The Kashmir Crisis and the Futility of U.N. Peacekeeping

Abstract

The United Nations came into being on the premise of a world body tasked with ensuring sustainable peace through multilateralism. This is the primary mandate of the UN which gained new dimensions as nation-states became more complex and intertwined through globalization. An argument for the successes of U.N. peacekeeping can be made on the grounds of several interventions where U.N. sponsored policing helped create and maintain peace. However, contrary to that, very valid and extensive literature backed by historical events is present that highlights the shortcoming of said interventions. Reasons for these failed attempts at peacemaking can be attributed to a wide range of framework fault lines, geopolitical complexities, vested interests, and the overall difficulty of the task. Moreover, there are examples of these protracted, fruitless missions that haunt the UN halls to this day and have contributed to the critique leveled against the world body. One such example is the Kashmir dispute between two nuclear-armed neighbors, and the utter failure of the UN mission in the region to attain a cessation to violence.