The end of the Cold War brought a period of prosperity with expectations for peace, broken by a new kind of small and protracted conflicts. Western powers, freed from the former threat, were eager to commit military units in peace operations. The United Nations (UN) developed a new concept for the use of force. This concept extended the role of peacekeeping to include humanitarian assistance, conflict solving and nation building. Two case studies especially reflect this new concept: Somalia and the former Yugoslavia. Both cases ended in failure for the UN because the mandates exceeded forces' capabilities and authorization to use the force. Political direction was lousy, just do something. Both cases have been broadly studied; this thesis provides a detailed look at the mandates for the use of force from a military perspective and how military commanders implemented it. Those mandates reflected the instinctive positions of civilian and military decision makers in a new world order. Their impulses are likely to appear again in the future; the lessons learned from those conflicts should help to shed light on a better use of force in peace operations.

ADA 482943 Approved for public release; Distribution is unlimited. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the student-authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency. (References to these studies should include the foregoing statement.)