The end of the Cold War provides a new and powerful opportunity to reinvigorate efforts which can minimize international threats to peace and improve the management of conflict. Peace operations offer a means of addressing complex regional conflicts for which unilateral action may not be justified or appropriate. As the world turns to preventive and multilateral efforts, the United Nations is the institution most often called upon to organize them. The U.N. has struggled to keep up with the demand, more than doubling its peace operations since the end of the Cold War. .
Given its current capability, the United Nations has achieved a great deal. But it is important to ask, what is the U.N. capable of accomplishing in the future? One choice is to strengthen the United Nations system, build on a renewal of its international standing, and provide it with an increased capability to prevent and respond to conflicts. .
The alternative is to do little, thereby maintaining the U.N. as a body whose mandate will often overwhelm its capabilities and which fails to provide more than mediations, post-conflict peacekeeping, and an occasional miracle. .
The future course for the United Nations depends in great part on the route America charts for itself in the world. The United States could choose to take a unilateral course, going it alone as the world's policeman and using its power as the remaining military superpower to tackle problems and issues of interest to it. Or it could take a more isolationist path, deciding to withdraw from a leadership position in world affairs, allowing international crises to play themselves out unless they directly threaten U.S. vital interests. Finally, the U.S. could select a policy of engagement with the world, in which America offers leadership to help resolve some of the world's conflicts through multinational efforts, and acts alone only in exceptional circumstances. .
While no single course will always define the American role, the United States can clearly benefit from engagement in the world.
