Abstract
The following analysis looks at attempts to maintain peace and provide humanitarian succour in the cases of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. What is suggested is that the very vagueness of the concepts of peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention creates serious ambiguities which can be exploited—as, it is argued, Russia has been doing—to cover hegemonic ambitions. The article concludes that the international community is not yet ready to face up to its humanitarian responsibilities in this region and that the adverse experience of Yugoslavia, while highlighting the inadequacies of existing agencies and their likely inability to determine a long-term outcome to the conflict, has probably diminished the chances of interventions in similar circumstances in the foreseeable future, and thus, perversely, actually undermined the chances of creating effective peacekeeping rules and instruments.
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