Peacekeeping: Challenges for the Future.

• Author: Crawford, John

Editor: Hugh Smith Published by: Australian Defence Studies Centre, Canberra, 1993, 229pp, A$20.

These books, which share an editor and several contributors, are both collections of essays based on papers presented at seminars about different aspects of peacekeeping. One of the strengths of both books is the wide range of backgrounds from which the authors of the essays are drawn. Many of the authors are military or police officers or civilians with direct experience of serving in peacekeeping operations. These essays are characterised by a realistic and down-to-earth approach founded on first-hand experience of peacekeeping operations. Other essays are by academics from a variety of different disciplines, predominantly from the Asia-Pacific region.

Peacekeeping: Challenges for the Future consists of 21 generally fairly short chapters arranged in five parts: The Global Context, Major UN Operations, National Perspectives on Peacekeeping, Challenges for the UN, and Prospects for Peacekeeping. In his introduction to the collection, Hugh Smith outlines the challenges facing peacekeeping operations in the post-Cold War world. He notes that the increasingly complex and demanding peacekeeping operations which have been established in recent years have tested the skills and training of armed forces in a way in which conventional peacekeeping does not. Smith aptly describes peacekeeping as putting `armed forces on centre stage with unfamiliar roles, fellow actors they hardly know, and producers and directors who may not always have matters under control'.

Of particular interest to New Zealand readers is the essay by Dr Cathy Downes, `Challenges for Smaller Nations in the New Era of UN and Multinational Operations'. Downes outlines four trends in international security: diffusion of power in world affairs, disintegration and failure of states, expansion in the meaning of international security and increasing recourse to collective security principles and organisations. She then describes how these trends have led to the deployment of more capable international forces, in what Downes describes as `second generation peace operations'. The essay concludes with a discussion of the implications such operations have for small contributing nations such as New Zealand and how such states can continue to make worthwhile contributions to international peacekeeping or peace-support operations.

The papers collected as International Peacekeeping: Building on the...