THE UNITED-NATIONS REACTIONS TO FOREIGN MILITARY INTERVENTIONS

This study investigates how the United Nations (UN) has reacted to for eign military interventions. The term foreign military intervention is defined and criteria for the selection of cases are formulated, resul ting in the selection of seven foreign military interventions: Vietnam in Kampuchea, Tanzania in Uganda, France in the Central African Empir e (CA), the USSR in Afghanistan, the USA and several Caribbean states in Grenada, the USA in Panama, and Iraq in Kuwait. The relevant provis ions of the Charter of the UN are presented and interpretations of Art icle 2(4) and Article 51 are made for the purpose of this study. This is followed by an examination of the UN reactions to the seven cases t hrough the Security Council's and the General Assembly's responses to the interventions. The reactions are categorized as active (Kuwait), e xtensive (Kampuchea and Afghanistan), single (Grenada and Panama), and no reaction (Uganda and the CAE). The next step of the analysis is th e formulation of a Hypothesis. This is done from a legal and normative approach to explaining the UN reactions. The Hypothesis is operationa lized and tested through the formulation of two specifications. The re sult of this testing is that the Hypothesis has been found untenable. This indicates that the Charter is not the sole factor guiding and gen erating the UN reactions to foreign military interventions. The study also shows that there is a basis for arguing that the UN reactions to the seven cases were not consistent.