In This Review
Peacemaking and Peacekeeping for the New Century

Peacemaking and Peacekeeping for the New Century

Edited by Olara A. Otunnu and Michael W. Doyle

Rowman & Littlefield, 1998, 352 pp.

This overpriced book is edited by two distinguished authors, one the head of the International Peace Academy, the other a professor at Princeton. The authors are a mixture of big names (Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Kofi Annan, Brian Urquhart), carefully selected to represent continents and the spectrum of opinion from enthusiastic supporters of U.N. peacekeeping to carefully considered sympathizers of the same. Skeptics and opponents do not put in much of an appearance, although Adam Roberts and a few of the others display considerably more caution than their colleagues. Yet throughout there is considerable awareness of the limits of the United Nations as an effective institution, even as its role in containing or even suppressing internal war has grown. A curious assumption in most of the essays appears to be that peacekeeping requires the action of a major multinational organization (preferably the United Nations); peacekeeping by one or two countries, or an ad hoc coalition, receives less attention.