ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the keyconcepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to present an overview of the United Nations' peacekeeping role and experience in Africa during the last four decades of the twentieth century and in this way provide an opportunity for a more distanced and therefore more sustainable judgement. The UN Charter made the Security Council responsible for deciding when a situation required collective security action and what form that action should take. The high ambition was simply incompatible with the global bipolarity that soon characterized international relations in the post-1945 era. The principle of 'middle-power peacekeeping' guided UN practice throughout the cold war. However, it was eroded in some areas in the post-cold war period and the impact of this on African peacekeeping has been a mixed one.
