for all the talk about reform, little has been done. Luck of the United Nations Association attributes this paralysis to inaction by the member states, including the United States. “People talk about reforming the U.N., but in terms of really putting forward a concerted program and working at it the way you have to work to make things happen here, the United States hasn’t done much,” he says. “It’s been mostly talk and a couple of gestures here and there.”Before the United Nations can become the efficient organization its supporters what it to be, its members must agree on what role they want it to play. “They’ve got to ask themselves whether the governments are their brothers’ keepers or not,” Urquhart says. “My view is that they are, because the people won’t let them not be. But the trouble is, nobody wants to really put the capacity in the United Nations to make it real.”As policy-makers look back over the past half-century of U.N. activities and debate the future of American involvement in the organization, they will consider the following issues:Does the United Nations have a role to play in the post-Cold War era?For most of its history, the U.N.’s peacekeeping role was restricted by the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Allies in World War II, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. became rival superpowers on the strength of their growing nuclear arsenals and created alliances that divided most of the world into opposing camps. While regional conflicts raged throughout the postwar period, it was the dread of tripping a nuclear holocaust, rather than the peacekeeping authority of the U.N., that prevented the outbreak of a third world war.With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, the nuclear competition came to an end –as did the global order imposed by the Cold War. No longer constrained by alliances with one or the other ...
