Introduction

This chapter examines the related questions concerning the limitations of the United Nations as a political institution whose primary responsibility was conceived to be the maintenance of international peace and security. It describes the problem of Namibia, to assess its value as a mechanism for crisis management and conflict control. The world organization seems unable to expel the illegal South African administration from the international territory of Namibia and put an end to the escalating conflict in the region, which is becoming a threat to international peace and security. The South African challenge in militarizing the territory and using it as a springboard to attack Angola, an independent and sovereign country, is being met with no effective response from the United Nations. The problem with the United Nations, as Stanley Hoffman notes, is that of the very concept of international organization.