ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how Chinese strategic preferences in the UN shaped China’s decisions and actions and examines China’s policy options and the political reasoning underlying China’s decision choices. It traces China’s reactions to the development of the events between 1990 and 2002 when major powers decided to resort to the use of coercive force against Iraq in coalition or unilaterally in peace enforcement or peacekeeping. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 shocked the world. With the agreement of almost every government that this invasion was a most flagrant aggression, the UN Security Council would swiftly take the most forceful and far-reaching enforcement action in the UN’s history. The chapter explores the decision-makers’ practical reasoning, asking what policy objectives, which preferences for the course of action and what calculations were directly connected to the choices of the policy actions under study.
