The Transformation of United Nations Peace Operations in the 1990s

Abstract

The conventional `end of the Cold War explanation' of the transformation of UN peace operations in the 1990s fails to specify the causal links between the independent variable (the end of the Cold War) and the observed variation in the dependent variable (the dramatic changes in the number and nature of peace operations). A missing link is the acceleration in the globalization of the market economy, democracy and human rights that has been triggered by the Western victory in the Cold War. Three developments link this acceleration to the transformation of UN peace operations: (1) the introduction of economic and political conditionality in Western development and assistance programmes served to generate a demand for peace operations by contributing to state collapse and the outbreak of armed conflicts in the Third World, (2) the change in norms that made it possible to launch peace operations in support of human rights and democracy served to increase the supply of peace operations aimed at promoting these goals, and (3) the intense media coverage of human rights violations and atrocities generated intervention pressures that also had the effect of increasing the supply of peace operations aimed at promoting democracy and humanitarian objectives.