On Monday 4 February 2008, Jean-Marc Coicaud will be launching his new book entitled "Beyond the National Interest: The Future of UN Peacekeeping and Multilateralism in an Era of US Primacy" from 12.30 - 1.30 pm.
Whatever happened to multilateral peacekeeping? This is the central question Jean-Marc Coicaud explores in this penetrating scholarly examination of the period of “robust” UN-mandated peacekeeping missions in humanitarian crises. The most notable peace operations during this period were undertaken by the three leading NATO powers—the United States foremost among them—in the immediate post–Cold War era. Yet, as Coicaud explains, the international democratic solidarity that unified their multilateral action against a Soviet threat was stretched thin in the post–Cold War era, which manifested an entirely new set of threats to international security—such as ethnic cleansing and failed states. The three leading Western powers were ill-equipped to handle them effectively in terms of the fundamental political theory and applied political philosophy that generally informed their traditional foreign policies. The book concludes with guidelines for more effective realisation of international interests among the Western powers and an afterword on the book’s lessons applied to Darfur.
Jean-Marc Coicaud, a former senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace, is the head of the United Nations University (UNU) office at UN headquarters in New York. Coicaud has been a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School and New York University’s School of Law, and held appointments with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Parliament’s Financial Committee, the Sorbonne, and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
This meeting will be chaired by Dr Dana Allin and will take place on the Fifth Floor at Arundel House, 13-15 Arundel Street, Temple Place, London WC2R 3DX.
If you would like to attend this meeting, please RSVP Kathleen James on james@iiss.org or Tel 020 7395 9109.
