Turkey’s Candidature to the UN Security Council Seat in 1948: Why the West’s ‘Favorite’ Candidate Lost

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 284-302
Author(s):  
Ali Balcı ◽  
Talha İsmail Duman

Abstract Following the Second World War, Turkey vigorously pursued a policy of effective participation in international institutions. As part of this policy, Turkish diplomats campaigned for a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council in the year 1948. This article aims to provide descriptive information about this campaign and explain why Turkey lost the election in the UN General Assembly for the seat reserved for the Near East region. In doing so, the article primarily uses historical documents from the Foreign Relations of the United States (frus) series because they provide very detailed information about backstage diplomacy, motivations of candidate countries, and opinions of the US diplomats about candidates. The article concludes that it was the US Cold War policies that influenced the outcome of the 1948 election. Although it was publicly known that the US supported Turkey in this election, a closer examination of the American diplomatic documents reveals that the US voted for Egypt in order to keep it in the Western camp.

1997 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert R. Coll

As of 1997, the United States faces an unprecedented degree of security, stability, and economic prosperity in its relations with Latin America. Never before have US strategic interests in Latin America been as well-protected or have its prospects seemed, at least on the surface, so promising. Yet while the US strategic interests are in better shape — militarily, politically, and economically — this decade than at any time since the end of the Second World War, some problems remain. Over the long run, there is also the risk that old problems, which today seem to have ebbed away, will return. Thus, the positive tone of any contemporary assessment must be tempered with an awareness of remaining areas of concern as well as of possible future crises.


Genealogy ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Rosemarie Peña

William Gage’s Geborener Deutscher, a print newsletter distributed by traditional mail from the late 1980s until 2003, and the eponymous Internet forum Gage established in 2000 on Yahoo Groups, provide search resources and community support specifically for German born adoptees. The archived newsletters and conversations offer early insight into the search and reunion activities of many who were transnationally adopted to the United States as infants and small children in the wake of the Second World War. Among Gage’s mailing list and Yahoo Group subscribers are members of the post-war cohort of Black German Americans living in Germany and in the US. Gage’s archive provides a unique opportunity to begin to explore Black German adoptee search, reunion, and community development over nearly a two-decade span.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Daniel Immerwahr

The comic-book artist Carl Barks was one of the most-read writers during the years after the Second World War. Millions of children took in his tales of the Disney characters Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. Often set in the Global South, Barks's stories offered pointed reflections on foreign relations. Surprisingly, Barks presented a thoroughgoing critique of the main thrust of U.S. foreign policy making: the notion that the United States should intervene to improve “traditional” societies. In Barks's stories, the best that the inhabitants of rich societies can do is to leave poorer peoples alone. But Barks was not just popular; his work was also influential. High-profile baby boomers such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas imbibed his comics as children. When they later produced their own creative works in the 1970s and 1980s, they drew from Barks's language as they too attacked the ideology of modernization.


2019 ◽  

The election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States surprised the world and aroused great anxiety. His ‘America First’ rhetoric had already fuelled concerns that his presidency would be radical during the presidential election campaign in 2016. Above all, it seemed to cast doubt on the US’ claim to global leadership, which was regarded as the foundation of the global order that the US had helped to form since the Second World War. From both an internal and external perspective, this book examines the social, institutional and international reasons for the USA’s foreign and security policy under Trump. With contributions by Hakan Akbulut, Florian Böller, Andreas Falke, Gerlinde Groitl, Steffen Hagemann, Lukas D. Herr, Gerhard Mangott, Marcus Müller, Sonja Thielges, Charlotte Unger and Jürgen Wilzewski.


Subject Global Compact on Refugees. Significance Faced with refugee numbers unprecedented since the Second World War, the international community is pushing forward with a UN-convened Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), including a new Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF). The UN High Commissioner for Refugees presented the GCR as part of his September report to the UN General Assembly. Impacts Commitments by host states to expand economic opportunities for refugees in urban areas could prompt domestic opposition. A failure of richer countries to back the GCR with substantial funding could see African states delaying improved provisions for refugees. Poor infrastructure and lack of resources and technical expertise in host states remain major hurdles to meeting refugee rights. Rejection of the related Global Compact on Migration by the United States (among others) could undermine confidence in its viability.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 128
Author(s):  
Yingqin Wang

