From Cold War to a System of Peacekeeping Operations: The Discussions on Peacekeeping Operations in the UN During the 1980s up to 1992

Abstract

This paper examines the discussions on peacekeeping in the United Nations during the 1980s and up to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It demonstrates that the call for wider implementation of UN peacekeeping operations and for the broadening of their functions began in the final stages of the Cold War. This was not a result of a shift in the policies of the Western powers or the work of the UN Secretariat; rather, the major source of change was an alliance between Western states which were veterans in contributing to peacekeeping operations and Eastern European states led by the Soviet Union. These two groups of states identified a need for multifunctional United Nations peacekeeping operations as the appropriate instrument for dealing with conflicts in the new world order of the 1990s. Many UN member states supported the new ideas which suited their myriad interests, albeit with reservations on several new functions of the operations. Therefore, with the end of the Cold War the international community found in peacekeeping the most uncontested instrument available to maintain international peace and security.