Reinhard Schumacher 
The UN Security Council as a pivot for security management? A discussion on the Iraq Crisis [PDF ebook] 

Essay from the year 2006 in the subject Politics – Topic: International Organisations, grade: B2, University of Limerick, language: English, abstract: Introduction
In March 2003 an US-led coalition declared war against the Iraq and invaded Iraq. As soon as in April the resistance of the Iraqi military ended and the ‘coalition of the willings’ came out as the winner. But until today the situation in Iraq is far away from being peaceful. Instead there are terror attacks with hundred, sometimes even thousand, of dead civilians and soldiers every month.
But there is another point that led the war appears in bad light, namely that the United Nations (UN) and especially the Security Council of the UN never clearly backed this war. Furthermore the US-led coalition started the invasion disregarding the international community that was majoritarian against an attack on Iraq. But the fact that the US started the war by-passing the UN generates the question which role plays the UN nowadays in international politics? Is the UN still the only authority that has the legitimacy to decide and act in matters of international peace and security or are states paying less attention to the rules and regulations of the UN and strong states like the US act without regards to the UN and its the decisions in the future? Thus, can the UN and the Security Council restore and maintain their authority in matters of international dimension – despite the fact, that they were undermined in the Iraq war by the US (and the states that supported the US-led coalition)? Or did the unilateral Iraq War marked the ‘end of international security system’ (Glennon 2003, p.17)?
The starting point of this essay is this thesis of Thierry Tardy:
‘The ill-founded war in Iraq no doubt undermined the authority of the UN Security Council, apparently unable to match US security interests. But it also holds true that the UN still matters for the overwhelming majority of actors in the “international community” and is likely to remain an inescapable pivot of security management long after the Iraq crisis is out of the headlines’
(Tardy 2004, p.591)
To discuss these points this essay starts with a short introduction about the UN system and the Security Council of the UN. Afterwards I will look at the war on Iraq, how the UN and its member countries, especially the US, acted during to and after the war…