This volume concerns the United Nations during the transformative period of the 1990s in which the United Nations 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 towards greater autonomy and power. Initially his efforts bore fruit, especially as he received support from the US in a number of different operations. This support, however, ended after the October 1993 killings of 18 US army rangers in a UN operation in Somalia which resulted in subsequent widespread recrimination in the US against the UN.