Abstract
While the abrupt dissolution of the Soviet Union into its component republics was seen by many as an era de novo, and the essential ingredient for outlawing warfare and widespread conflict, others within the analytic community regarded this turning-point as both an ‘end’ and a ‘beginning’. Though the world had seemingly moved beyond bipolarity, events in many global corridors served as sharp demystification of cataclysmic expectations and suppositions of a new age of international peace and stability. The Cold War was, however, a development of enormity that was congruous with renewed conflict and confrontation, yet it enabled the United Nations (UN) to assume a greater role within the orbit of international affairs, including peace operations and mediation. In spite of its new reach and functions, the UN’s early experience in peace-building as well as security and stabilization operations proved wholly insufficient for resolving conventional conflict between precarious nation-states. It some cases, the role assumed by the UN and its subsidiaries proved injurious to regional peace and security. Through an examination of the Eritrean-Ethiopian War, this article exemplifies the UN’s deficiency in international mediation and that manifestations of nation-building detracted from its responsive capacity to external communication intended to induce a speedy and solid peace-agreement. Ergo, while the UN was not prepared to handle a situation with large set-piece battles involving conventional armed forces, the conduct of the international organization precipitated a war that has lasted well beyond its own natural expiration, and once again proving the unsuitability of the UN to manage international peace-building operations amid such circumstance.
Highlights
It may be a war no one wants, over land rich in dust, between people who until recently regarded each other brothers and sisters in arms.-The Washington Post, 1998Conflict between nations will continue to arise
The role of the mediator is to facilitate communication between the parties, assist them in focusing on the real issue of the dispute, and generate options that meet the interests or needs of all relevant parties in an effort to resolve the conflict (Honeyman and Yawanarajah, 2003). This form of intermediary engagement differs from arbitration – a form of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) – in which a decision reached is subsequently agreed upon by the various parties involved in the process
This can be useful in the case of developing countries that are heavily dependent on the flow of foreign-aid in order to sustain political and economic lifelines of the country and those living within its borders
Summary
It may be a war no one wants, over land rich in dust, between people who until recently regarded each other brothers and sisters in arms. The real issue is whether they are to be resolved by force, or by resorting to peaceful methods and procedures, administered by impartial institutions. This very Organization itself is the greatest such institution, and it is in a more powerful United Nations that we seek, and it is here that we shall find, the assurance of a peaceful future. Unconventional wars wherein one or more parties were not recognized as sovereign state entities This experience led the UN to undertake international mediation methods and employ subsequent strategies for the proliferation of peace in manners that proved to be heavily insufficient for resolving major conventional conflict between two recognized states engaged in conventional warfare. By exploring the rupture's many constituents, including what interventionist actions were implemented, and what prospects for peace-building existed, it is demonstrated that the UN's efforts to mediate and meliorate the dispute were enervated through a lack of dynamism and by agents acting mala fide, rendering efforts to solve the conflict as conditioned by circumstances and external conventions
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