of non-interference should not be jettisoned too readily, he queried whether it should not be qualified through ‘a new framework’ to permit action to remove ‘evil’ dictators like Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic. However, the massive bombings of Kosovo in 1999 undertaken without Security Council approval and claimed to have been for humanitarian reasons have remained controversial and have not been seen as a legal precedent.

This chapter traces the origins of the veto power of the permanent members of the UN Security Council from the negotiations leading into the San Francisco Conference to the finalization of the UN Charter. It then examines early response to Security Council paralysis – resolutions in the late 1940s by the General Assembly calling for veto restraint as well as the “Uniting for Peace” Resolution in 1950. Even though expectations for the Security Council have probably gone beyond the intention of the drafters of the UN Charter, especially since the end of the Cold War it is clear that when there is sufficient political will, this body has the legal ability to prevent or stop many situations of catastrophic consequences to communities, countries, and regions around the world. Concomitantly, when the Council does not take on such a role, there is widespread disenchantment with its performance. The lack of responsiveness to the commission of mass atrocity crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, and/or war crimes), which have occurred virtually unimpeded in places such as Rwanda, Darfur, Syria, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Yemen has come at a staggering toll in terms of lives lost. Much of the time, inaction by the Council can be specifically traced to use of the veto, or the threat of the veto, by one or more of the permanent members. This chapter makes the case that it is time to reconsider existing hard law legal obligations and recognize that these in fact impose limitations on the use of the veto in the face of atrocity crimes.

This chapter aims to show with empirical evidence the veto power of business over corporate accountability.It starts discussing the underlying assumption that business veto power stems from its economic power, leading to a history of impunity. Although our judicial action data set seems to confirm patterns of impunity, it also indicates more variation than glib assumptions about economic actors’ power sustain. We explore what type of firm has proved more successful in vetoing judicial accountability, where that veto power over accountability occurs and when economic actors are most likely to successfully use their veto power over accountability. In the second part of the chapter, we explore the strategies economic actors have employed to maintain impunity, specifically legal, non-judicial, unlawful, and mobilizational. The third part of the chapter probes the notion of weakening economic actors’ veto power using our Archimedes’ Lever approach. To lift the weight of corporate accountability, either civil society actors must apply more force or the force of veto powers must be reduced. This section explores that possibility. The concluding section returns to Archimedes’ Lever to summarize the possibilities for change and what steps might contribute to reducing the power of veto players weighing down corporate accountability.

Borrowing Gerry Simpson’s taxonomy, it was and remains common to think of the Soviet Union as both a ‘great power’ and an ‘outlaw state’. Some historical accounts portray Soviet law as elaborate, specific and complex; but simultaneously, others portray ‘Soviet law’ as a sham. This essay argues that the Soviet approach to Cold War international law hews closer to the former image than the latter. It appears that Soviet faith in international law grew over the course of the Cold War, rather than diminished. This essay is a tentative sketch of the transformation of Soviet faith in law over the course of the Cold War.

While Turkey has been traditionally deeply entrenched in the Western alliance, the country lately had a significant deterioration of its relationship with the West. This chapter first outlines the puzzle that this book addresses: How and why does Turkey increasingly go its own way within the Western alliance and grow further apart from its traditional Western allies? It then places Turkey’s relations with the West in a historical perspective, by focusing first on the history of Turkey–EU relations and then on Turkey–NATO–USA relations. It discusses the research methodology used in addressing these questions, especially the author’s unique fieldwork and semi-structured elite interviews with over 200 government officials, diplomats, EU, NATO, and OSCE officials, academics, non-governmental organization officials, and journalists in Turkey, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States. It offers a justification for the selection of cases examined throughout the book and concludes by discussing the outline of the book.

While the new security environment necessitates an enhanced dialogue between the EU and NATO, since 2004 Turkey opposes NATO’s sharing of sensitive intelligence information with non-NATO EU members that did not sign a bilateral agreement with NATO (i.e. the Republic of Cyprus) on protecting classified information. Through its NATO membership, Turkey constitutes a veto player in the inter-institutional relations between the EU and NATO and engages in boundary-testing strategy using active diplomacy, entangling diplomacy, and issue-linkage bargaining. Turkey engages in boundary challenging through strategic noncooperation and inter-institutional balancing against the EU. The veto gives Turkey a voice against the EU and helps Turkey pursue long-term interests, such as increasing its leverage against the EU in its accession negotiations, resolving the Cyprus problem to its advantage, and getting fully integrated into the European Defence Agency (EDA). The chapter concludes that as long as the uncertainties around Turkey’s EU accession and EDA associate membership remain and the Cyprus conflict remains unresolved, Turkey will continue to challenge its boundaries against the EU.