Cummings, Kathleen M. Navigating the Uncharted Waters of Gray Area Peacekeeping: Who Should Have the Conn? Naval War College, Newport RI, May 1995.
The UN is sinking under the weight of its greatly expanded peacekeeping responsibilities made worse by its persistent use of Cold War peacekeeping techniques to address ethnic conflicts, intrastate warfare, and humanitarian crises not envisioned by its 1945 Charter. These gray area peacekeeping challenges require non-traditional solutions and it's not clear that the UN is ready or able to respond. On the other hand, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO) is adapting itself to support peacekeeping efforts of both the Organization for Collective Security in Europe (OSCE) and the UN. NATO's successful collective defense record, well honed infrastructure, extremely successful and combat tested, integrated multinational military command and control system along with its new Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) concept make it the best security institution to rescue the UN from drowning in gray area peacekeeping. How the UN fell into gay area peacekeeping, what is meant by gray area, and who should be responsible for it are discussed by examining the elements critical to the success of gray area peacekeeping--mandate, doctrine, command and control, infrastructure and use of force. The best solution lies in not trying to reinvent the UN into something it is not but rather in taking maximum advantage of NATO.