The shifting laws on the use of force and the trivialization of the UN collective security system: the need to reconstitute it

The war on Iraq has fuelled the debate about the nature and meaning of the international security system premised on the United Nations. This paper begins by examining the nature and subsequent modification of the UN collective security system. It focuses on the practice of Security Council authorisations to use force and the expanded notion of self-defence. It identifies as causes of such transformation the changing security environment, power asymmetries and the structural inability of the UN to adapt accordingly. The paper examines the failings of such a system and concludes by offering a framework for an international security system based on legitimacy interpreted as the congruence between processes, actors, claims and practices.