Effectiveness and Ineffectiveness of the UN Security Council in the Last Twenty Years: A European Perspective

Abstract:

The end of the Cold War struck the UN like a bolt from the blue. Many of the old Cold War taboos disappeared almost overnight; no-go areas, as for so long had been the case in Cambodia, became the forum for substantial UN peacekeeping activity; proxy wars, in which the allies or clients of the two super-powers had been engaged with no risk at all of effective UN action being taken, ­as had been the case in El Salvador, in Angola and in Mozambique ­were wound down under the UN’s aegis.

It truly was a watershed moment, and therefore a sensible one to take as the start of any analysis of the Security Council in the twenty year period that has since followed.