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Presents information on Columbia International Affairs Online, an online service launched by the Columbia University Press in August, 1998. Address of the online service; Why it was developed; Initial target for the service.

Americans have generally seen the principles and objectives proclaimed by President Woodrow Wilson during the First World War as having continued relevance for United States foreign policy. However, they have often differed over their application to specific situations, particularly because there is likely to be a tension between a drive to establish democratic values across the globe and commitment to a universal system of collective security. Rather than seeking a pure, abstract definition of ‘Wilsonianism’, it is more illuminating to examine its origins and evolution in relation to the development of American foreign policy over the years. Tracing this historical process reveals that Wilson committed himself to a postwar league of nations during the period of American neutrality, but it was only as the United States became a belligerent that the spread of democratic government became a policy objective, and then only in a partial and qualified way. A similar pattern has been discernible in subsequent decades. It has been during conflicts, or the run-up to them, that the more ideological and revisionist aspects of Wilsonian principles have come to the fore, whereas it has been in the aftermath of conflicts that there has been the greatest interest in the potentialities of a universal collective security organization. There has also been a broad shift of emphasis over time. As confidence in America's power position has grown, the core of Wilson's legacy has more often come to be seen as the promotion of democracy rather than the strengthening of international institutions. The persistence of both themes may be seen as reflecting basic and enduring elements of the policy-making context—on the one hand, the interests of the United States as a status quo power, and on the other, the demands of domestic American opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 2006 the British government released a White Paper announcing its intention to begin the process of replacing its current Trident nuclear weapons system, thereby allowing it to retain nuclear weapons well into the 2050s. In March 2008 the government released its National Security Strategy that stressed the long-term complexity, diversity and interdependence of threats to British security with a clear focus on human rights, justice and freedom. This article asks how the threat to kill tens if not hundreds of thousands of people with British nuclear weapons fits into the National Security Strategy's world view and questions the relevance of an instrument of such devastating bluntness to threats defined by complexity and interdependence. It argues that the government's case for replacing the current Trident system based on the logic of nuclear deterrence is flawed. First, Britain faces no strategic nuclear threats and the long-term post-Cold War trend in relations with Russia and China—the two nuclear-armed major powers that could conceivably threaten the UK with nuclear attack—is positive, despite current tensions with Moscow over Georgia. Second, the credibility and legitimacy of threatening nuclear destruction in response to the use of WMD by ‘rogue’ states is highly questionable and British nuclear threats offer no ‘insurance’ or guarantee of protection against future ‘rogue’ nuclear threats. Third, nuclear weapons have no role to play in deterring acts of nuclear terrorism whether state-sponsored or not. Fourth, British nuclear threats will be useless in dealing with complex future conflicts characterized by ‘hybrid’ wars and diverse and interdependent sources of insecurity. The article concludes by arguing that the government's fall-back position that it must keep nuclear weapons ‘just in case’ because the future security environment appears so uncertain, makes no sense if British nuclear threats offer no solution to the causes and symptoms of that uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extreme volatility of global energy markets since the early 2000S has prompted the Commission of the European Communities to issue a new Green Paper, 'A European strategy for sustainable, competitive and secure energy'. This important document seeks to identify the main steps EU members need to take to enhance their energy outlooks. The first section in this article discusses the concept 'energy security'. This is followed by an examination of Europe's energy mix (oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear power and renewables). The third section analyses European efforts to establish and strengthen energy partnerships with Russia, the Caspian Sea region and the Middle East. In other words, the article seeks to examine Europe's efforts to diversify its energy mix and energy sources. The main argument is that stability and predictability in energy markets are shared goals between producing regions and major consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article has been developed and updated from a paper delivered at the Grossbritannien-Zentrum, Humboldt University at Berlin, June 2000. Traditionally, sport has been marginalized, even treated as an irrelevance, in the study of International Relations (IR). The 2002 World Cup Finals raised yet again questions about the realism of continuing to write sport out of IR, and particularly to ignore its impact upon such relationships as those between Britain and Germany. Football's role in mirroring, influencing and articulating British perceptions of Germany, at least at the popular and media level, is presented as a case-study, since the football field proved another important British_German battleground throughout the twentieth century. This trend continues. Already, three high profile football internationals played during 2000–1 as well as rivalry to host the 2006 World Cup tournament have illuminated the problematic state of the British-German relationship, particularly the fact that history, most notably world war imagery, imparts en enduring extra-sporting sub-text for any England-Germany footballing encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The signing of an eight-year private trade agreement between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Japan on 16 February 1978, envisaging exchanges between 1978 and 1985 of goods worth US$10 billion each way, and the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese treaty of peace and friendship on 12 August 1978, laid the foundation for the PRC's Japan policy in the period after the fall of the Gang of Four.[1]
