Is U.N. Peacekeeping a Growth Industry?
Abstract
What bearing does the United Nations' (UN) experience with peacekeeping operations have on the universal aspiration for an effective system of collective security against aggression? For large-scale military operations like those in Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, or the Persian Gulf, arrangements of collective self-defense offer the only practicable way toward effectiveness in enforcing the Charter rule against aggression. Since the procedures of article 43 are not available for reasons mentioned earlier, it behooves the states to give up the quest for a new mechanism, a new bureaucracy, which might prevail where the League of Nations, Security Council, and other institutional devices have failed. In this realm, wisdom comes with the realization that while Woodrow Wilson's insight was correct in viewing the failure of the Concert of Europe to find a diplomatic solution for the crisis which followed the archduke's murder in 1914 as the proximate cause of World War I, his remedy for reforming the Concert was misconceived. Neither the shortcomings of the Concert of Europe nor the United Nations can be cured by a new institution and a new bureaucracy, or by reinforcing the Security Council's power to pass legally binding decisions. In its nature, the state system is still a congeries of sovereign states, which can be led only by the achievement of consensus among its leaders. Its basic procedures are still the meetings, consultations, and recommendations of the Concert of Europe, not the commands of a non-existent sovereign. For peacekeeping, the model of the Concert of Europe is far more realistic and relevant than all the well-intentioned experiments in building the international machinery of a superstate.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1994
- Accession Number
- ADA528905
Entities
People
- Eugene V. Rostow
Organizations
- National Defense University