This is the first introduction to the United Nation's activities during the Cold War period. It combines a history of the UN with a broader account of east-west diplomacy during the Cold War and after. Norrie MacQueen begins by looking at the formation, structure and functions of the UN. Then, within a chronological framework, he assesses its contribution to international security from the emergence of the UN's peacekeeping role in 1945-56 right through to UN operations in the 1990s in Angola, Somalia and Bosnia.

The Oxford Handbook on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations presents an innovative, authoritative, and accessible examination and critique of the United Nations peacekeeping operations. Since the late 1940s, but particularly since the end of the cold war, peacekeeping has been a central part of the core activities of the United Nations and a major process in global security governance and the management of international relations in general. The volume will present a chronological analysis, designed to provide a comprehensive perspective that highlights the evolution of UN peacekeeping and offers a detailed picture of how the decisions of UN bureaucrats and national governments on the set-up and design of particular UN missions were, and remain, influenced by the impact of preceding operations. The volume will bring together leading scholars and senior practitioners in order to provide overviews and analyses of all 65 peacekeeping operations that have been carried out by the United Nations since 1948. As with all Oxford Handbooks, the volume will be agenda-setting in importance, providing the authoritative point of reference for all those working throughout international relations and beyond.

Includes statistics.

The end of the Cold War created an opportunity for the United Nations to reconceptualize the rationale and extent of its peacebuilding efforts, and in the 1990s, democracy and good governance became legitimizing concepts for an expansion of UN activities. The United Nations sought not only to democratize disorderly states but also to take responsibility for protecting people around the world from a range of dangers, including poverty, disease, natural disasters, and gross violations of human rights. National sovereignty came to be considered less an entitlement enforced by international law than a privilege based on states’ satisfactory performance of their perceived obligations. In Governing Disorder, Laura Zanotti combines her firsthand experience of UN peacebuilding operations with the insights of Michel Foucault to examine the genealogy of post–Cold War discourses promoting international security. Zanotti also maps the changes in legitimizing principles for intervention, explores the specific techniques of governance deployed in UN operations, and identifies the forms of resistance these operations encounter from local populations and the (often unintended) political consequences they produce. Case studies of UN interventions in Haiti and Croatia allow her to highlight the dynamics at play in the interactions between local societies and international peacekeepers.

The volume is the first comprehensive overview of multiple theoretical perspectives on UN peace operations, with two main uses. First, it provides practical examples of how International Relations theories - realism, liberal institutionalism, rational choice institutionalism, sociological institutionalism, constructivism, practice theories, critical security studies, feminist institutionalism, and complexity theory - can be applied to a specific policy issue. Second, it demonstrates how major debates on UN peace operations - regarding protection of civilians, local ownership, or gender mainstreaming - benefit from a theoretical exploration. The volume is aimed at three audiences: scholars who want to keep up to date with the latest research on UN peace operations; undergraduate and postgraduate students who either seek to understand International Relations theories in general or are interested in UN peace operations..

Making War and Building Peace examines how well United Nations peacekeeping missions work after civil war. Statistically analyzing all civil wars since 1945, the book compares peace processes that had UN involvement to those that didn't. Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis argue that each mission must be designed to fit the conflict, with the right authority and adequate resources. UN missions can be effective by supporting new actors committed to the peace, building governing institutions, and monitoring and policing implementation of peace settlements. But the UN is not good at intervening in ongoing wars. If the conflict is controlled by spoilers or if the parties are not ready to make peace, the UN cannot play an effective enforcement role. It can, however, offer its technical expertise in multidimensional peacekeeping operations that follow enforcement missions undertaken by states or regional organizations such as NATO. Finding that UN missions are most effective in the first few years after the end of war, and that economic development is the best way to decrease the risk of new fighting in the long run, the authors also argue that the UN's role in launching development projects after civil war should be expanded.

In seeking to examine whether peacekeeping fundamentally changed between the Cold War and post-Cold War periods the author concludes that most peacekeeping operations were flawed due to the failure of UN members to agree upon various matters such as achievable objectives, provision of necessary resources and unrealistic expectations.