Volume 38, Number 1 & 2 · January 17, 1991
The Price of War
By Stanley Hoffmann
Thanks to the end of the cold war, the society of states finds itself in the condition that had been mistakenly expected by the drafters of the United Nations Charter. For forty-five years, the paralysis of the Security Council prevented the Charter provisions on collective security from being carried out. In the Gulf crisis provoked by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Security Council has at last performed exactly as it had been designed to do. Indeed, the Bush administration has repeatedly presented the crisis as a test whose outcome will shape the future of collective security and determine whether the UN will be able to play the important role that Gorbachev, in his famous speech before the General Assembly in December 1988, had requested for the world organization. But we should have no illusions about how easy or rosy that future will be, even if the current coalition prevails over Saddam Hussein; and American policy in the Gulf crisis may well make the task of the UN in years to come much more difficult.
Feature, 3566 words
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