UN Peace-Keeping: In the Interest of Community or Self?

Abstract

This article examines whether state participation in UN peace-keeping results from a state's idealistic commitment to the global community and international peace or whether participation is tied to the state's national interest. With the high profile of UN peace-keeping in this post-Cold War era, the answer to this inquiry may suggest to us whether the emerging international system will be organized on the principles of community or self. This inquiry is conducted through an examination of the eighteen UN peace-keeping operations fielded from 1948 until 1990. Specifically, this article examines the incidence of state participation and the types of contributions states have made both to observer missions and peace-keeping forces at the aggregate level. This article also explores the perception of peace-keeping successes and failures and the perceptions of the dominant peace-keepers to determine whether an idealist or a realist perspective better accounts for state participation in peace-keeping. The findings provide support for the realist account. Further, the findings suggest that those states whose interests were better served by the continuation of the international status quo - that is, the states of the advanced industrialized West and non-Western states who have enjoyed some prestige in the international status quo - have dominated UN peace-keeping.