Under its present pragmatic leadership, the PRC appears to have been relying more and more heavily on the West and on Japan for capital and advanced technology for the realization of its 'four modernizations'. Japan's role in the PRC's modernization programme is certainly significant. After the first loan of 300 billion yen for 1979-83, the Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone promised in his PRC visit in March 1984 a second loan of 470 billion yen ($2.08 billion) for 1984-90.[2] Similar perceptions of the Soviet threat have also contributed to the development of Sino-Japanese relations. It was reported that when Hu Yaobang, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), visited Japan in November 1983, he compared the PRC and Japan to rival heroes in a Chinese classic tale and stated: 'When they fought, both sides were weakened. But when they were united, they were invincible.'[3] Invincibility may be an exaggeration, but the complementarily of the two economies and the vast potential of their cooperation will obviously affect the power balance of the Asia-Pacific region, and in the future perhaps that of the world. This article intends to trace the evolution of the PRC's Japan policy since the fall of the Gang of Four, analyse the achievements and problems of the bilateral relationship, and assess the implications for the Asia-Pacific region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The determination that strategy should have a long-term predictive quality has left strategy seemingly wanting when having to address what are currently called 'strategic shocks', such as the recent Arab Spring and the NATO commitment to Libya. The focus on grand strategy, particularly in the US, is responsible for this trend. Its endeavour to mitigate risk in the national interest is inherently conservative, rather than opportunistic, and it is favoured and probably required by powers that are committed to the status quo, that need to manage diminishing resources, and that are dealing with relative decline. Strategy as traditionally but more narrowly defined by generals for use in a military context, is much more exploitative and proactive. Precisely because it is designed to be used in war it presumes that its function is offensive, that it will have to deal with chance and contingency, and that its aim is change. Its task is to deal with the uncertainties of war, and to respond to them while holding on to long-term perspectives. Clausewitz addressed the issue of 'war plans' in book VIII of On war, but the thinker who did most to inject planning into European strategic thought was Jomini. His influence has permeated much of American military thinking. The effect of nuclear planning in the Cold War was to ensure that strategy at the operational level became conflated with broader views of grand strategy-not least when the Cold War itself provided apparent continuity to strategic thought. Since 1990 we have been left with a view of strategy which fails to respond sensibly to chance and accident. Strategy needs context, and a sense of where and against whom it is to be applied. Its core task is to embrace contingency while holding on to long-term national interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2010 the coalition government conducted a major review of defence and security policy. This article explores the review process from a critical perspective by examining and challenging the state-centrism of prevailing conceptions of current policy reflected in the quest to define and perform a particular 'national role' in contrast to a human-centric framework focused on the UK citizen. It argues that shifting the focus of policy to the individual makes a qualitative difference to how we think about requirements for the UK's armed forces and challenges ingrained assumptions about defence and security in relation to military operations of choice and attendant expensive, expeditionary war-fighting capabilities. In particular, it confronts the prevailing narrative that UK national security-as-global risk management must be met by securing the state against pervasive multidimensional risk through military force, that military power projection capabilities are a vital source of international influence and national prestige and that the exercise of UK military power constitutes a 'force for good' for the long-term human security needs of citizens in both the intervened and intervening state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a strategic defence review expected to begin in 2010, this article reflects upon the history of the review in British defence policy and planning. The authors argue that for decades successive defence reviews have followed a process in which policy development moves through four phases: failure, inertia, formulation and misimplementation. This has resulted in a cycle of defence reviews that have proved to be incomplete and unsustainable: a cycle in which each review leaves so much unfinished business that another radical reappraisal of defence policy is soon thought necessary, and a cycle from which a succession of governments have so far proved unable or unwilling to escape. The article suggests