ABSTRACT
The practice of using Rules of Engagement (ROE) to authorize and to control the application of military force has its modern origins in the Cold War. Heavily armed adversaries were for nearly half a century in very close proximity to each other on land and sea and in the air. It was important that the potentially devastating power of those forces was subject to control at the highest possible level, that neither their intentions nor their capacities could be miscalculated, yet their readiness would not be compromised by inability to react. In the halcyon days of ‘traditional peacekeeping’, this was for the United Nations a minor matter: with the exception of the Congo operation in 1961, force was no part of the mandate except in the case of a direct threat to the life of a peacekeeper. The definitive reference on ‘first generation’ peacekeeping operations, ‘The Blue Helmets: A Review of United Nations Peacekeeping’ (First Edition),1 does not mention ROE.
