Books about the UN, like the politicians who support it, evidently do better when they make little outward mention of that international organisation. While the cover of most editions of this nine-chapter book is adorned with UN blue and those initials are highlighted in the ‘unfinished’ of the title, the United Nations is mentioned nowhere explicitly until a chapter or two in. This is no criticism: the UN is a flawed body that everyone knows but few understand, and smuggling it onto people's reading lists may be one of the few ways to address that.

• Ellie B. Hearne |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

To paraphrase the mantra of realism—international politics, like all politics, is a struggle for normative ascendancy: the establishment and maintenance of the dominant normative architecture of international order created and maintained by the interplay of power and ideas. As China, India and Brazil emerge as important growth centres in the world economy, the age of the West and its disrespect for the role, relevance and voice of the rest of the world is passing.

• Ramesh Thakur |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

Intervention across borders of other states with the intention of protecting the civilian population from atrocities committed against them is not a new phenomenon. According to Thomas Weiss, 1 the evolution of humanitarian intervention precedes the appearance of the current generation of international institutions. After the Second World War, the United Nations Charter under Article 2(1) stipulated that the UN be based upon the sovereign equality of all its members.

• Keerthi Sampath Kumar |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

In the aftermath of the Second World War and the horrors of the Holocaust, during which war crimes were committed on an unprecedented scale, the international community came together to declare ‘never again’ and set up the United Nations. Governments agreed that they would cooperate to prevent the commission of genocide and punish the perpetrators.

• Satish Nambiar |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

The protection and shelter of millions of Afghans on Pakistan soil for over three decades has amplified the image of UNHCR as a humanitarian institution, which has worked along with the government of Pakistan to manage the burden of the largest caseload of refugees in the world. The office is credited with having carried out the largest repatriation of Afghans (approximately 3.6 million) to their home country since 2002. This operation has greatly enhanced the credibility and esteem of the UNHCR both within Pakistan and Afghanistan.

• Nasreen Ghufran |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

Nepal has conducted a slew of political experiments since 2006. By inviting the Maoists into the mainstream and collectively deciding to dump the Constitution of 1990, there was hope that a new era of peace and stability would begin with the end of the decade-long armed insurgency. The Constituent Assembly (CA) elections of 2008 saw the emergence of the Maoists as the largest party—which was a totally unexpected and surprising outcome for the international community.

• Nishchal Nath Pandey |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

Strong motivation is the most important factor in getting you to the top.

Edmund Hillary (on scaling Mt Everest)

Some have compared the goal of a nuclear weapons free world to scaling an incredibly high mountain—and the mountain is covered in cloud making the peak invisible. Thus, they argue, all we can do is take small steps up the lower slope—hoping for better conditions in the future that might make it possible to climb higher.

• Alyn Ware |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

As a founding member, India has been a firm supporter of the principles and purposes of the United Nations. Enshrined as its central aim, the UN Charter states that the United Nations: ‘maintains international peace and security and to that end, takes corrective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to peace, and the suppression of acts of aggression.’ 1 Towards supporting and furthering world peace, India has participated in some of the world's most difficult peacekeeping missions over 61 years.

• Vinay Bhatnagar |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

The world has changed significantly since the founding of the United Nations and so have its conflicts. During the mid-twentieth century, the pre-eminent challenge for multilateral cooperation was the awesome prospect of a Third World War. Today, in the aftermath of the Cold War, we see a more elaborated focus on the prevention of conflict and the protection of communities and peoples—both as a sovereign responsibility of the modern nation-state as well as a central focus of the United Nations peace engagements.

• Vijay Nambiar |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis

Does the changing nature of the international order in the 21st century influence the nature and forms of multilateralism? And if yes, how does it impact the United Nations, an institution at the apex of the multilateral process, but which in some crucial respects still reflects the international order of the mid-twentieth century? This is the question that this paper attempts to explore.

• B.S. Prakash |
• November 2011 |
• Strategic Analysis