ABSTRACT
While multinational peacekeeping operations have become increasingly common in the 1990s, there is little agreement within the political, military, or academic communities about the participation of military personnel in peacekeeping missions nor about which nations should be involved as peacekeepers. The deployment of military personnel for peacekeeping, as opposed to war–fighting functions, can be seen as the latest stage in an ongoing attempt by the international community to resolve international differences without war, while at the same time providing for collective security. The use of military personnel from the major powers or superpowers in peacekeeping forces has nonetheless remained a debatable issue in peacekeeping doctrine. The legitimacy of the peacekeeping intervention was coded on a scale ranging from low to high support for peacekeeping. Peacekeeping interventions have been more likely to succeed if they have been opportunistic, being proactive in establishing a linkage between compliance and situational advantage for both disputants.
