Explaining the Imposition of the UN Arms Embargo

• In Event: The Effectiveness (or Not) of Coercion

Abstract

When do countries experiencing civil wars face an arms embargo by the United Nations Security Council? Although the Charter of the United Nations implies that the UN arms embargo is a measure to maintain international peace and security by the Security Council, some cases show that it is not true. For example, even though the Syrian government has been proposing a threat to the regional peace by attacking its innocent civilians causing human rights violations and civil conflicts, the Security Council has not imposed an arms embargo on the country’s government. This shows that the threat to international peace and security by the potential targets is not the only cause of the UN arms embargo. Instead, the consensus among the Security Council members is another important factor as the imposition of an arms embargo requires an affirmative vote of nine members. Unfortunately, however, scholars have not paid much attention to the unique multilateral aspects of the decision-making process of the UN arms embargoes. This paper aims to extend the discussion of the topic with a larger emphasis on the consensus between the actors. I argue that the national interests of the individual members of the UN Security Council affect the imposition of the UN arms embargoes to the countries.
For the empirical analysis, I merge the UN arms embargo data into the Uppsala Conflict Data Program’s civil war dataset. Also, I include two major variables that can affect the cost-benefit analysis of the Security Council members to support the UN arms embargoes. One measures the defense alliance and the other measures the arms trade history between the members and the potential target countries. The results show that the target country’s relationship with the UN Security Council members significantly affects the imposition of an arms embargo. When a target country has an intense civil war, the Security Council is more likely to impose an arms embargo. However, when the country is allied with at least one of the permanent Security Council members or has imported weapons from the members, the intensity of civil war has a lesser effect on the imposition of an arms embargo. The result demonstrates that the interests of the Security Council members have a significant influence on the consensus for a UN arms embargo. In other words, I would argue that the UN arms embargo is not just the result of supporting common goods for international peace and security but also affected by the national interests of the members of the Security Council.

Author

• Hoshik Nam, University of Iowa