Beyond the National Interest

Whatever happened to multilateral peacekeeping? This is the central question Jean-Marc Coicaud explores in this penetrating scholarly examination of the period of "robust" UN-mandated peacekeeping missions in humanitarian crises. The most notable peace operations during this period were undertaken by the three leading NATO powers - the United States foremost among them - in the immediate post-Cold War era. Yet, as Coicaud explains, the international democratic solidarity that unified their multilateral action against a Soviet threat was stretched thin in the post-Cold War era, which manifested an entirely new set of threats to international security - such as ethnic cleansing and failed states.The three leading Western powers were ill-equipped to handle them effectively in terms of the fundamental political theory and applied political philosophy that generally informed their traditional foreign policies. The book concludes with guidelines for more effective realization of international interests among the Western powers and an afterword on the book's lessons applied to Darfur.