Abstract
On the evidence of this and earlier studies, it seems clear that the United Nations fulfils three main diplomatic roles. It provides a convenient forum for general diplomacy (which includes intelligence gathering), it legitimises diplomacy, and it mediates. There is also little doubt that over the last few years, through the exploitation of these roles by member states and by the Secretariat, the United Nations has made a contribution of varying degrees of importance to diplomatic breakthroughs in some dangerous ‘regional conflicts’. In others, it has either come close to or made significant progress towards breakthroughs of both procedural and substantive kinds. In short, the recent past, especially the annus mirabilis of 1988, has witnessed a productive return to the UN.
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Notes
On the conventional distinctions between good offices, conciliation and mediation, see Saadia Touval, The Peace Brokers: Mediators in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948–1979 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 4–7.
Conor Cruise O’Brien and Feliks Topolski [illustrations by], The United Nations: Sacred Drama (London: Hutchinson, 1968).
Conor Cruise O’Brien and Feliks Topolski ‘U.N. Theatre: Survival Tactics on the World Stage’, The New Republic, 4 Nov. 1985, pp. 17–19;
Conor Cruise O’Brien and Feliks Topolski ‘When Nothing is Better Than Nothing’, The Times, 23 Oct. 1985;
Conor Cruise O’Brien and Feliks Topolski ‘Getting Together for Peace’, The Times, 3 Aug. 1988.
The Peace Brokers, p. 16. In I. William Zartman and Saadia Touval, ‘International Mediation: Conflict Resolution and Power Politics’, Journal of Social Issues, vol. 41, no. 2, 1985, pp. 27–45, the strong version of this argument is nominally maintained but in effect abandoned.
See also S. Touval and I. William Zartman (eds), International Mediation in Theory and Practice (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1985).
On the highly distorting impact of the presidential election cycle on American foreign policy, especially towards the Middle East, see William B. Quandt, Camp David: Peacemaking and Politics (Washington: Brookings, 1986);
William B. Quandt, The Middle East: Ten Years After Camp David (Washington: Brookings, 1988).
On the episodic involvement of the United States in the interminable Cyprus negotiations, see Brian Urquhart, A Life in Peace and War (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987), p. 279.
Harold Nicolson, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (London: Constable, 1954), pp. 75–6.
Harold Nicolson, The Political Testament of Cardinal Richelieu: The Significant Chapters and Supporting Selections, trsl. by Henry Bertram Hill (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961), pp. 94–5;
Humphrey Trevelyan, Diplomatic Channels (London: Macmillan, 1973), p. 72.
See, for example, A. Yeselson and A. Gaglione, A Dangerous Place: The United Nations as a Weapon in World Politics (New York: Grossman, 1974).
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© 1991 G. R. Berridge
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Berridge, G.R. (1991). Conclusion. In: Return to the UN. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376052_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376052_9
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