On the contrary, right up to the day before the start of the war, Iraq appeared as a country fully linked with all others. The Resolution was adopted because Southern Rhodesia's racist government was regarded by the Council as a threat to peace. Drawing from the experience of the Gulf crisis, the strengthening of non-coercive measures could be pursued along the following lines. First, limits should be set on the Security Council's absolute discretion. It is not conceivable in today's international community for it to be an agency legibus solutus .
Clearly checks are necessary.
It is certainly difficult to envisage a role for a judicial agency in peace-keeping actions. It is possible, however, to imagine the setting up of political controls, which could be entrusted only to the General Assembly, though it would have to be reorganized on more democratic foundations to represent peoples rather than governments. Another point to consider is that the system of non-coercive measures outlined in Article 41 is conceived above all to respond to breaches of international law that have already been committed . The system ought instead to operate preventively , that is, with measures aimed at discouraging grave breaches of international law and able, for instance, to intervene to control the arms trade. In Iraq's case the country was first allowed to arm and then had a destructive war unleashed on it.