ABSTRACT
In the last chapter we discussed the idea that peacekeeping during the cold war took place within a ‘permitted area’. This area was political as much as geographical. Its perimeters were fixed by tacit agreement between east and west and excluded issues and regions where core national interests were in play. These were off-limits to multilateral intervention as the superpowers and their allies regarded it as crucial to retain close national control over them. Eastern Europe and Latin America, for example, were spheres of national influence for the Soviet Union and the United States respectively where, whatever crises and conflicts emerged during the cold war, direct UN military intervention was never a serious option. But other areas — in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia and the Pacific — were open to UN intervention not because they did not involve core interests but because multilateral responses to their conflicts could serve the management of east—west relations by preventing their drift into the larger bipolar contest.