<em>In the aftermath of the Second World War, European integration progressed rapidly. Despite economic performance, the European community is far from playing a major role in security and defense. The catalyst for a European defense policy is the war in Yugoslavia, which shows that Europeans are dependent on Americans. Thus, the EU has the CSDP and has conducted many military and civilian operations. Yet a new wave of academic studies, launched by proponents of American neorealism, argues that the EU is engaged in an attempt to “balance” the US by exploiting the CSDP. By studying European history in terms of security, we find that the balancing theory can not be justified.</em>


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-147
Author(s):  
Karol Żakowski ◽  

The article examines the impact of history problems on Japan’s long-lasting efforts to gain permanent membership in the United Nations (UN) Security Council. It analyzes both the domestic stimuli behind Tokyo’s stance on the UN reform and the external constraints on the UN Security Council enlargement. It is argued that while problems with Japan’s bid for permanent membership in the UN Security Council stemmed mainly from divergent interests of member states, history issues constituted an additional obstacle that weakened Tokyo’s position in negotiations on the UN reform. The discourse on lack of repentance by Japan for the atrocities committed during the Second World War was instrumentally used by the country’s rivals, mainly China and South Korea, all in the effort to hinder Tokyo’s efforts on the international arena.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 326-351
Author(s):  
Ruth Ellen Wasem

Abstract After the Second World War, liberal reformers in the US Congress pushed refugee legislation and included refugee provisions in their immigration reform bills. Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower were among those who urged Congress to enact refugee legislation. Without a statutory pathway for persons entering as refugees or asylees to become lawful permanent residents (lprs), refugee admissions were reactive. Some presidents would draw on other executive authorities to bring refugees into the United States, relying on Congress to subsequently enact laws providing lpr status. In other instances, Congress would enact refugee legislation aimed at specific populations and limited numbers. As a result, refugee policy was handled in a piecemeal and incremental fashion during this period. It is within this context that this article explores the nexus of refugee and labour migration policies and the role the nativist right-wing political leaders played in shaping US policy in this period.


Hadassah ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 54-70
Author(s):  
Mira Katzburg-Yungman

This chapter takes a look at the women who led the organization. Between the end of the Second World War and the end of Israel's first decade of statehood in 1958, Hadassah was headed by twelve of the thirty women who sat on the National Board. They can be divided into three groups according to their socioeconomic and cultural background. One group (the largest) comprised members of families that had emigrated to the United States from eastern Europe. These women had been raised and educated in America, most of them in New York. The second group, consisting of women from a German Jewish background, falls into two sub-groups: American-born women of German Jewish origin who were married to men of east European origin, and very well-to-do women who came to the United States from Germany on the eve of the Second World War. The third group consisted of women who were involved in volunteer work in Palestine and, later, Israel. The members of this last group had a totally different background from that of the US leadership, but their work in Palestine over a long period justifies their inclusion in this chapter's review.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 85-130
Author(s):  
V. A. Veselov

In recent years, the history of World War II has transformed into a battlefield in its own right in the ‘war of memory’. Besides the clear fact that the current attempts to revise the results of this war reflect the contemporary international tensions, yet another factor should be noted. The ‘shadow’ of the Second World War appears to be very long. It manifests itself not only in the contemporary system of international relations, but also in the fact that we still view the world around through the prism of concepts that appeared during the state of war and still bear its mark. Particularly, the concept of national security. This paper examines the emergence and development of this concept in the United States. The author notes that although the concept of national security existed throughout the 20th century, before World War II it was identified primarily with the defense of the state. The paper examines how lessons of the Second World War led to a rethinking of this concept, and how approaches to national security evolved during the war and immediately after it. Special attention is given to discussions that preceded the adoption of the National Security Act of 1947, as well as to its initial results. The author demonstrates that the national security concept was based on a fundamental recognition of the existence of a special state between peace and war. For successful functioning within this state, the government needs to rely on a wide range of tools of both economic and military-political and ideological nature. Based on the lessons from the war, national security was viewed as an ‘overarching structure’, aimed not only at integrating various components of the state’s policy, but also at eliminating any contradictions that may arise between them. On the other hand, the author emphasizes that from the very beginning the national security concept had a pronounced proactive, offensive and expansionist character. Being considered as an antipode to the concept of collective security, this concept reflected the will of the US elites not only to get integrated in the existing system of international relations, but to create a new one, which would be based on the American values and would ensure the stable functioning of the US economy. The author concludes that it is precisely the multidimensionality of the national security concept caused by the multidimensional nature of the challenges of World War II that explains its continued relevance for the study of world politics.


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