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The United Nations in international relations

Review products

ErskineChilders with BrianUrquhart, Renewing the United Nations System (Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, 1994)

KevinClements and RobinWard (eds.), Building International Community: Cooperating for Peace Case Studies (Canberra: Allen & Unwin, 1994)

RosemaryRighter, Utopia Lost: The United Nations and World Order (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1995)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1996

Extract

Writing about the United States and its highly ambivalent relationship to the United Nations, Conor Cruise O'Brien once noted how, in ‘the land which houses the United Nations, and which does most both to support and to use it, discussion of the functioning of the United Nations is almost all on [a] quas-supernatural plane, whether it be in terms of the strengthened Platonic UN, or in terms of a UN of evil enchantment—God or the Devil’. With some exaggeration, much the same can be said about the public debate of the UN's role in international relations in recent years. It is heartening, therefore, as the UN celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, to see a growing number of studies prepared to examine critically the performance of the organization; to explore its possibilities in a world where interdependence and transnational processes require greater cooperation; but also to acknowledge its limitations in the same world where the autonomy and primacy of the state remain unchallenged in vital spheres of activity.

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Type
Review articles
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1996

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