ABSTRACT
Specialists in the field of international organization have noted with some alarm a decline of interest among students and foundations in the study of the United Nations system. The interest in integration and regimes reflects both the persistence and the transformation of the kind of idealism that originally pervaded, guided, and at times distorted the study of international organization. A different emphasis, advocated some years before, on a comparative study of the institutions expressed a willingness to detach or abstract international organization from the international system. Since international organizations provide procedures for cooperation or for the temperate pursuit of conflict, it is obvious that their effectiveness depends on the degree of moderation of the international system. A new international legitimacy will have to emerge, as in every past moderate system. Insofar as peacekeeping is concerned, there is obviously in the long run no substitute for international measures of arms control with a growing network of supervision, inspection, and enforcement.
