soldiers during its eleven-year mission. During the U.N.’s first forty-five years, thirteen peacekeeping missions were deployed. Only one of these – the 1960-64 mission to the former Belgian Congo, which involved 19,800 troops – approached the size of some present-day missions.A VIEW FROM THE U.S.With all the criticism of the United Nations heard today, it is easy to forget that the organization – like the League of Nations before it – was largely a product of American initiative. President Franklin D. Roosevelt urged his wartime allies to support the notion that the only way to stop aggression by individual nation was to authorize an international body to keep the peace.If anything, argues Urquhart at the Ford Foundation, Americans were overly optimistic about the chances of the U.N.’s success. “The thing that surprised me most about the diplomats, and particularly the Americans, was that they were absolutely convinced that this was going to work absolutely as written in the charter,” he recalls.When Urquhart, then a six-year veteran of the war in Europe, challenged this view before an American diplomat, he “was absolutely furious, told me it was skeptical young men like me who caused wars and stamped away. That was very much the view in the American delegation,” Urquhart adds. “They believed they had hit upon the secret of international peace. Within about six months, it turned out they hadn’t because we went plunging into the Cold War. There was a huge disillusionment when that happened.”Despite its leading role in creating the United Nations and high initial expectations for its performance, the United States has always viewed the multilateral organization with ambivalence. Fearful that American troops could be forced into service against the will of the U.S. government, Congress in 1945 strictly circumscribed the Security Council’s reach. ...
