ABSTRACT
Situating naval diplomacy in the post-Cold War era is a complex business. Many writers and commentators have tried to describe post-1991 global trends and there can be found a significant degree of concurrence. The decline of communism and the rapidly changing map of central and eastern Europe led to a particularly uncertain security situation in the early 1990s. Some have described the post-Cold War world not as a series of geopolitical 'happenings' but in terms of societal or conceptual changes. As the situation deteriorated in the former Yugoslavia, the United Nations Security Council passed a series of increasingly aggressive resolutions to quell the turmoil, including United Nations Security Council Resolution 787 in November 1992 which authorized the enforcement of sanctions. Jeremy Blackham stated that his immediate priority was to 'familiarise ourselves with the geography, oceanography and pattern of activity in the Adriatic' and that his mission was to 'poise'.
