History of United Nations Peacekeeping - End of The Cold War

End of The Cold War

With the decline of the Soviet Union and the advent of perestroika, the Soviet Union drastically decreased its military and economic support for a number of "proxy" civil wars across the globe. It also withdrew its support from satellite states and one UN peacekeeping mission, UNGOMAP, was designed to oversee the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan as the USSR began to refocus domestically. In 1991, the USSR dissolved into 15 independent states. Conflicts broke out in two former Soviet Republics, the Georgian–Abkhazian conflict in Georgia and a civil war in Tajikistan, which were eventually policed by UN peacekeeping forces, UNOMIG and UNMOT respectively.

With the end of the Cold War, a number of nations called for the UN to become an organization of world peace and do more to encourage the end to conflicts across the globe. The end of political gridlock in the Security Council helped the number of peacekeeping missions increased substantially. In a new spirit of cooperation, the Security Council established larger and more complex UN peacekeeping missions. Furthermore, peacekeeping came to involve more and more non-military elements that ensured the proper operation of civic functions, such as elections. The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations was created in 1992 to support the increased demand for such missions.

A number of missions were designed to end civil wars in which competing sides had been sponsored by Cold War players. In Angola (UNAVEM I, II and III) aimed to end fighting between rebel, anti-Communist UNITA and the ruling, Communist MPLA. ONUMOZ was similarly designed to oversee the end of the conflict between the anti-Communist RENAMO and the leftist government in Mozambique, ending the Mozambican Civil War. In Cambodia UNAMIC, and then UNTAC for the first time took over control of the entire state on behalf of the UN and organized and ran an election before turning control over to the elected government. In Central America, ONUCA oversaw the restriction of cross-border aid by any one country to insurgencies in any other. Five nations were involved: El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras. The guerrilla movements in all five countries, variously communist and anti-communist, gave way to UN-brokered peace agreements in the 1990s. In El Salvador, a further internal UN peacekeeping force, (ONUSAL), was authorized to verify the ceasefire between the socialist FMLN and the government. Similarly, in Guatemala, MINUGUA was authorized in 1996 to verify the ceasefire there between leftist URNG and the conservative government.