Vijay Nambiar

The subject of today’s discussion is peacekeeping but you have asked me to speak on a much broader plane about the past and future of the United Nations. Last year marked a hundred years of multilateralism. The founding of the League of Nations in January 1920 to maintain peace and foster international cooperation represented the first real institutionalization of multilateralism.

• Published: July-September 2022
• Journal of Defence Studies

The world has changed significantly since the founding of the United Nations and so have its conflicts. During the mid-twentieth century, the pre-eminent challenge for multilateral cooperation was the awesome prospect of a Third World War. Today, in the aftermath of the Cold War, we see a more elaborated focus on the prevention of conflict and the protection of communities and peoples—both as a sovereign responsibility of the modern nation-state as well as a central focus of the United Nations peace engagements.

• Published: November 2011
• Strategic Analysis