United Nations Security Council Resolutions Vetoed by the United States

The United States government is frequently criticized for abusing its veto power in the United Nations Security Council to block resolutions that call on Israel to deescalate military violence. A Security Council resolution is vetoed when any one of the five permanent member states casts a negative vote. In addition to the United States, the five permanent member states are the United Kingdom, France, China, and the Russian Federation. The Security Council also has ten rotating member states, but only a vote of "nay" from a permanent member state can veto a resolution. In addition to vetoing a resolution, a member state can abstain from voting, which allows a state to express its disapproval of a resolution without issuing an outright veto. Professor Noam Chomsky has referred to an abstention by the United States as a "double veto," because it effectively eliminates any coverage of the resolution in the media and it erases it from the historical record.1 In its defense, the United States government does not hold the record for the most vetoes cast by a single member state. That dubious honor belongs to the USSR, which cast 118 vetoes in its lifetime. The US follows in second place with 76 vetoes (which means it is the nation with the highest number of vetoes that still exists in the Security Council). The nation in third place--the United Kingdom--cast only 31 vetoes.2 To many, this record of resolutions vetoed by the US government demonstrates, in addition to a commitment to ongoing atrocities by the Israeli government, a pattern of violence openly opposed by the international community that the mainstream domestic press seems to be completely ignoring.

United Nations Security Council resolutions that the United States either vetoed or abstained from voting on are listed below. Abstentions are listed in normal typeface, while vetoes are denoted by italicized typeface. The table contains the date the resolution was voted on, the subject of the resolution, and the names of any nations that joined the United States in vetoing or abstaining from voting on the resolution. The resolutions are listed in chronological order, begining with the earliest. Note that resolutions regarding "The situation in the Middle East" typically refer to Israel and its neighbors. Another important point to note is that the US government frequently uses the mere threat of a veto to prevent a resoltuion from even reaching the Security Council for a vote. As no official record of such threats exists, I am unable to include those here, so readers should bear in mind that this list only relays part of the narrative. Unfortunately, I have not yet had the time to list abstentions from 1989 to the present, so only the vetoes are listed for those years. When time permits, I will complete the list of abstentions and update it to include the most recent votes.

US Abstentions and Vetoes

Security Council resolutions vetoed by any of the permanent member states from 1946 through 2004 are listed in Annex III of the UN General Assembly report attached to this article.

1. 1. Chomsky, N. 2003. Dominance and its Dilemmas. Boston Review http://www.chomsky.info/articles/200310--.htm
2. 2. I tallied these vetoes manually, so they may be off by a couple vetoes
3. 3. Amendment to a paragraph of S/17363