Role of UN in Post-Cold War

The United Nations Organization (UN) website starts with an optimistic punch
line…United Nations, We the People. A stronger UN for a better world. It was this
vision for a better world after the catastrophes of two world wars which gave birth
first to the League of Nations and ultimately to The United Nations Organization.
However, the League of Nations founded at the end of World War 1 in an attempt
to eliminate war and violence had been defunct for many years, and had been in no
position to oppose the approaching tragedy of the World war 2nd.
This weakness on League's part was that it was not able to assume 
responsibility for world peace by having all the major powers into its Permanent C
ouncil.
. The United States of America, despite the fact that the whole project had been
initiated by President Wilson, never became a member. It was the downfall of the
world to experience another battle that was much deadlier and troubled than the
first.
US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in view of the unabated aggression on part of
the German Reich, Italy and Japan, was convinced that another huge war was
unavoidable and US would have to be involved in it. But because of the already
failed League nothing could be done to avoid such havoc. During 1941, it was
Roosevelt who suggested the British Prime Minister 's not to repeat mistake,
during 1941, it was Roosevelt who suggested the British Prime Minister 's not to
repeat mistake. One year later, Roosevelt, was willing to add the Soviet Union and
China to the circle of powers responsible for World Peace. In their concluding
declaration, the four powers stated, “that they recognize the necessity of
establishing at the earliest practicable date a general international organization,
based on the principle of sovereign equality of all peace-loving states, and open to
membership by all such states, large and small, for the maintenance of
international peace and security”. (Joint Four Nation Declaration, 1943, Point 4).
The Tehran conference in November 1943 and Yalta conference in February 1945
were in which the United States drafted a plan for the World Organization as the
leading power. The Charter, with 19 chapters and 111 articles of detailed
provisions, came into force on 24th October 1945. The Charter was the result of an
excellent settlement, achieved in the exceptional context of the Second World War.
The UN thus exhibits much stronger egalitarian tendencies and characteristics
borrowed from the League of Nations than Roosevelt had intended. The UN
emerged as a multinational body after the devastating Second World War was a
brief history. It was but of course for a brief time after the war that an improved
international order with great reason, law, assumption of unity, and collective
security seemed feasible. But luckily! Immediately after its birth, it became
involved in another Cold War crisis that lasted for even long time. It led to the
stagnation in important areas such as the Security Council. In certain cases, the UN
was unable to take any practical steps, but was able in other places to develop
initiatives and instruments which would never happen without such organization.
The United Nations could not keep peace and avoid conflict with its leaders
divided into two camps.. Conflict belligerents looked for Eastern or West partners.
Support by superpower in any case meant the UN conflict resolution was
problematic as it would block successful participation of the UN either in
Washington or Moscow. This was important but a new way of preserving peace
that requires a global organisation, whether the major authorities decided or at least
decided, to behave within clearly established limits. UN became involved in four
major security crises that influenced subsequent developments and possibilities: in
Palestine, Korea, Suez, and the Congo. Directly after Israel declared its
independence in 1948, war broke between it and its four neighbors- Egypt, Jordan,
Lebanon and Syria. Soon thereafter, the Security Council ordered a cease-fire
under Chapter VII and created an observer team under Chapter VI to supervise it.
