How far the efforts to maintain international order in the post-Cold War period by the UN have been successful? (2011, 30 Marks)
The end of the Cold War unlocked the Security Council: vetoes almost vanished in the 1990s, and George H. W. Bush spoke in 1990 of a “new world order” in which the Council would finally work as designed. Three and a half decades on, the record supports a precise answer: the UN has succeeded in inverse proportion to great-power stakes, doing well where the permanent five were indifferent or aligned and poorly where any of them was engaged.
The yardstick
Hedley Bull (The Anarchical Society, 1977) defined international order as the pattern of activity that sustains the elementary goals of a society of states: limiting violence, keeping agreements, preserving sovereignty. The UN can be judged on three tasks: reversing aggression, managing internal wars, and building rules.
Where the UN succeeded
- Reversing aggression, once. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait (2 August 1990) drew sanctions within days and Resolution 678 authorising “all necessary means”; the aggression was reversed, though by a delegated coalition.
- Implementing settlements. Second-generation missions ended wars in Namibia, El Salvador, Cambodia and Mozambique; Sierra Leone, Liberia and Timor-Leste followed.
- Building rules. The Yugoslavia and Rwanda tribunals (1993, 1994) led to the Rome Statute (1998); the 2005 World Summit adopted the Responsibility to Protect; Resolution 1373 (2001) bound every state against terrorist financing; Resolution 2231 (2015) gave legal form to the Iran nuclear deal.
- Good offices. The Black Sea Grain Initiative (2022–23) moved about 33 million tonnes of grain between belligerents.
Where it failed
- The 1990s collapse. Somalia (1993), Rwanda (800,000 killed in 1994) and Srebrenica (8,000 murdered in a UN “safe area”, 1995) ended the optimism.
- The Council bypassed. NATO’s Kosovo campaign (1999) and the invasion of Iraq (2003) showed that powerful states use force without authorisation and survive the cost.
- Protection discredited. Libya (2011), where Resolution 1973 was read as licensing regime change, ended the consensus; Russia has since vetoed eighteen drafts on Syria, ten jointly with China.
- The central cases out of reach. On Ukraine the aggressor holds a veto; the General Assembly condemned the invasion by 141 votes in March 2022, but its February 2026 resolution drew only 107, with India abstaining. On Gaza, US vetoes blocked action until Resolution 2803 (November 2025) handed governance to an externally constituted Board of Peace. The US–Israeli war on Iran from February 2026 found the Council divided: China and Russia vetoed a draft on Hormuz shipping on 7 April 2026.
- Capacity contraction. A cash crisis driven by arrears sent a quarter of uniformed peacekeepers home in 2025 and cut the 2026 regular budget by 7.3%.
The theoretical reading
The pattern confirms John J. Mearsheimer‘s claim that institutions mirror the distribution of power. Yet Robert O. Keohane‘s institutionalism explains why rule-making and humanitarian delivery continued through deadlock: the order the UN maintains is normative and functional more than coercive. Amitav Acharya (The End of American World Order, 2014) adds that a “multiplex” world, in which regional bodies and rising powers share governance, is replacing a UN-centred order led by Washington. India’s call for “reformed multilateralism” reads the record the same way: these are failures of a 1945 Council, not of multilateralism.
Conclusion
The UN’s post-Cold War success has been partial and declining: substantial in the 1990s window, in law-making and at the periphery of great-power interest, negligible wherever a permanent member was a party. In 2026 it is at its weakest since 1945, yet it remains the only forum in which all 193 states must justify themselves, less a guarantor of order than its indispensable register.