Reflections on Anti-Americanism in Our Times

Worldview ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 46-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Hollander

AbstractAmericans and others find that they cannot “love it or leave it“In the course of the last quarter century or so the United States has become a nearly universal scapegoat symbol. The United States has been denounced and blamed in countless speeches and editorials, on posters, in.radio broadcasts, and over television, as well as in private conversations, for the ills of the world, for the problems of particular societies, and even for the myriad unhappiness of individuals. No country has had more hostile demonstrations in front of its embassies around the world, or more of its libraries and cultural missions abroad ransacked, or more of its policies routinely denounced in the United Nations and other international organizations. More American flags have been burned, in and outside the United States, than the flags of any other country.

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Wertheim

Why did the United States want to create the United Nations Organization, or any international political organization with universal membership? This question has received superficial historiographical attention, despite ample scrutiny of the conferences that directly established the UN in 1944 and 1945. The answer lies earlier in the war, from 1940 to 1942, when, under the pressure of fast-moving events, American officials and intellectuals decided their country must not only enter the war but also lead the world long afterwards. International political organization gained popularity – first among unofficial postwar planners in 1941 and then among State Department planners in 1942 – because it appeared to be an indispensable tool for implementing postwar US world leadership, for projecting and in no way constraining American power. US officials believed the new organization would legitimate world leadership in the eyes of the American public by symbolizing the culmination of prior internationalist efforts to end power politics, even as they based the design of the UN on a thoroughgoing critique of the League, precisely for assuming that power politics could be transcended.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-295
Author(s):  
Keith Allan Clark II

In 1955, Jiang Tingfu, representing the Republic of China (roc), vetoed Mongolia’s entry into the United Nations. In the 26 years the roc represented China in the United Nations, it only cast this one veto. The roc’s veto was a contentious move because Taipei had recognized Mongolia as a sovereign state in 1946. A majority of the world body, including the United States, favored Mongolia’s admission as part of a deal to end the international organization’s deadlocked-admissions problem. The roc’s veto placed it not only in opposition to the United Nations but also its primary benefactor. This article describes the public and private discourse surrounding this event to analyze how roc representatives portrayed the veto and what they thought Mongolian admission to the United Nations represented. It also examines international reactions to Taipei’s claims and veto. It argues that in 1955 Mongolia became a synecdoche for all of China that Taipei claimed to represent, and therefore roc representatives could not acknowledge it as a sovereign state.


1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon A. Christenson

In the merits phase of decision in the case brought by Nicaragua against the United States, the World Court briefly mentions references by states or publicists to the concept of jus cogens. These expressions are used to buttress the Court’s conclusion that the principle prohibiting the use of force found in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter is also a rule of customary international law.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-281
Author(s):  
Stefano Recchia

Abstract Research suggests that military interveners often seek endorsements from regional international organizations (IOs), in addition to approval from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), to reassure international and domestic audiences. Toward that end, interveners should seek the endorsement of continent-wide regional IOs with the broadest and most diverse membership, which are most likely to be independent. In practice, however, interveners often seek endorsements from subregional IOs with narrow membership and aggregate preferences similar to their own. This should weaken the reassurance/legitimation effect significantly. I argue that such narrower regional endorsements are sought not so much to reassure skeptical audiences, as to pressure reluctant UNSC members to approve the intervention by putting those members’ relations with regional partners at stake. To illustrate this argument and probe its plausibility, I reconstruct France's successful efforts to obtain UNSC approval for its interventions in Côte d'Ivoire (2002–2003) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2003) at a time when the United States was hesitant to support France because of the two countries’ falling-out over the Iraq War. For evidence I rely on original interviews with senior French and US officials.


Author(s):  
Henry Shue

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted in Rio de Janeiro at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in June 1992 establishes no dates and no dollars. No dates are specified by which emissions are to be reduced by the wealthy states, and no dollars are specified with which the wealthy states will assist the poor states to avoid an environmentally dirty development like our own. The convention is toothless because throughout the negotiations in the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee during 1991 to 1992, the United States played the role of dentist: whenever virtually all the other states in the world (with the notable exceptions of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) agreed to convention language with teeth, the United States insisted that the teeth be pulled out. The Clinton administration now faces a strategic question: should the next step aim at a comprehensive treaty covering all greenhouse gases (GHGs) or at a narrower protocol covering only one, or a few, gases, for example, only fossil-fuel carbon dioxide (CO2)? Richard Stewart and Jonathan Wiener (1992) have argued for moving directly to a comprehensive treaty, while Thomas Drennen (1993) has argued for a more focused beginning. I will suggest that Drennen is essentially correct that we should not try to go straight to a comprehensive treaty, at least not of the kind advocated by Stewart and Wiener. First I would like to develop a framework into which to set issues of equity or justice of the kind introduced by Drennen. It would be easier if we faced only one question about justice, but several questions are not only unavoidable individually but are entangled with one another. In addition, each question can be given not simply alternative answers but answers of different kinds. In spite of this multiplicity of possible answers to the multiplicity of inevitable and interconnected questions, I think we can lay out the issues fairly clearly and establish that commonsense principles converge to a remarkable extent upon what ought to be done, at least for the next decade or so.


1986 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 973-983 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard W. Nelson

On March 12, 1986, Ambassador Vernon A. Walters, the United States representative at the United Nations, said: [T]he prospect is for the withholding by the United States of a very sizable amount. … This inevitably would raise the question of whether the non-payment of a substantial amount could constitute a material breach of the United States obligation under Article 17 of the U.N. Charter to pay our duly assessed share of the U.N. budget. This is an issue of which we must be aware.


1981 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Riggs

This research note reports the findings of a mail survey of higher level Guatemalan civil servants, soliciting their views on the United Nations. The survey was administered in the summer of 1979 for comparison with similar surveys of Norwegian and United States officials undertaken five years earlier, to determine whether experience with international organizations produces attitudes more favorable to international cooperation.


1955 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell Cohen

The personnel difficulties of the United Nations Secretariat, so much dramatized since 1952, have served to focus exceptional attention on the Secretary General and his employment policies, as well as on the constitutional position of the Secretariat, its staff and their relations to the General Assembly and to the Administrative Tribunal. Indeed a substantial literature examining these issues —issues arising, in part, out of the United States’ allegations of “subversive” personnel in the Secretariat—now must be added to the already imposing structure of scholarship dealing with international organizations and officials since their beginnings in the League system and into the United Nations period.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 348-355
Author(s):  
Alina Alexandru

Abstract New technologies have marked the beginning of the Forth Industrial Revolution era. While the advantages of new technologies for our day-to-day life are undeniable, we cannot fail to notice that emerging and disruptive technologies also imply challenges and risks for individuals, societies and countries. Moreover, in the absence of regulations and norms internationally accepted and assumed, risks associated to the misuse of new technologies tend to increase, transforming the domain into a competition arena. States and international organizations perceive the pressure to address emerging technologies. The United Nations, the United States and the European Union have defined their own strategies and policies on the new technologies with the aim at capitalizing the benefits and minimizing the risks. While different in their view, UN’s, US’ and EU’ strategies and policies offer landmarks to consider in addressing new technologies.


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