Book contents
- Blue Helmet Bureaucrats
- Human Rights in History
- Blue Helmet Bureaucrats
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on the Text
- Initialisms/Acronyms
- Introduction
- 1 Testing the Waters, 1945–1955
- 2 Reckoning with Suez, 1956–1959
- 3 Imperial Aspirations, 1960–1961
- 4 Obstructing Self-Determination, 1962–1963
- 5 From Stagnation to Insignificance, 1964–1971
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
3 - Imperial Aspirations, 1960–1961
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 April 2023
- Blue Helmet Bureaucrats
- Human Rights in History
- Blue Helmet Bureaucrats
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on the Text
- Initialisms/Acronyms
- Introduction
- 1 Testing the Waters, 1945–1955
- 2 Reckoning with Suez, 1956–1959
- 3 Imperial Aspirations, 1960–1961
- 4 Obstructing Self-Determination, 1962–1963
- 5 From Stagnation to Insignificance, 1964–1971
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
Summary
Chapter 3 turns to the Congo crisis, examining the imperial continuities and neo-colonial character of the infrastructural support provided by the ONUC mission during the first phase of the intervention. This chapter establishes the obstructive and productive influences of the ongoing presence of Belgian capitalists and colonial officials on the UN mission. It also examines how the UN staff used the access of technical assistance projects, such as the radio station and airport, to control the political future of the nation. This chapter explores how UN officials’ recast their strategies of paternalistic rhetoric, cultural exceptionalism, and anticommunism as international expertise in security and peacebuilding. UN staff’s political interference in the Congolese constitutional crisis in September 1960 was the first in a series of ONUC crises that ignited international controversy and criticism of the UN leadership’s decision-making, damaging the organisation’s relationship with the Afro-Asian bloc and threatening the future of the UN peacekeeping project.
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- Blue Helmet BureaucratsUnited Nations Peacekeeping and the Reinvention of Colonialism, 1945–1971, pp. 114 - 161Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023