that the strategic defence (and security) review promised for the next parliament is in danger of continuing this pattern of policy deficiency. The authors contest that this need not be the case. With a close understanding of the pattern of past reviews it should be possible for the 2010 review finally to break the mould and produce a coherent and above all sustainable defence policy and strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an analysis of the EU's engagement in Georgia as a standpoint from which to assess the EU's role as a conflict manager. The article begins with a brief narrative account of the development of EU—Georgia relations in the context of the country's two unresolved conflicts over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It then proceeds to the analysis of two sets of factors—those within, and those external to, the EU—that are crucial for understanding the nature and impact of EU efforts to manage the two Georgian conflicts. On the basis of this case-study analysis, the authors offer a wider analysis of the EU's potential for assuming a wider role as an international security actor. This is undertaken by considering both the limitations of the EU's existing capabilities for conflict resolution and the new developments contained within the Lisbon Treaty. The final part of the article asserts that the EU has suffered from two key weaknesses that have prevented it from living up to its aspirations of becoming a globally significant and effective conflict manager. The first is structural—the lack of, to date, a permanent External Action Service; the second is conceptual—the lack of a coherent and comprehensive conflict management strategy. The article concludes with five substantive principles that should guide the EU's approach to conflict management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Labour government's 1998 Strategic Defence Review (SDR) marked the end of almost twenty years during which Labour had been little more than a bystander in British defence policy-making. The ‘foreign policy-led’ SDR marked an impressive and authoritative debut, emulated by other national governments. Ten years later, however, the SDR is a fading memory. British defence is out of balance and facing immense stress, and calls are mounting for a new strategic defence review. This article examines the difficult choices which a defence review would have to make. But a defence review also requires the governmental machinery with which to analyse and understand defence, and with which those difficult choices can be made. The article argues that this machinery is wearing out. Defence policy, planning and analysis in the United Kingdom have reached a state of organizational, bureaucratic and intellectual decay which may be irrecoverable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a major focus of interest for development practitioners in recent years. While development NGOs have been critical of voluntary corporate initiatives, official development agencies have taken a more positive view and in some cases encouraged CSR. This article locates the growth of CSR in the context of global deregulation since the early 1980s, highlighting the key drivers that have led to its adoption by many leading transnational corporations. It then describes the factors that have led to the recent emphasis given to CSR by both bilateral and multilateral development agencies and the United Nations. A framework for analysing the links between foreign direct investment and poverty is developed focusing on the impacts on the poor as producers, consumers and beneficiaries of government expenditures. This framework is used to illustrate the limitations of CSR in terms of likely impacts on poverty reduction through each of the channels identified and also to point to areas in which CSR may have some positive benefits. Overall, the article concludes that it is unlikely to play the significant role in poverty reduction in development countries that its proponents claim for it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Manufacturing amnesia’ argues that the term‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ has been abandoned by most South African firms in favour of the term‘corporate social investment’. This has been done in order to divert attention from calls on business to redress the results of its historical contribution to the apartheid system. The discourse of reconciliation has further served to erase memories of past corporate behaviour. It also masks continuing inequalities and unsustainable practices. Business has responded weakly to the pressures for CSR, of which five broad areas are identified and analysed. Voluntary sustainability initiatives have not succeeded and compliance with black economic empowerment charters and environmental standards have to be legislated and regulated. Firms need to reassess their legacies more honestly until which time their CSR contributions will be regarded as cosmetic and self-serving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa's foreign policy, conducted in an ad hoc and haphazard fashion under President Nelson Mandela, has been consolidated under the presidency of Thabo Mbeki. This article first outlines five consistent policy themes: Africa and Africanist; democracy and respect for human rights; a holistic understanding of security; a pacific approach to conflict resolution; and multilateralism. The article then identifies and attempts to explain a number of significant inconsistencies in relation to these themes, including Mbeki's‘quiet diplomacy’ on Zimbabwe; his denialist position on HIV/AIDS; South Africa's controversial arms procurement programme; and its domestic xenophobia. Some of these inconsistencies have undermined the country's international credibility and at times overhshadowed its considerable achievements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The war on terror and the war in Iraq pose three challenges for