ABSTRACT
Events in the late 1980s that signaled an end to the Cold War–the toppling of the Berlin Wall, the revolutions in Eastern Europe, the disintegration of the Soviet Union—were accompanied by widespread euphoria. After more than forty years of East-West struggle during which geopolitical considerations had dominated the international agenda, the human needs of civilians would at long last receive overdue attention—or so the reasoning went. In the early post-Cold War years, local factors have assumed greater importance in their own right. Civil wars are no longer as easily internationalized as when rival factions served as pawns in a big-power chess game. There are, to be sure, major obstacles to more effective humanitarian action during the remainder of the century and beyond. Some basic humanitarian instincts and the humanitarian apparatus that exists to put flesh on them have atrophied during the Cold War interregnum.
