ABSTRACT
UN sidelined 590 37.4 Humanitarian assistance and the failure of the US and UN in
Somalia (1993) 592 37.5 Greater success in Mozambique, Cambodia and Haiti, but failure in
Rwanda 1992-94 594 37.6 An agenda for peace (1992) and new generations of UN peacekeeping 597 37.7 Violence in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, East Timor and Congo 1998-2000 599
Figure 37.1 UN peacekeeping operations 1988-2007 588 Figure 37.2 Political and peacebuilding missions of the Department of Political Affairs 599
Gorbachev addresses the General Assembly (1988)
It was unclear in the transitional phase how the new era in international relations after the bipolarity of the Cold War would develop. The UN benefited towards the end of the 1980s from détente between East and West however. In 1987 Gorbachev decided to meet Soviet debts to the UN and to call on the organization for support. He set out his ‘new thinking’ on the Soviet Union’s foreign policy in an address to the UN General Assembly in December 1988. He emphasized that this should lead to a joint approach in international conflicts. In his view the ideological struggle between East and West within the UN was over. He needed UN support for his efforts to strengthen the Soviet economy and to reduce Soviet support for parties in regional conflicts such as Cuba, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Yemen and above all Afghanistan. ‘UNpeacekeeping provided a face-saving means to withdraw from what Gorbachev described as the “bleeding wound” of Afghanistan’ (Weiss et al. 1994, 60).