This group grew into the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization
(UNTSO) in 1949 and assumed the role of guard. Observer groups deployed along
the borders of Israel and those of its neighbors were unarmed and operated with the
consent of the parties involved. Troops were unarmed and had no enforcement
capability, but their presence sometimes put off ceasefire violations. The
international community was embodied, frequently allowing them to exercise their
mandates without military intervention. Although the observers wore their own
national armies' uniforms, their first loyalty to the world organization was
theoretical. United Nations peacekeepers' Blue Helms. UNTSO has performed a
variety of important tasks. They set up demilitarized zones along Israel-Egyptian
and Israel-Syrian borders, established Mixed Armistice Commission along each
border to investigate complaints and allegations of cease-fire violations. When
there were some such mishandlings, the head of the UNTSO staff sought to
manage the matter locally and cessation of fire talks became the key feature of that
operation before the serious threats to peace emerged.. UNTSO also became a
training ground and resource center for other peacekeeping operations, its
observers and administrators were consistently redeployed in other parts of the
world. UNTSO’s experience over the years has been integrated into other
operations to improve their functioning. [1]
After North Korea invaded South Korea the first coercive action taken on behalf of
the United Nations was in the Korean Peninsula. In an urgent meeting, the Security
Council was able to adopt a Resolution that demanded more than the "urgent truce"
and retraction of the armed forces of North Korea. The Security Council required
all member states ‘to render every assistance to the United Nations in the execution
of this resolution and to refrain from giving assistance to the North Korean
authorities. The resolution was passed with the absence of Soviet Union which was
boycotting the Organization in protest at the General Assembly’s decision to
recognize the nationalist Chinese government which had fled to Taiwan after the
Chinese Civil War, instead of the Communist People’s Republic government as the
legitimate representative of China. The Security Council vowed to use force
against North Korea, despite the Soviet absence. It recommended that UN Leaders
provide the Republic of Korea with the aid it might need to repel the armed attack
and to restore international peace and security in the region. Thus the collective
security mechanism of the UN was set in motion for the first time. Nevertheless,
this did not take the form of a resolution from the Security Council, which
legitimized the use of military force, according to the provisions of Chapter VII. In
addition, the blockade began on 1 August 1950 when the Soviet Union reappointed
the rotating Presidency of the Security Council. As President of the Council, the
Soviet Union was able to hinder votes through creative use of the order of
business, and in September 1950 it began to use its veto on all Korean resolutions.
Nonetheless, on an American initiative on 3rd November 1950, the General
Assembly passed its famous Uniting for Peace Resolution which stated in the very
first paragraph that
“If the Security Council because of lack of Unanimity of the permanent members,
fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international
peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace,
breach of the peace, or act of aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the
matter immediately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to
members for collective measures, including in the case of a breach of the peace or
act of aggression the use of armed force when necessary, to maintain or restore
international peace and security.”. Then a commission was set up, whose actions
eventually led to the conclusion of a bloody war that spanned three years. This
action marked the beginning of a power fight between the General Assembly and
the Security Council. After all, according to Article 12 (1) of the charter, the
General Assembly enjoys only a subsidiary competence to address issues of
international conflict with which the Security Council is already occupied. The
Uniting for Peace Resolution threw serious doubt on the validity of this rule, and it
has in fact over the years lost all significance. The right to make recommendations
of the General Assembly is now essentially undisputed, and was confirmed at 10
special emergency sessions. On the contrary, at the time the General Assembly was
formed as an alternative option, the expectations of the United States were not
fulfilled-a platform to determine when the Security Council was blocked. The
authority of the General Assembly has never gone beyond the making of
recommendations. All important strategies and tactical decisions pertaining to
Korea that carried the UN’s name were in fact made in the White House or the
Pentagon. A number of other states fought for the defense of South Korea, but that
military operation was in fact a U.S. operation behind a blue international fig leaf.
The defense of South Korea was not a classical example of collective security. [2]
The1956 Suez Canal crises was quite distinct from the Korean crises. It resulted in
the first use of what later became known as “peacekeepers” to separate warring
parties. France, Britain and Israel had attacked Soviet-backed Egypt against the
wishes of the United States, claiming a right to use force to keep the Suez Canal
open after Egyptian President Camal Abdul Nassar had closed it. The vetoes used
by Britain and France, and measures blocked by the Security Council. The General
Assembly used the Uniting for Peace Resolution – for peacekeeping and not
compliance this time – and ordered General Secretary Dag Hammarskjold to set up
a compliance force to supervise the cease-fire between Israel and Egypt as soon as
it was decided. The first United Nations Emergency Force saw the coalition split
up and acted as the tampon between Egypt and Israel. In this instance, Washington
and Moscow were not so far apart. UN peacekeeping in 1956 and for a decade
thereafter was hailed as a great success.
