This book, highly praised as an authoritative assessment of the United Nations and its place in international relations, brings together distinguished academics and senior UN officials in a clear and penetrating examination of how the UN has developed since 1945. It examines the UN''s various roles in addressing long-standing and difficult problems in the relations of states in such fields as international security, human rights, international law, and economicdevelopment.The book takes into account a wide range of developments in a world which remains very much divided; the rapid expansion of UN peacekeeping and election-monitoring activities; the consequences of the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; the 1990-1 Gulf conflict and its aftermath; attempts at settlement of many regional conflicts; UN involvements in fractured societies, including Cambodia, Somalia, and the former Yugoslavia; and the political and resource limits of theUN''s capabilities. This e