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

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.

Documento presentato al primo incontro del Gruppo di lavoro I "The EU and the reform of the UN Security Council", organizzato a Roma il 12-13 novembre 2009 dall'Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) nell'ambito del progetto di ricerca "The European Union and the Reform of the United Nations" (The EU as a global actor in the UN reform process). Versione successiva: "Effectiveness and Ineffectiveness of the UN Security Council in the 20 Years since the Fall of the Berlin Wall: a European Perspective", in Joachim Krause and Natalino Ronzitti (eds.), The EU, the UN and Collective Security. Making Multilateralism Effective, London/New York, Routledge, 2012, p. 37-52.