foreign aid. The first concern is that donors may hijack foreign aid to pursue their own security objectives rather than development and the alleviation of poverty. The second concern is that the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the wider war on terror will gobble up aid budgets. The third concern is that major donors are continuing to impose competing and sometimes clashing priorities on aid recipients and this erodes rather than builds the capacity of some of the world's neediest governments. This article assesses the emerging aid policies of the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom and the European Union and proposes practical measures that could bolster an effective development-led foreign aid system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution in the international system from bipolarity to unipolarity has led to shifting patterns of alliances in world politics. Since 9/11, the United States has demonstrated a willingness to use its overwhelming military power to deal with potential or real threats. Contrary to its policy of embedded power in the economic and security institutions of the post-1945 period, the United States increasingly views the multilateral order as an unreasonable restraint on the exercise of hegemonic power. What does this new context mean for Britain? Going back to 1997, the first New Labour government added an internationalist dimension to the traditional roles of acting as a loyal ally to the United States and serving as a bridge across the transatlantic divide. The Iraq war of 2003 showed that the bridge could not bear the weight of the disagreement between‘Old Europe’ and the new conservatives in Washington. The Prime Minister's decision to be there‘when the shooting starts’ shows that Britain continues to place the bilateral connection with the United States above all other obligations. This article questions whether the Atlanticist identity that underpins the strategic rationale for the special relationship is likely to succeed in delivering the interests and goals set out in the recent UK security strategy document. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many observers, the Iraq crisis spelled the end for EU ambitions in the defence sphere. The profound public and bitter divisions that emerged were seen as illustrative of the insuperable problems confronting ESDP. This article argues, however, that the reverse is in fact the case. Far from sounding the death knell for ESDP, the crisis has had a cathartic effect in compelling the member states to face up to and resolve the major ambiguities that had always threatened to undermine EU defence policies. Consequently, these member states have, in the months following the war, laid the basis not only for a more modest but also for a more effective ESDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to establish the elements of a diplomatic theory of international relations and argues that this is implicit in the works of Herbert Butterfield on international relations, historiography, diplomatic history and Christian ethics. As a founding member of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, Butterfield shared with his colleagues the conviction that diplomacy and diplomatic systems lie at the heart of what happens, might happen and ought to happen in international relations. Like his colleagues, however, he failed to produce a work on diplomacy that attracted the sort of attention garnered by their work in other areas, for example on international systems and societies. Indeed, his own theoretical work on diplomacy is often regarded as a blind alley exhibiting nostalgia for the ‘old diplomacy’ of eighteenth-century Europe or a fatal attraction towards the more scientistic elements of political realism. It is argued, however, that in the broader corpus of Butterfield's work there is to be found a theory of diplomacy advocating self-restraint and charity towards others based upon recognizing both our common humanity and the impossibility of achieving a full understanding of one another. For Butterfield, this would have been a theory applied to states; but, employing one of Butterfield's own techniques for interrogating dead historians, it is argued that this holds up as a theory of how to conduct relations between groups that regard themselves as distinctive, hold their separation from one another to be a good and, hence, value their independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the role played by financial liberalization and the structural weaknesses in the banking system in South Korea. Factors that created conditions for the vulnerability of the Korean banking system to sentiments of foreign investors; Erosion of the ability of the Korean central bank to act effectively as a lender of last resort.

Focuses on the financial global situation that is without guarantee by governments or international institutions that it is under control. Relation between budget deficits, debts and dramatic expansion of the bond market; Rationale for pegging the exchange rate in the light of capital flows; Strategies for hedging against currency risks.

The normal pattern for most African states at independence is to retain the foreign policy orientation that has been bequeathed to them by the departing colonial masters. In plain terms, and in spite of all the talk about non-alignment, this means being pro-West in their international relations. There are instances, however, when, largely as a result of the uneasy relations between the nationalist leaders and the metropolitan powers, some states boldly reject the idea of a foreign policy legacy. Many of these latter states tend, in varying degrees, to look more towards the foreign powers that had assisted them in the wars of national liberation than to the former colonial powers. In this regard, ideology can sometimes be an important factor, especially where the mentors hold different belief-systems from the colonial masters.
