“Abandoning diplomacy for confrontation.....is a dive over a cliff,” - Antonio Guterres, UN Chief

According to Gilson (2007), Japan’s Peace Consolidation Diplomacy is meant to advance the state’s international profile while tackling domestic pressure over best use of aid and the role of the Japanese military in the international arena. For a country that has been nominated over ten times as a non-permanent member to the United Nations Security Council, more international engagement is necessary since Japan’s desire to be a permanent member on the Council is no secret. Peace Consolidation Diplomacy is not limited to Japan but is more of a global debate or tact in opting to combine humanitarian intervention and aid with peacekeeping. Japan’s Peace Consolidation Diplomacy has three pillars with the first being promotion of the peace process which can be through mediation or election assistance, the second pillar is accomplishing domestic stability and security through activities such as disarmament, demobilization as well as removal of landmines and the final pillar is humanitarian

In the period 1947 to 1988, there was an ideological battle between the United States and the Soviet Union which dominated international politics with the former aiming at the global containment of communism. On the other hand, anticolonial nationalism was taking place in Africa which was under Western European imperial control hence becoming a target for the two contending powers. The liberation struggle that followed led to the demise of colonialism and attainment of independence by African states (Ohaegbulam, 1992). The United States’ fear of the spread of communism got them involved in a number of domestic politics that escalated the civil wars and inter-state conflicts in places like Zaire between 1960 to 1978, Angola from 1975 to 1988, and the Ogaden war between Ethiopia and Somalia from 1977 to 1978. The bearers of American interests on the continent included rebel leaders such as Jonas Savimbi in Angola while those who were looked at as a threat to those interests among them