THE UN’S UNHAPPY BIRTHDAY
balance of power that compelled significant caution in U.S. and Soviet behavior. The principal occasion when the UN intervened to maintain international peace – committing an international force to reverse North Korean aggression against South Korea – it could do so only because the Soviet Union was boycotting it. There were widespread hopes that the UN could play a larger role in the Cold War’s aftermath. Optimists appeared to
The case for multilateralism and global governance is stronger than ever. But, for better or worse, it will have to take place largely outside the UN. Council) prevented unified action to stop the bloodshed in the Balkans. A lack of international support motivated President and conservative: to evict Iraqi forces and restore the status quo in Kuwait, not change the regime in Iraq. Such conditions could not easily be replicated. Major power relations deteriorated significantly, and the UN became increasingly irrelevant. Russia (which inherited the Soviet Union’s seat on the Security
< United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York City.
George W. Bush’s administration to bypass the UN when it went to war with Iraq in 2003. Russian opposition precluded any UN action when Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. The UN also failed to head off the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. A decade later, the General Assembly – vowing never to let this happen again – declared the world had the “Responsibility to Protect,” or intervene, when a government was unable or unwilling to protect its citizens from large-scale violence. The doctrine has mostly been ignored. The
be vindicated in 1990 when countries of the world came together through the UN to oppose and ultimately reverse Saddam Hussein’s conquest of Kuwait. Alas, the Gulf War proved to be the exception. The Cold War had just ended, and relations between the U.S. and both China and the Soviet Union were relatively good. There was little love for Iraq’s dictator, whose aggression violated the fundamental international norm that borders ought not be changed through force. And the goal of the UN-blessed, U.S.-led coalition was limited
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October 2020
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