Reply #39: That makes no sense.

[SanchoPanza]

I think you're misreading the charter and the Participation Act. You do not need an Article 43 agreement to take an Article 42 action. Why would you need Congressional authorization for an Article 43 agreement but not an Article 42 action if the two reference the same process? Hell, why would you even need Article 42 in the first place?

They don't relate to the same thing. Article 43 references permanent contributions to a U.N. security force, something along the lines of a standing army of the Security Council. Article 42 references limited peacekeeping actions (should non-military interventions in Article 41 fail or prove insufficient). The Security Council has never invoked Article 43, yet has been using the more limited Article 42 in every multilateral intervention since Korea. This is, generally speaking, a good thing. Article 42 actions are narrow in scope and have specific goals, so there is less of a chance of "mission creep" or a military operation going beyond the scope of the resolution. People nervous about Libya becoming a quagmire should take comfort in this.

The reason why there is a distinction made in the Participation Act between Articles 42 and 43 is because, when it was ratified in 1947, Congress had no idea that the U.N. would come to rely exclusively on the more limited Article 42 actions. So they made it impossible for the President to submit troops to a permanent force without their approval. But in the tradition going all the way back to Jefferson's war against Tripoli, they left ad hoc engagements largely up to the executive under the rationalization that Congress could always curtail them after the fact. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 merely codified this unwritten rule into law and set specific time tables for such engagements (60 days plus an additional 30 for redeployment) as well as establishing reporting requirements that the President must fulfill.