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Governing Disorder: UN Peace Operations, International Security, and Democratization in the Post-Cold War Era

states’ motivations to intervene are also only partially driven by truly humanitarian concerns. For the author, the great majority of states are still thinking in Westphalian terms, and the range of motivations observed today does not appear to be fundamentally different from that of the cold war traditional peacekeeping era. The first three chapters of the book deal with these issues from different angles: the first two offer a historical perspective on interventions and the thinking about humanitarianism. Chapter three examines how the concept of ‘responsibility to protect’ has reflected the evolution of sovereignty and the relationship between cosmopolitan values and sovereign rights. The author then shifts the focus to three geographical areas that constitute case studies: Africa, the Balkans, and Timor-Leste. The narrative in those chapters is very clear and presents a relatively comprehensive picture of the UN response to various conflicts, yet it is essentially descriptive and would have benefitted from a better linkage with the Westphalian/post-Westphalian prism. Finally, the author briefly ends with some questions about the success and failure of UN interventions. Here again, the balance sheet is mixed. Three bases of assessment are identified: intervention as ‘process’, where the assessment of the operation is on the fulfilment of the terms of the mandate and the extent to which the mission reduces violence; intervention as ‘deep resolution’, where the establishment of a long-term ‘positive peace’ is what needs to be examined; and third intervention as ‘system management’, which carries a strong Westphalian connotation as a peacekeeping operation aims at preserving the international system by ‘immunising’ it against ‘infection’ by local conflicts. Overall, MacQueen offers a stimulating analysis of what UN interventions are about and what they can – or cannot – achieve. His broad vision of humanitarianism is unconventional but well balanced by his thoughts on state behaviours and institutional limitations, which convincingly combine realist and neoliberal/constructivist thinking. In the end, while the author is critical of some of the manifest weaknesses of the UN system, he also acknowledges the legitimacy and added value of an institution that the author presents as the ‘worst possible option – apart from all the others’ (p.225).