10. Earliest Comprehensive Sanctions: Southern Rhodesia and Apartheid South Africa

The very first attempt to mobilize UN sanctions on behalf of the humanitarian norm of racial equality revealed the Security Council’s tenuous commitment to the UN’s core principals. Intended to act as the primary regulatory mechanism through which the veto-wielding powers were to guarantee peace and security, the Security Council never lived up to this promise. Big power politics overshadowed or shunted aside the very legitimate demands of the majority of the world’s populations and newly independent states. The Council, as had become apparent during its first full decade of existence, secured the winners of WW2 and their victors’ spoils mostly by strengthening and cementing their privileged positions. The logical consequence of this broken promise should have been to either radically reform the Security Council to deleverage the real sources of global hostilities or for those states that were betrayed, to abandon the Security Council altogether. Instead of choosing between these two options, the P5 preferred of course, and succeeded, to maintain the illusion of the Security Council’s peace-promoting role. Consequently, the proposed sanctions against Apartheid South Africa or Southern Rhodesia’s racist leadership never amounted to more than lip service. Equally consequential was how the failed attempt by many less powerful countries to make use of the Security Council sanctions system discouraged their continued participation in the Security Council’s conflict-resolution efforts.