By Joshua Muravchik

This publication exhibits how the UN has confirmed inept at retaining international peace and selling human rights. the writer proposes a smaller model of the association, refocused on less complicated goals.

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Extra resources for The Future of the United Nations: Understanding the Past to Chart a Way Forward

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The process by which two superpowers liquidated their long, bitter conflict involved many summits and other meetings, and many negotiations and agreements on arms and other issues. What it conspicuously did not involve was any significant peacemaking role on the part of the UN. With the end of the Cold War in 1989, hopes were kindled that the Security Council, no longer polarized, could begin at last to play the role of peace-enforcer envisioned in the charter. This idea strengthened when the council responded promptly and effectively to Iraq’s conquest of Kuwait in 1990, its first post–Cold War test.

These positions are therefore plums, which generates an impetus to create more of them. Since the wealthiest fourteen memberstates (the so-called Geneva group) provide 80 percent of the UN’s income, there is little incentive for the other 177 members to hold 44 THE FUTURE OF THE UNITED NATIONS down costs. Boutros-Ghali remarked in a moment of candor that “the third world is for proliferation [of UN offices], all because of the possibilities of jobs or for prestige. ”57 The problem is not merely the impetus for featherbedding, but also the demand by member-states for their share of the UN pie.

The UN’s impartiality was trusted, and it could play this role effectively. However, in several other situations where one or more of the parties were not ready for peace, the UN’s attempts at peacekeeping led to disaster. One such case was Bosnia. 12 Although the Security Council authorized the use of force in protection of these safe areas, the UN peacekeepers were given rules of engagement that allowed them to fire their weapons only if they themselves were fired upon, not if the people under their putative protection were being shot.

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