Abstract
The United Nations has lost its direction concerning peacekeeping and intervention in civil wars. Its member states have asked the impossible from the organisation, and given it neither the resources, nor the clarity of purpose and strategy to achieve it. To get the United Nations back on track, the organisation and its member states must gain a realistic sense of the possibilities of making or enforcing peace in civil war; make choices about where and how the UN will intervene; and develop a capacity for thinking strategically about its interventions. In particular it must acknowledge the limitations imposed by civil war — what can realistically be accomplished by outside forces in violent internal conflict — and the limitations imposed by its own organisational makeup and procedures.
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Notes
Peacebuilding is ‘action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict’. See Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace (New York: United Nations, 1992).
Wiliam J. Durch, ‘Building on Sand: UN Peacekeeping in the Western Sahara’, International Security, 17:4, Spring 1993, p. 151. This paragraph and the next draw from Durch’s excellent case study.
John Steinbruner, ‘Memorandum: Civil Violence as an International Security Problem’, in Francis M. Deng, Protecting the Dispossessed: A Challenge for the International Community ( Washington, DC: Brookings, 1993 ), pp. 157–8.
Rick Atkinson, ‘The Raid That Went Wrong’, Washington Post, 30 January 1994, p. A27.
For example, Andrew Natsios, ‘Food through Force; Humanitarian Intervention and U.S. Policy’, Washington Quarterly, Winter 1994, 17: 1, pp. 129–44.
See, for example, William J. Durch and Barry M. Blechman, Keeping the Peace: The United Nations in the Emerging World Order (Washington, DC: The Henry L. Stimson Center, 1992);
Indar Jit Rikhye, Strengthening UN Peacekeeping: New Challenges and Proposals ( Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1992 ).
David Lax and James Sebenius, The Manager as Negotiator: Bargaining for Cooperation and Competitive Gain ( New York: Free Press, 1986 ), pp. 255–64.
Contrast, for example, the seminal work of I. William Zartman, Ripe For. Resolution, Updated Edition (New York: Oxford University, 1989 );
the derivative work of Richard N. Haass, Conflicts Unending: The United States and Regional Disputes (New Haven: Yale University, 1990).
Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave ( Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1991 ).
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© 1995 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Stedman, S.J. (1995). UN Intervention in Civil Wars: Imperatives of Choice and Strategy. In: Daniel, D.C.F., Hayes, B.C. (eds) Beyond Traditional Peacekeeping. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23855-2_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23855-2_3
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