At the same time, actions by the World Organisation, in the face of one of the most
traumatic de colonizations, have shown the limit of peacekeeping in the former
Belgian Congo (now Zaire).. The United Nations Operation in the Congo almost
bankrupted the world organization and also threatened its political life and
Secretary- General Hammarskjold lost his own life in a suspicious plane crash in
the country. The conflict was both international (caused by the intervention of
Belgium in its former colony) and domestic (caused by the secession of a province
within the new state). The almost complete lack of government resources involved,
in addition to 20,000 UN troops, a major presence of the UN civil administration.
The state of affairs became unusual as the Soviet Union, its allies and other non-
aligned countries assisted the National Prime Minister and then the West and the
United Nations organization, who were then assassinated while in detention. The
UN forces, which the United Nations created with Western support, instead of
neutrals of peacekeepers, became a central government enforcement army. The
global organization did not count cooperation in this process between the opposing
parties in the Congo. Some troop contributors resisted UN command and control;
others removed their soldiers. The Soviet Union and later France refused to pay
assessment; Moscow went further in trying to destroy Hammarskjold’s
independence by suggesting the replacement of the secretary-general. Many
African states were threatened by secessionist movements but UN had a large
budgetary deficiency and a hesitancy to become involved in internal wars.
The UN was primarily able to maneuver through its impartiality and limited scope
of operations into the tumultuous waters of the Cold War. Once, the essence of UN
operations has been decided by global policy. Although peacekeeping is not
expressly alluded to in the Charter, it has become the primary task of the
organisation, with respect to peace and security. The use of troop contingents for
this purpose is widely recognized as having begun during the 1956 crises in Suez.
Close to 500,000 military, police and civilian personnel-distinguished from
national soldiers by their trademarks blue-helmets served as UN peacekeeping
forces during the Cold War and some 700 lost their lives in UN service during this
period and it was in 1988 when UN peacekeepers received the noble peace prize.
Ten years after 1978, even as regional conflicts with the superpowers or their
proxies were born worldwide, there were no new operations. Much has come from
Washington after the Regan administration came to power in 1981 to stimulate
increased East and West tensions and end a new deployment of the United Nations.
The inability to comply with the UN peaked between 1985 and 1987, when
Washington also rejected all of its taxes. The company became virtually bankrupt
although conventional compliance with international law appeared to evaporate..
Washington's priorities have been demonstrated by interventions in Grenada,
invasion of Libya and assistance to insurgencies in Colombia, Sudan, Afghanistan
and Cambodia. The Soviet Union, by comparison, has become a frontline of
Central America, Europe, most of South Africa and parts of Asia. It has only
changed with the Soviet Union Gorbachev government committing to political and
economic reform in the country. Soviet leader Gorbachev prescribed programs
aimed at integrating the Soviet economy into the world economy and reducing
East- West tensions. Changes in Moscow 's approach to the United Nations have
affected the global environment, particularly Washington's approach to the world
organization. President Ronald Regan soon somewhat changed his public stance
and thanked the organization, the UN Secretary-General and the peacekeepers for
their efforts. This position was continued by President George Bush, the former
United States Permanent Representative at the UN. Major power co-operation has
increased so that the Security Council can resume its position as a guarantor of
international peace and stability, including its dramatic attempts to reverse the Iraq
attack on Kuwait.
