As the danger of nuclear war recedes, along with the huge and fearsome "total wars" of the first half of the century, limited or local wars have correspondingly flourished and so have civil wars, often of a destructive kind. Christopher Bellamy writes both as a man who has served as a soldier, and as a tough and seasoned newspaper correspondent who has covered the Gulf War, Bosnia and the fighting in Chechnya. He analyses present peace-keeping machinery and the role of the UN (which gives the book its title) and gives his own recipes for avoiding or at least containing war, quoting Grotius, Clausewitz, etc. Just how practical these latter ideas are, I am not qualified to judge.