| Book Title | Regional Organizations and the Development of Collective Security: Beyond Chapter VIII Of The UN Charter |
| Book Author | Abass, Ademola |
| Bibliographic Information | Hart Publishing Ltd., 2004, Pages : 239, $80.00, ISBN 1841134805 |
Short review
Regional Organisations and the Development of Collective Security: Beyond Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. By Ademola Abass. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing, 2004. Pp. xxviii, 239. $90.
Reviewed by James Cockayne, NYU School of Law JSD candidate, and Institute for International Law and Justice (IILJ) Graduate Scholar in the IILJ’s LL.M.-JSD Program in International Law.
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Ademola Abass’ doctoral thesis makes for a disappointing study of the relationship between regional organizations and the United Nations system of collective security. The volume raises a number of questions, but provides few incisive answers. The risk with the publication of doctoral theses is that brevity will be sacrificed in favor of a cover-all-bases demonstration of the author’s compendious understanding of a given topic. That risk can be averted by the presence of a strong editorial hand. Unfortunately, this volume demonstrates both an absence of that hand, and holes in the author’s treatment of this important issue.
The volume provides a wide-ranging, but often poorly structured, discussion of many of the elements in the increasingly complex debate over the proper relationship between the UN and regional security mechanisms. Unfortunately, it overlooks key issues, such as the conflict of jurisdiction between overlapping regional mechanisms, a question which has emerged frequently in recent times, with the UN present at the same time as OSCE and NATO in the Balkans, OSCE and CIS in Georgia, EU and SADC in the DRC, NATO and AU in Sudan and ECOWAS and AU in Côte d’Ivoire. This oversight is a product of structural and conceptual looseness. Symptomatically, a useful discussion of the meaning of ‘collective security’ comes half way through the book. The apparent lack of editorial guidance leads to much repetition, and a plethora of grammatical and spelling mistakes, often distracting to the reader.
On the positive side, the useful exposition of contemporary practice is well informed by historical perspective, reminding us of the times, not so long gone, when mere cooperation between the Security Council and regional organizations was controversial. Yet inadequate space is devoted to exposition of particular cases (only pages 141-182), and much more could be made of those cases. Abass also seems to overlook a number of important cases, particularly NATO’s presence in Afghanistan, and the EU’s Operation Artémis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Pacific Island Forum’s Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI). He is strongest in his discussion of ECOWAS practice in West Africa.
The discussion raises a number of important legal questions, including the question of the legality of the Council’s delegation of enforcement powers to regional mechanisms, and of states’ authorization of intervention by regional organizations on their territory. Abass’ discussion is at its best here, even if some of his conclusions – for example, that the 1991 Gulf War was illegal – seem a little obscure.
A decade ago, the Supplement to the Agenda for Peace identified five forms of possible cooperation between the Security Council and regional mechanisms: consultation, diplomatic support, operational support, co-deployment and joint operations. These concepts might form the basis for fleshing out how the ‘subsidiarity’ which Abass so repeatedly refers to might be realized. This is a central challenge awaiting the Council, and of increasing urgency, especially as regional organizations like NATO begin taking action ‘out-of-area’ in the wake of 9/11. Unfortunately, Abass does little to advance the debate.
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First, not covering issues as the AU in Sudan, ECOWAS in Ivory Coast, or EU in DRC was not a product of oversight but owes to the fact some of these operations had either not taken place at the time the book was completed or did not form part of the thematic concern of the book. But one understands the ignorance of the reviewer about the usual great lapse between the submission of manuscripts and their final publication.
Certainly, the reviewer did not understand the main concern of the book as it emerged.
Certainly, there is some credibility on his comment on editorial points even if these are widely exaggerated. But the treatment of "Collective Security" in the middle rather than the start was a deliberate decision by the author for reasons that are self explanatory in the book but which the reviewer did not detect because he/she did not
On the whole, I think the review is rather poor, not because it brought out certain weaknesses in the book - for which I am, and any writer should be grateful, but because the reviewer lacks the basic understanding of the real issues involved. My advice is that the reviewer undertake more studies in this area before embarking on future reviews.