The end of the Cold War has provided an exceptional opportunity for the United Nations to more completely fulfill its mandate to further the rule of law as opposed to the rule of force in the world, and to ensure adherence to the basic principles of human rights on the part of nations around the world. So long as much of the world was divided between two powerful, ideologically opposed power blocs, as was the case during the Cold War era, local conflicts around the world often became stages for their rivalry, precluding effective United Nations action. With the end of the Cold War, the potential for effective United Nations action has been greatly increased.
In some cases, notably the repulsion of Iraqi aggression against Kuwait, the United Nations has performed very well in meeting its mandate. In other cases, however, including the current civil conflict in Yemen, internal disorder in Somalia, a multi-party war in Bosnia, and other instances, the United Nations has failed to achieve its potential. The failure of the United Nations has been particularly regrettable, in that it is not an instance (as in Somalia and Bosnia) of practical difficulties in undertaking international actions to control conflict, but rather has been a more fundamental failure even to address the issue.
To place these situations in perspective, it is worth noting a remarkable characteristic of the conflicts with which the United Nations is currently called upon to respond. Without exception, every armed conflict now taking place in the world is an internal conflict, within the borders of a single country. They thus pose difficulties of a sort not encountered as recently as 1990, when the forces of one sovereign state, Iraq, invaded and occupied another recognized sovereign state, Kuwait. In this case, there was a clear victim state with a recognized sovereign government (albeit in exile) on whose behalf the United Nations could intervene. In cas...