ABSTRACT
UNOSOM can be seen as an attempt by the UN and the Secretariat in particular to adapt to the changed post-Cold War international environment, and by availing of the greater harmony within the Security Council, engage its forces in a new, more robust form of action than that associated with earlier consent-based operations. However, as James Mayall observed: ‘The major powers might have been better advised to have taken the Congo operation as their model and warning than to have allowed public opinion to lure them into the belief that the success of Desert Storm and enforcement action under Chapter VII could be repeated in quite different circumstances.’1
