ABSTRACT
The cost in lives and infrastructure, along with the diversion of finances to arms and military capabilities, continue to detract from prosperity and the social progress needed to alleviate the causes of conflict. The Cold War froze the problems associated with colonial frontiers, often drawn for political or administrative expedience, or as trade-offs in nineteenth-century diplomacy in European imperial capitals. At the end of the most disastrous war the world has known, the representatives of fifty nations signed the Charter of the United Nations. In the last decade of the twentieth century, the deployment of peacekeeping forces has become the most visible face of the United Nations. In an environment of excesses and obstacles, the use of force as a preventative measure, to impose a settlement on recalcitrant parties, or to establish order over lawless groups, sometimes emerges as an apparent necessity.
