Very true. In the 90s, developing countries used UN peacekeeping deployments as means of getting free equipment and money from first world nations. The results speak for themselves: How effective was UNOSOM (sp?),
I was thinking specifically of UNOSOM as I typed my first reply. I watched UNOSOM spiral into a morass after the US withdrew in March, 1994, and those observations frame my views on peacekeeping to this day. I'm trying to break that cycle, but it is very hard.