As far as Angola is concerned, the Popular Movement for the, Liberation of Angola (MPLA) achieved the country's independence largely through the support of the Soviet Union and Cuba. Consequently, for some years after independence, ideology became a crucial determinant in the direction and orientation of the country's foreign policy. As time wore on, and as the harsh realities of nation-building persistently stared the MPLA leaders straight in the eye, a good measure of realism was adopted: the once one-lane ideological express-way to Havana and Moscow was broadened and redesigned to have numerous access routes to the West. This paper discusses the way ideology and pragmatism have been blended to provide the base for Angola's external relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This leads to my second point, which is that a better understanding of the whole is the paramount objective. Analytical categories are for clarification, not obfuscation, and in practice the factors listed in the framework do not operate in isolation. For instance, much will depend on the Secretary-General's perception of systemic factors, and the extent to which he sees them as directing or circumscribing his activities.
In this paper, attention will be focused on the Commonwealth Secretary-General and not on the Secretariat, but its efficiency and harmony will obviously be important as part of the resources or capabilities on which the Secretary-General can draw. The Secretariat provides the organizational structure which he heads and within which he works. It was established by agreement among Commonwealth Heads of Government in 1965.[5] In earlier periods the idea of a permanent Secretariat for Imperial Conferences had not found favor chiefly because of fears of institutionalizing British domination. But by the mid-1960s, the 'Empire' was rapidly becoming history: decolonization had produced a new and greatly enlarged Commonwealth in which Asian and African members made up the majority. (See Appendix on p. 83.) The British Colonial Office was virtually redundant and in 1966 it became the Dependent Territories Division of the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), while the absorption of the CRO by the Foreign Office was already in prospect.[6] No British government department could present an authentic ' Commonwealth ' image, nor could Whitehall officials put loyalty to the Commonwealth ahead of national loyalty. The new Commonwealth needed a permanent office which could provide continuing services for meetings and conferences, facilitate communication and become a visible core, representing all members and their interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main message of this paper is that there is no immediate cause for alarm about Europe's mineral supplies, but there is equally no room for complacency. The past reliance solely on market mechanisms is no longer sufficient to satisfy Europe's needs in the 1980s, even though present surpluses are more than adequate for the next few years. Unless action is taken soon serious problems will arise in the 1980s. Such action requires a more conscious mineral procurement policy in which foreign-policy initiatives should be closely integrated with domestic policies. Britain can achieve far more in this field acting in concert with its Community partners than by pursuing an independent strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IN one of its aspects, the essay that follows is a brief exploration of a little-known side of reactions within Britain to the war against Japan between 1941 and 1945, and to Anglo-American relations in the context of that conflict. At the same time, however, it seeks to raise certain questions concerning the degree of independence that the Royal Institute of International Affairs was able to preserve within the special circumstances of the war years, and to ask whether, with particular regard to the Far East, the Institute can be said to have had any significant influence on the policies of the British government. Finally, it is hoped that, in the process of pursuing both these lines of inquiry, some indication will emerge of ways in which documentary material existing in the archives of Chatham House (especially when used in conjunction with papers in the Public Record Office in London and in official and private collections abroad) provides an insight into various ideas about aspects of international affairs that were being discussed at some time in the past among members of the 'attentive' and 'opinion-forming' publics,[1] both within and outside Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

POLITICAL leaders in countries with sharp ethnic, religious, or linguistic cleavages have no doubt often wished that some miracle would suddenly transform those societies into homogeneous entities. But at least one country exists in which virtually all political leaders would exchange safe homogeneity for uncertain diversity. That country is the Republic of Ireland. For fifty-five years its leaders have advocated 'rejoining' what is now the 26-county Republic of Ireland with the six-county Northern Ireland area which has remained part of the United Kingdom.
This paper focuses on the problems in Northern Ireland from the perspective of the Republic of Ireland. Specifically, it examines the perceptions of members of the political elite of the Republic with regard to the North. The questions that are relevant concern the views of the political elite about the likelihood of achieving a united Ireland, the factors that might impede or facilitate such an occurrence, and what form(s) a united Ireland might take. The analysis is based upon interviews that were conducted during the academic year 1968-69 and in March and December, 1975.[1]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To the extent, however, that arms control is regarded as an essential component of detente [5]---as it is by some on both sides---failure to make progress may undermine detente. To the extent that improvements in ah adversary's military forces seem threatening---as they do to some in both East and West---the countries concerned may turn their attention from measures intended to promote detente to those designed to enhance security,[6] perhaps at the expense of detente. Thus, it may be useful to consider linkages among these factors, since each will affect the other.
