This volume concerns the United Nations during the transformative period of the 1990s in which the UN and other countries used the UN to accomplish a wide variety of demanding and complex tasks. Of the seven secretaries-general, Boutros-Ghali was the most determined to guide the UN toward greater autonomy and power. Initially, his efforts bore fruit, especially as he received support from the U.S. in a number of different operations. This support, however, ended after the October 1993 killings of 18 U.S. Army Rangers in a UN operation in Somalia and subsequent wide-spread recrimination in the U.S. against the UN.