After a ten-year gap in deploying new UN security operations, five post-cold war
operations were launched-in Afghanistan, astride the Iran-Iraq border and in
Angola, Namibia and Central America (for Nicaragua). These operations were
completed in 1993 and were similar to previous ones. It is true that certain new
elements have been integrated into the improvisation cycle, which are those
features of peacekeeping. E.g., there were large number of civilian tandems with
soldiers in Namibia and Central America: the first supervision of domestic
elections as well as the collection of weapons from insurgents took place in
Nicaragua. Such precedents have clearly shown the UN 's capacity for evolution
and development in the modern age, while improvisation and mission expansion
have also been present in earlier UN activities. Many of these post-Cold War
operations were authorized by competing parties and were based on the principles
of defensive force employed by modestly trained UN troops, none of whom came
from the main armed forces. The follow up operations in Angola and the one in the
Western Sahara fall into the traditional peacekeeping categories. The UN Good
Offices Mission in Afghanistan, and Pakistan (UNGOMAP), the UN Iran- Iraq
Military Observer Group (UNIIMOG) , the first Angola verification Mission
(UNAVEM 1) and the UN Transition Assistance Group in Namibia (UNTAG)
were missions that renewed peacekeeping’s visibility and perceived workability in
the international areana of conflict resolution. [3] UNGOMAP, UNIIMOG and
UNTAG are also significant because they afforded the UN the opportunity to
demonstrate its usefulness in war zones, a capacity that had been frozen from 1978
to 1988.These operations are examples of "observation" of a wide range of tasks in
which peacekeeping is the least contentious area. The UN Truce Supervision
Department (UNTSO) has been observing the Middle East since 1948.UNGOMAP
verified the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan after 1988. The Soviet
withdrawal was not problematic because the U.S.S.R. decided to leave, but the
resulting peace, elections and disarmament measures were not followed by the
political will. The mission of the United Nations in Central America was similar in
one way to the Afghanistan operation: The world organization was helping a
superpower move beyond an unwinnable confrontation in its own backyard. An
analysis of the United Nations Observer Group in Central America (ONUCA), the
United Nations Observer Mission to Verify the Electoral Process in Nicaragua and
the United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) illustrates the
complex transition process that the UN’s peace and security functions began to
undergo. They also set the stage for the following analysis of the UN-sponsored
Chapter VII enforcement action against Iraq. In particular, ONUSAL demonstrates
the independence of UN action when countries provide a political leeway for the
global organization. One unusual development was the extent to which the UN
operations were linked to supporting efforts from regional and non-governmental
organizations. The organization of American States (OAS) –in particular the
secretaries-general of the UN and the OAS-cooperated closely in diplomatic efforts
and in civil observation. The operation began in August 1989 and ended in
February 1990 with the surprising defeat of Sandimista government.
Operations in the Gulf of Persia represented an important part of the UN violence
history. I also mentioned how much new potential for mutual security has been
provided by changing world politics. The decision-making process of the Security
Council and its conduct of war also led some analysts to be suspicious about the
exact significance of the Gulf War as a template for subsequent Chapter VII
compliance intervention.. Factors include the overwhelming capacity of the United
States to lead the organization to serve its objectives in the Persian Gulf, the
decision to replace no enforceable sanctions with force as the dominant means of
ensuring that Iraq complies with the organization's wishes, the widespread use of
force that ensued, and the UN's inability to control and control the operation. Each
of these criticisms raises important questions about the ability of the United
Nations collective security apparatus to function impartially.
The UN has never been a forum that was neutral. Western supremacy in the early
years was partly replaced, beginning in the 1960s, by an automatic plurality of the
Third World in the General Assembly, but not in the Security Council. The United
States was able to use its considerable political and economic influence in the
Security Council to ensure that its agenda for the Persian Gulf was approved... Non
forcible sanctions were overtaken by force by forcible ones after only three
months. According to Article 42, the Security Council may authorize force after all
other means of settlement and economic sanctions in particular have proven
inadequate. But, before sanctions against Iraq had an opportunity to take full effect,
the Security Council chose to use military force. Critics pointed out that partial
sanctions for the army had not, however, been refused in South Africa, following
decades of criticism for discriminatory policies. Financial or military sanctions
have not punished Israel's expansion and continued occupation of territory, as well.
The other criticism of the Persian Gulf War is that the use of force was not limited
and the government had little impact on the activity of the military.
