The UN's record in peace operations is long, various, distinguished by both accomplishments and failures, and most importantly, innovative. Unfulfilled expectations and escalating violence in Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia forced retrenchment upon UN peace operations_but at the same time, a new opportunity to enhance capacities, review strategies, redefine roles, and reaffirm responsibilities has opened up. Here, a dynamic group of leading diplomats, academics, and journalists combines forces with UN policymakers and leaders including current Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to explore how the international community can improve its practice in negotiating and implementing peace. They look at what works and what doesn't in UN peacemaking and peacekeeping, and then map out alternative futures for UN action in the 21st century.

Although there is no international government, and no global police agency enforces the rules, nations obey international law. In this provocative study, Franck employs a broad range of historical, legal, sociological, anthropological, political, and philosophical modes of analysis to unravel the mystery of what makes states and people perceive rules as legitimate. Demonstrating that virtually all nations obey most rules nearly all of the time, Franck reveals that the more legitimate laws and institutions appear to be, the greater is their capacity for compliance. Distilling those factors which increase the perception of legitimacy, he shows how a community of rules can be fashioned from a system of sovereign states without creating a global leviathan.

The nations that drafted the UN Charter in 1945 clearly were more concerned about peace than about justice. As a result, the Charter prohibits all use of force by states except in the event of an armed attack or when authorised by the Security Council. This arrangement has only very imperfectly withstood the test of time and changing world conditions. In requiring states not to use force in self-defence until after they had become the object of an actual armed attack, the Charter failed to address a growing phenomenon of clandestine subversion and of instantaneous nuclear threats. Fortunately although the Charter is very hard to amend, the drafters did agree that it should be interpreted flexibly by the United Nations' principal political institutions. In this way the norms governing use of force in international affairs have been adapted to meet changing circumstances and new challenges. The book also relates these changes in law and practice to changing public values pertaining to the balance between maintaining peace and promoting justice.

The American public has become increasingly disenchanted with the United Nations. Some responsible sources in this country are already advocating withdrawal from U.N. agencies and perhaps even from the entire system.

This book, by the former Director of Research at UNITAR, the U.N.'s "think tank," examines the record of the U.N. during its first 40 years in the clear light of American national interest. Franck offers a balance sheet which confirms that the U.N. during its first 40 years in the clear light of American national interest. Franck offers a balance shet whcih confirms that the U.N. often operates in a way that undermines respect for individual human rights and hampers conflict resolution. At the same time, he does not shrink from showing that the fault frequently lies with the United States itself. He shows how the U.S. helped form the U.N. with unrealistic views of what it could do, how for a decade or more the U.S. was able to use the U.N. essentially as a tool and adjunct to its foreign policy, and how Washington failed to predict and plan for the inevitable shift in power at the U.N. led by the newly emergent Third World nations. Franck warns of the American penchant for treating international relations as a series of unrelated encounters instead of an ongoing, institutionalized system in which the tactics and outcome of one crisis inevitably affect the way the next context is played out.

Taday the U.S. and its allies are often the butt of antagonisms that the U.N. system seems to encourage and exaggerate. Nevertheless Franck shows that even now the U.S. position in the U.N. is far from hopeless, and he provides a blueprint for a strategy of "playing hard ball," which is far more realistic than abandoning the world organization.

About the Author:

Thomas M. Franck is Professor of Law and Director of the Center for International Studies at the New York University Law School. His previous books include Word Politics and Secrecy and Foreign Policy.

`an original and groundbreaking source of international legal scholarship ... This thorough, scholarly treatise is bound to become a standard ... Highly recommended for graduate students and faculty.'

Choice `this work provides a vision for the future development of international law and institutions and ends with a challenge to both scholars and practitioners to take up the issue of fairness in the law actively.'

International Affairs `... a work of considerable scholarship and vitality ... Franck is challenging us to develop a new way of thinking about international law. I will have to read this book a second time, perhaps a third, to take in all that Franck offers, but that will be a pleasure not a burden.

The Cambridge Law Journal

A Series Of Case Studies On The Role Of Law In The Settlement Of International Disputes. Additional Contributors Are Oscar Schachter, U. Thant, Orison S. Marden, And Many Others.

The United Nations Charter in 1945 prohibits all use of force by states except in the event of an armed attack or when authorized by the Security Council. Although the Charter is very hard to amend, its drafters agreed that it should be interpreted flexibly by the UN's principal political institutions and the text has undergone extensive interpretation. This book relates these changes in law and practice to changing public values pertaining to the balance between maintaining peace and promoting justice.