ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the UN’s efforts to maintain peace and security and on the conceptual struggle of what multilateral cooperation should be in this field. This will be based on a qualitative analysis of selected documents produced by the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Secretary-General, and other selected bodies in the UN system. The chapter focuses on key events related to the UN involvement in maintaining peace and security from the 1991 Gulf War, through the 2003 build-up to the Iraq War, until 2022 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The argument of this chapter focuses on constructing the historical political dynamics related to different approaches to multilateralism that the UN is presenting. The chapter will illustrate the perseverance of discourses promoting multilateralism, albeit with the gradually increasing effort to promote alternative structures and processes to conduct multilateralism in practice.
