Boulden's focus is UN “peace enforcement,'' or by her definition, military missions that fall between traditional peacekeeping and full-fledged enforcement operations. The cases she examines all entailed “sustained military operations'' that were carried out by the United Nations (p. 5). The cases that fit her definition include the UN's experience in Congo, Somalia, and Bosnia. Her focus is the Security Council's record, and how closely use-of-force resolutions were implemented. Each case is divided into four sections, including a historical summary of the conflict, the actual mandate given by the Security Council, analysis of the implementation of each mandate, and a final section in each chapter on the lessons learned and other “issues'' generated by each case. She includes an introductory chapter on the history of the United Nations Charter and its evolution into peacekeeping.

The book's greatest virtue is the meticulous chronicling of the Security Council's decisions for each deployment. No other similar text exists that focuses exclusively on use-of-force decisions, making the book an excellent reference source. Moreover, in each chapter, the author goes beyond the Security Council mandates and discusses the specific rules of engagement for the troops deployed in each mission. This aspect of political-military studies is often overlooked by political scientists. Such logistical factors merit examination because they may be instrumental in influencing the political dynamics of the operation, and provide a more complete understanding of the constraints under which UN troops work.

The author's conclusions are also well supported. All missions suffered from “chronic undersupport'' and from serious commandand-control problems (p. 130). Boulden's recall of the United Nations experience in Somalia offers an especially poignant demonstration of this argument, as the Clinton administration and the UN mission on the ground were often operating completely apart from each other. As this mission progressed, the gulf between the United States and the United Nations grew, culminating in political disaster and 18 American casualties in Mogadishu in early October 1993. Had better communication existed, she concludes, perhaps this tragedy could have been avoided.

Another commonality she notes is that despite calls for additional support for the peace enforcers in each case, these pleas were rejected in the deployments' early phases. Through her analysis of Security Counicl resolutions, she also finds that upon originally taking action, the United Nations dealt primarily with the consequences of the conflict, rather than the causes of the violence. In each case the “suffering'' was addressed, but a genuine commitment to resolve the conflict was absent.

The author focuses almost exclusively on the Security Council's mandate and then the implementation of the various use-of-force resolutions. The “Security Council'' is the principal unit of analysis. Such an approach is both the strength and limitation of the study; she notes that she does not “tell the full story of the operations examined'' (p. 5). Due to the complexity of each operation, and the large time frames considered in Congo and Bosnia especially, telling the full story is obviously not possible when seeking to draw broader generalizations and comparisons. She chooses to rely largely on documents from the United Nations and actual Security Council decisions. In this respect, there is no comparable book. In her chapter on Somalia, she includes an analysis of Boutros-Boutros Ghali's interpretation of these resolutions, which differed markedly from those of the major powers on the Security Council. This discussion provides much insight on the refusal to grant him a second term as Secretary General.

At the same time, Boulden notes the importance of the United States in both of the post–Cold War operations she examines, and provides some attention to the Clinton administration's policy approach in Somalia and Bosnia (pp. 73, 111). Yet for those seeking broader treatment of the positions of the Security Council's members, supplemental references will be needed. For those interested in Bosnia, for example, Ivo H. Daalder's (1999) Getting to Dayton examines the profound differences among senior policymakers at the White House and the many factors involved in reshaping American foreign policy toward the United Nations and Bosnia, including French President Jacques Chirac's role in calling for American leadership in 1995. In this respect, Daalder's study offers a more complete explanation of the Security Council's evolution on Bosnia.

Some analysts of the United Nations may also quibble with her definition of “peaceenforcement'' operations, asking why UN operations in Cambodia, and perhaps Sierra Leone, are not treated. Such a distinction likely revolves around the author's definition of a “sustained'' military operation.

Nevertheless, this book will be useful for policymakers and students. A concluding chapter provides a host of policy proposals, as well as recognition that UN operations can bring positive and negative results. Partial military commitments to political crises do little to advance the cause of peace, and damage the UN's credibility in the process.