Strategies for Approval

A thoughtful analysis of how major powers can obtain UN Security Council approval for military intervention Powerful democracies value UN Security Council (UNSC) approval for their military interventions, as it confers legitimacy and increases domestic and international support. In this painstakingly researched book, Stefano Recchia investigates how the United States and its allies can maximize their chances of gaining UNSC approval when veto-wielding permanent members such as Russia and China are strongly opposed at the outset. Drawing on hundreds of declassified documents in various languages and original interviews with top-level diplomats, Recchia demonstrates that in the three decades after the end of the Cold War, obtaining UNSC approval in the face of stiff initial opposition required not only economic and political leverage, as scholars have argued, but also determined efforts to reassure deeply reluctant member states about the military intervention's purpose, consequences, and normative appropriateness. Such reassurance efforts frequently involved the acceptance of costly constraints on military action-including its timing, scope, and duration-embedded in the UN resolution of approval. Recchia argues persuasively that reassurance efforts of this nature will be even more critical in the future if the United States and its allies want to have a realistic chance of obtaining UN approval for their armed interventions despite their declining leverage and increased great-power competition.