ABSTRACT
This concluding chapter of the book presents some key concepts discussed in the book, which examined two closely related aspects of international security: the potential for local conflicts to escalate to the point at which they bring dangerous confrontations between the superpowers; and the means available to the international community to contain or to resolve local conflicts. In almost all of the conflicts, the United Nations played a variety of roles, including judgments and decisions of the General Assembly and the Security Council. However, the most effective UN interventions were those of the Secretary General and his subordinates in the UN Secretariat, including the setting up of peacekeeping operations. Regional or other organizations of a nonuniversal character have been involved in all six conflicts. National governments, acting unilaterally or in informal concert with other governments, have intervened with important consequences in two of the six conflicts.
