Plans to beef up peacekeeping missions, as outlined in the secretary-general’s 1992 report to the General Assembly, have been sidelined. Following setbacks in Somalia and Bosnia, peacekeeping operations already have been scaled back, as the belated and undermanned mission to Rwanda demonstrates.“Once an organization’s reputation is badly damaged, as the U.N.’s reputation has been in Somalia and now, even worse, in Bosnia, people begin to question everything about it,” says Carpenter at the Cato Institute. “Even the worthwhile functions it has served, the achievements it has had in Namibia, for instance, are going to be far less impressive than they might otherwise have been.”With the United States especially reluctant to support efforts to strengthen the U.N., some diplomats are prodding Europe and Japan to pick up the slack. “It’s a foolish idea to assume that every time anything happens the only country that can do anything is the United States,” Urquhart says. “It isn’t like 1945, when the United States was the only country still on its feet. There are some nice, big, grownup countries out there, some of which are quite rich. But there remains this hopelessly defeatist attitude that if the United States doesn’t want it, it won’t happen.”There is another reason, Urquhart says, why the United Nations’ member governments should not allow the confusion over the U.N.’s role as global peacekeeper to undermine its place in world affairs. “In fifty years’ time, the United Nations won’t be judged on having failed in Bosnia,” he says. “It will be judged on whether it did anything about poverty, economic imbalance, and the environment. Those are the forces that are going to shape the future one way or another, not what happens in Bosnia.”NOTES1. Carroll J. Doherty, “Congress’ Foreign Po...
