A Revitalized United Nations in the 1990s

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Introduction

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Overview

The United Nations is emerging once again as a viable instrument for maintaining world peace and security. Long the scene of bitter exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union, and often the focus of heated criticism for its inefficiency and waste, the 160-member body is enjoying a quiet revival on its 45th birthday.

The revival is possible because of the easing of tensions between the superpowers. “The Cold War [was] probably the major impediment to a realization of the U.N. as people thought about it in 1944–45,” says Donald F. McHenry, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Carter administration and now a professor of diplomacy and international relations at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. When the organization was founded, he says, people believed that countries would cooperate in peace as they had cooperated in war. “Of course, they did not. They immediately started fighting. Now, with the Cold War practically over and countries having exhausted themselves in regional conflicts, there is once again a [useful role for] the U.N. to get people out of the problems they are in.”