This I propose to do in this paper, though on a limited rather than on a global scale. I will look first of all at the extent to which various views concerning detente will affect willingness to accept limitations on armaments. I will look secondly at differing perceptions of the effects of detente on security in Europe, perceptions which will affect both reactions to detente and receptivity to measures for the limitation of armaments. I will look thirdly at the kinds of arms control measures now being discussed at the Vienna Conference, with particular reference to their implications for security and for detente. Finally, I will try to suggest measures which might enhance the sense of security in Eastern and Western Europe and thus further---or at least not retard---progress towards detente in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archives are the life-blood of the historical profession. If the opening to research of the British public records for the postwar period has proved anything, it has been this. Since January 1976, when the records for 1945 were made available under the 1967 Public Records Act, an incessant stream of papers, articles and books dealing with the first postwar Labour government has appeared. One of the most notable features to result from this enormous flow of historical scholarship is the reassessment of the British role in the emerging cold war. The American historian Robert Hathaway has coined the expression 'depolarization' to describe this process, and David Reynolds, discussing some of the recent literature, points to 'the European dimension' of the cold war which this literature points to.[1] However, before we address British-West European relations in the period 1945-51, two preliminary questions which have figured in recent literature must be answered. The first concerns the relationship between the Foreign Secretary and his department, between Ernest Bevin and the Foreign Office. The second concerns the relationship between Britain and the United States, between junior and senior partner, and the room for manoeuvre that the junior partner enjoyed. Both questions are a necessary part of any analysis of British foreign policy in general, and therefore also of an analysis of the relationship between Britain and Western Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legacies are unavoidable in the histories of states, as in the history of families or of our bodies. Always we make our futures in the presence of our pasts. Legacies are peculiarly substantial and durable in those states which emerge from partitions. In this respect the subcontinent of South Asia is not a case on its own; the partitions of Palestine, of Ireland, of Germany are also events which seem never to die, nor even smoothly to fade away.
The purpose of this essay is to try to disentangle the elements, positive and negative, of the British contribution to the legacies of 1947 as transmitted to the subcontinent. The task has been made practicable by the opening up to public inspection of the records a few years ago. What is more extraordinary is that in principle the task can be undertaken even by those who have not the time nor the patience nor the practical possibility of burrowing into the heaps of files. For this we have to thank the Harold Wilson government which took the bold decision to publish a vast selection of the papers which record the process of Britain's first and largest decolonization operation. We have also to thank Professor Nicholas Mansergh and his staff who undertook with exquisite care and judgment the giant task of editing the twelve massive volumes of the Transfer of power series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International peacekeeping has gone through a number of interesting and important twists and turns in recent times. The establishment in 1973 of the second United Nations Emergency Force in the Sinai Peninsula served to reinvigorate peacekeeping in the United Nations, and a good deal of consensus on peacekeeping as a useful tool of the UN was then quickly achieved. The bulk of this consensus has survived, and there is much evidence to suggest that recourse to UN peacekeeping is still thought by states to be a leading option when the occasion arises. In the wake of the Camp David accords and Israel's invasion of Lebanon, however, politics again intervened in the United Nations. The result was that despite the favourable view of UN peacekeeping, two major multinational operations have recently been instituted outside UN auspices: that in the Sinai Peninsula, which continues in full operation; and that in Beirut, which ceased to exist in early 1984. In many ways, these establish precedents and offer striking lessons on how, and how not, to structure and manage a peacekeeping operation.
This article will examine the process by which both these operations were brought into being--and how that in Beirut came to end--and assess their mandates and functions. The activities, actual and potential, of the United Nations in the area will also be discussed.[1] Finally, some analysis will be offered by way of comparing a UN peacekeeping model with the multinational (non-UN) operations in the Middle East. A certain practical emphasis on the role of the United States in the multinational operations is admitted, though this implies a no less significant role for the other participating countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]