United Nations and US Foreign Policy

"Brian Frederking's new book should appeal not only to advanced undergraduate and graduate students, but to anyone interested in international organization, U.S. foreign policy, or global politics in the age of terror. In this volume, Frederking expertly engages debates over power, rules and institutions to highlight a "security-hierarchy" paradox which plagues U.S. policy toward the U.N. Security Council. Highlighting tensions between unilateral temptations and multilateral imperatives, Frederking provides incisive case studies of evolving approaches to peacekeeping, international justice, sanctions, regional conflicts, terrorism. In the process, his demonstrates the contributions of an elegant theoretical synthesis to understanding the emergent global order."Wesley Widmaier, St. Joseph's University, USA. "In today's world, the Security Council is a conspicuous site for the play of power politics--this is anarchy in a nutshell. Yet the Security Council does its business by making rules, and these rules matter. Brian Frederking deftly dissects and resolves this apparent paradox by showing how these rules constitute the hegemonial and hierarchical arrangements that give the post-cold era its distinctive structural properties. Frederking has got it right. Global security, states and power are all social constructions, talked into existence, linked by rules and expressed in forms of rule."Nicholas Onuf, Florida International University, USA. The United Nations Security Council has struggled to determine which rules should govern global security in the post-cold war world. This book describes the rules governing international security decision-making and examines the different understandings of collective security held by the permanent veto powers on the Security Council.Using a constructivist theory of global security, it analyzes major Security Council disputes since the cold war such as Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo; as well as current global security issues including Darfur, North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan and the War on Terrorism. Challenging the claim that 9/11 fundamentally changed world politics, Brian Frederking argues that the events exacerbated already existing tensions between the veto powers of the UN Security Council and emphasizes the many ways in which these powers disagree about how to pursue collective security.Frederking reasons that contemporary security threats require multilateral political cooperation, and the Security Council is vital to coordinating the actions of the international community to meet these threats. While the Security Council often harms global security by failing to act, the United States also often harms global security by acting unilaterally without Council authorization. Global security requires the veto powers to navigate a middle path between Council inaction and American unilateralism.Addressing a key issue in world politics, this book will be of interest students and researchers of American foreign policy, security studies and International Organizations.Frederking, Brian is the author of 'United Nations and US Foreign Policy', published 2007 under ISBN 9780415770750 and ISBN 0415770750.