A Period of Crisis: the UN in the 1980s

Abstract

As the seventies turned into the eighties, the international climate changed unfavourably for the UN, making it unable to play a role in many conflicts because of the unwillingness of disputants. The revolutionary Iranian government that seized power in February 1979 ignored appeals from the Security Council and an ICJ ruling demanding the release of American diplomats who had been taken hostage in Iran. There was fighting between China and Vietnam (whose patron was the USSR). Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation were locked in conflict in Lebanon. Central America was suffering from social strife and insurgency. In December 1979 the cold war flared up, with the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan. When the Iran-Iraq war began in September 1980, the Security Council idly watched two ‘troublesome’ states slaughtering each other. During his first term of office as Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar could not identify a single conflict that had been resolved because of the UN’s efforts.