In the former Yugoslavia, the UN became involved in an military operations on
European soil after many years in which regional conflicts were assumed to be a
monopoly of developing countries. The dissolution of the former Yugoslavia
entailed violence and displacement of a magnitude not seen in Europe since World
War II. The UNPROFOR operations in the former Yugoslavia tried for a long time
to stick to the classical peacekeeping formula. It soon became apparent, however,
just how useless a proven instrument becomes when it is applied to a context for
which it was not designed. ‘Blue Helmets’ were deployed despite the lack of a
reliable peace agreement. The mission, started in Croatia in 1992 to keep the
opposing parties away from each other, gradually extended to include Bosnia-
Herzegovina. Finally, under pressure from incidents, the mandate developed into
an attempt to protect the civilian population from major human rights violations.
The Secretary –General had warned several times that the peacekeepers should not
be given tasks for which their training and rules of engagement were not suitable.
The new mandate, however, was not accompanied by appropriate changes either in
the military outfit or in the legal and political definition of the rules of engagement.
There were several cases of ‘blue helmets’ being taken hostages or used as human
shields. These problems ensured that UNPROFOR constitutes a somewhat less
sparkling chapter in the history of the UN. In the winter of 1995/96, the
responsibility for military peacekeeping in Bosnia-Herzegovina was transferred to
NATO. [4]
 Role of UN in Post Cold War
The United Nations Organization (UN)
website starts with an optimistic punch
line…United Nations, We the Peoples...

Somalia provided another terrible model for UN involvement in internal wars. This
was another example of violent fragmentation. A single ethnic group, the same
religion, history and language, divided into heavily armed clans. Somalia had no
government in any meaningful sense, and one-third of the population risked death
from starvation because humanitarians could not reach the needy, the Security
Council at the end of August 1992 authorized 3,000 to 4,000 UN soldiers to help,
applying chapter VII to yet another situation by authorizing the reinforcement of
the United Nations Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM I). These armies were to be
deployed after warmongers decided to add 500 and 50 unarmed observers to their
initial infantry battalion. A aim was to secure assistance for humanitarian relief in
the unhappy region, but the blue helmets left the neutrality of the government after
24 Pakistani soldiers were killed and once more became part of an objective
struggle. In November 1994, the Somalia mission was broken off with the
resolution to withdraw the troops completely no later than 31 March 1995. There
died during the mission one hundred thirty-two 'grey helmets' and an undisclosed
number of Somalis. UNOSOM II mostly suffered from the simple inconsistency
that the blue helmets would not encourage an already existing peace, but rather
compelled one to enter the conflict under heavy loss rather than avoid it..
As far as Afghanistan is concerned, the International Security Assistance Force
( ISAF) which has been under NATO leadership since August 2003, is a mixture of
robust peacekeeping and an ad hoc coalition, but is not a UN peacekeeping mission
in its strictest sense. The United Nations has named Lakhdar Brahimi as the
Afghanistan special representative to organize and monitor all UN humanitarian
programs and activities and human rights security.
With the recent developments in the world especially after September 11, the USA
and the UN shares a shattered relationship. According to the USA’s 2002 security
strategy, since classical security precautions such as deterrence or arms control
offer no support against terrorist organizations and despots, the USA must be in a
position to strike its enemy before the enemy can attack. In particular, it is willing
to act without involving the UN, whose functions and responsibilities are not
mentioned at all in the entire US security strategy. In order to ensure security for
Americans the US administration long insisted on sovereign decision-making
rights, irrespective of international norms or bodies, and this included the decision
to use military force. With such concern for her own citizens, the sole super power
has once again put the world into doubt about the role of the world organizations
when acts like September 11 are hovering in the world at present and with the
operations like Desert Fox, the largest military action undertaken since the end of
Gulf War, Iraq’s military potential was hugely weakened in just a four day air
operation. This operation was conducted without the approval of Security Council
and even Russia, China and France hugely protested the attacks. The collapse of
the Security Council, which has resulted from the key members of the UN Council,
is contributing to the worst outcome of all and there is significant harm to the UN
and to the ideals of multilateral peacekeeping.