ABSTRACT
The post-Cold War period was met with a dramatic increase in the number of United Nations peacekeeping operations deployed around the world. This chapter examines the problems faced by consent-based peacekeeping techniques in early 1990s and investigates the degree to which members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) relied on the use of force to overcome them. It focuses on the implications of these UNSC decisions for the principle of non-intervention, the importance of state sovereignty in international politics, and the strength of humanitarian imperative within international politics. The chapter determines whether or not an understanding of the motivations of the UNSC members in the early 1990s assists in understanding the more recent decisions of the UNSC leading up to the second Gulf War. The members of the UNSC were similarly willing to determine that the dire humanitarian situation in Somalia constituted a threat to international peace and security, again utilising expansive interpretation of what constituted such a threat.
