| This dissertation deals with the international community's response to ethnic and other internal conflict in the post-Cold War period, and its impact on the structure of the international system. In short, this study pursues the question if, as an effective move toward global governance in security relations, the principles of state sovereignty and non-intervention have been undermined by post-Cold War international humanitarian intervention, in a process supported, and even driven, by major powers whose traditional emphasis on narrowly defined national interest has been broadened to effectively address issues of global peace and security. These issues are analyzed with respect to Russian, German and American foreign policy decisionmaking on international intervention in intercommunal crises in places such as Iraq, the former Yugoslavia and Somalia.; In a nutshell, the findings suggest a very limited life for effective UN-sponsored global responses to substate, intercommunal, conflict, which, for many, appeared to have been set in motion by UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali's suggestions in his 1992 An Agenda for Peace and the concurrent proliferation of UN involvement in various civil conflicts. Notably, peacekeeping operations are pursued by major states only as long as they fulfil their particular interests in defending national security and in establishing their international positions vis-a-vis other state actors, and as long as the economic, political and human costs associated with such involvement do not outweigh the strategic interests pursued by participation. Current and future United Nations peacekeeping activities will most likely not lead to a restructured international system, with its potentially dramatic implications for change in international relations theory and interpretations of international law. If global organizations desire to live up to their universalist and humanitarian principles, future internal conflict will have to be "sold" to potential contributors to peacekeeping operations in reference to potential cross-border security threats for neighbouring nations--in the form of military spill-over, of refugees, of market depletion, of environmental impacts and other short and long-term security risks. |
