ABSTRACT
This collection of essays has offered a timely focus on the changing nature of UN peace operations in Asia. They point to three major trends. The first is reflected in the two important analyses of the Cambodia and East Timor operations. While many of the salient test cases of the changing nature of UN peace operations have taken place in Africa and Europe, Asia has not been far behind. The growing complexity of such operations is reflected, first and foremost, in Cambodia, where, between 1991 and 1993 the UN carried out its largest peace operation to date under the framework of the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). It was also among the first major moves beyond peacekeeping to peacebuilding, involving a more elaborate and complex set of missions than ever previously undertaken by the UN. This in itself mirrored the changing nature of peacekeeping in the aftermath of the Cold War. As Yasushi Akashi, the then UN Special Representative for Cambodia put it: ‘To a larger extent than in previous operations in UN history, UNTAC . . . combines within itself elements of peacekeeping, peacemaking, economic and social maintenance and nation-building . . . Cambodia provides a new model of multi-faceted UN activity in an independent state [which] . . . if successful, will constitute a precedent that may well be followed in various situations around the world’.1
