Cooperating for Peace: The Global Agenda for the 1990s and Beyond.

Gareth Evans St. Leonards, New South Wales, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 1993 224 pp. $14.50 ISBN 1-86373-623-9

The golden anniversary of the United Nations is certainly an appropriate time to ponder its future course, even more so given the UN's post-cold war revitalization in world affairs. What individual attitudes must be developed and prevail for the UN to be able to fulfill its Charter goals? Can a fine line be struck between supranationality and national sovereignty? What globally shared interests should fall under the jurisdiction of the UN? What can be expected in future peace operations? Three complementary works provide individual, institutional and global perspectives on the UN, and a useful critique of its policy, structure and missions within a changing global security arena.

New Page author UNESCO Director-General Federico Mayor writes that the twentieth century has been characterized by a "culture of war", a culture of violence taught and reinforced by contemporary sociological mores. Fortunately, the century's close has been witness to a new environment where State security is increasingly defined in non-military terms. A historically rare opportunity to develop a "culture of peace", based on a moral "culture of democracy", is therefore at hand.

In The United Nations at the Crossroads of Reform, scholar Wendell Gordon shares Senator William Fulbright's observation: "We do not think the UN is a failure. We think it has never been tried." Asserting that organizations evolve or become extinct, Gordon calls for a long overdue conference to review the UN Charter. Adopting an institutional focus, he methodically examines the Charter and offers recommendations for improvement.

Lastly, in Cooperating for Peace, Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans employs case study analyses of UN responses to global crises, successfully capturing the complex nuances of UN field operations.

Mayor defines peace-building as a synergy resulting from simultaneous fiscal and social investment in basic and compulsory education, scientific investigation, communication, the production and sharing of knowledge and responsible civic action. For his part, Evans adds that building peace also entails government responsibility to meet societal needs for security, a decent standard of living and individual worth. Mayor's prose is engaging and all told, The New Page is convincingly supported.

Crossroads renders concrete reform proposals as a product of its critique. For instance, since one country, one vote fails to take population into account, Gordon proposes direct election of delegates to one house of a bicameral General Assembly. Additionally, the big power veto of the permanent Security Council members should be abolished, and Germany, Japan and India - the world's largest democracy - made permanent members. The fiscal woes wrought by the current and inadequate compulsory assessment system can be cured by earmarking a percentage of each country's military budget, coupled with a kind of corporate income tax, as twin revenue sources. The Intentional Court of Justice ought to be empowered with appellate jurisdiction over decisions rendered by national supreme courts. Crossroads is succinct in its arguments and at times quite hard hitting.

The strength of Cooperating for Peace lies in its three incisive chapters concerning peacemaking, peace-keeping and peace enforcement. Taken together, they mark a seminal contribution to the burgeoning literature on the subject. An increasing number of missions are of an "expanded" brand of peace-keeping having "multifunctional" connotations. Evans duly notes that peace enforcement is a reactive response to varying situations, from countering Iraq's cross-border invasion of Kuwait to supporting humanitarian objectives in Somalia, to bolstering peace-keeping operations in the former Yugoslavia.

Evans admits that defining criteria for the employment of peace-keepers is not an exact science and is in fact an inherently incomplete process due to the varying nature of hostilities across a wide spectrum of conflict. There will "always be a strong ad hoc element" when it comes to the commitment of peace-keepers. Both UN and government policy makers would be well advised to consider the case studies in this cogent, lucid analysis.