Instrumental Internationalism: The American Origins of the United Nations, 1940–3

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Wertheim
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Fast Moving ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
American Power ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Indispensable Tool

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.

“Imagined Territory: The Republic of China’s 1955 Veto of Mongolian Membership in the United Nations”

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-295
Author(s):  
Keith Allan Clark II
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Republic

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.

The World Court and Jus Cogens

1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon A. Christenson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Jus Cogens ◽  
United Nations Charter

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.

Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Shue
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Co2

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.

Can Saddam be Contained? History Says Yes

2003 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 219-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Mearsheimer ◽  
Stephen M. Walt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Power ◽  
Democratic Reform ◽  
The Past ◽  
Saddam Hussein ◽  
The United Nations

Should the United States invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein? Over the past few months, advocates of war have advanced a number of reasons why toppling Saddam is desirable. He is a bloodthirsty tyrant. He has defied the United Nations on numerous occasions. He has backed terrorists in the past. Removing him will reinforce respect for American power and spark democratic reform in the Middle East. If you're looking for a reason to support a war, in short, there are lenty from which to choose.

The Limits of Collective Financial Statecraft: Regional Development Banks and Voting Alignment with the United States at the United Nations General Assembly

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastassia V Obydenkova ◽  
Vinícius G Rodrigues Vieira
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Regional Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Development Banks ◽  
Regional Development Banks

Abstract Which limitations does the hegemon face when exerting financial statecraft through multilateral institutions? Recent studies indicate that intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) that are tools of collective financial statecraft sponsored by the United States, like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, lead developing states to align with Washington in the United Nations (UN). The same effect is verified in the case of US bilateral aid. Little, however, has been discussed about the effect of American-sponsored regional development banks (RDBs) in the same context. RDBs are IGOs with unique characteristics as each of them covers a region of the world and relies on resources from developed sponsors and developing borrowing members alike. In this article we aim to fill this gap in the debates on economic and financial statecraft by demonstrating through tobit models that the higher the material capabilities of a borrowing state that takes loans, the less likely it is to align with the United States at the UN General Assembly (UNGA). Membership of all RDBs but the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) yields the same effect. Results indicate the need to develop further research on RDBs to assess whether they create incentives for challenging the hegemon.

Some Kind of a Social Doctor: Martha May Eliot, 1891-1978

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-149
Author(s):  
William M. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Health ◽  
Pediatric Society ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
Study Child ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Health Organization

Martha May Eliot was one of the most influential pediatricians to hold positions of public authority in the United States during a long and distinguished career. Her name is linked with that of Edwards A. Park in the history of the control of rickets. With Grace Abbott and Katharine Lenroot she brought provisions for children into the Social Security Act, a big step beyond the original plan. within the councils of the American Pediatric Society, she encouraged proposals leading to the landmark study Child Health and Pediatric Education (1949) conducted by the Academy of Pediatrics. For more than 50 years Martha May Eliot took a leading part in the development of health services for mothers and children. She was concerned for children of all countries of the world and worked for them in the great international organizations: the League of Nations, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the world Health Organization. In the United States, her own country, she used her Vision and vigor in the US Children's Bureau, at Yale Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, and the Massachusetts Committee for Children and Youth, as well as in many other governmental and nongovernmental agencies and committees. Her entire career was a fulfillment of a decision and comniitment made early in her life. At Radcliffe she had a great interest in the classics, and her deep appreciation of her cultural heritage enriched her work and her life. While still a Radcliffe student, she determined to study medicine.

The U.S. Congress and the Rhodesian Chrome Issue

1972 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 2-7
Author(s):  
Gale W. McGee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Institution ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Southern Rhodesia ◽  
The U.S

The passage of legislation late in 1971 which in effect caused the United States unilaterally to breach the United Nations sanctions against Southern Rhodesia surely constitutes one of the most shameful episodes in the recent conduct of our country's international affairs. One commentator quite correctly did not mince words in describing the action as a “chrome-plated treaty violation.” And yet, even today, it is doubtful whether any great numbers of American citizens realize that their government has broken its treaty obligations to an international institution which our country did most to initiate and to promote until very recent times. An especially saddening aspect of the affair is the fact that an Administration which rightly has condemned and often contested growing neo-isolationist sentiment in our society's outlook on the world scarcely lifted a finger to prevent precisely the kind of result it decried.

Reflections on Anti-Americanism in Our Times

Worldview ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 46-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Hollander
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations

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.

TRENDS

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1951 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-294
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Marked Decrease ◽  
Marked Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fiscal Year ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Emergency Fund ◽  
The U.S

SINCE it was established in 1946, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund has been a powerful influence in marshalling both funds and personnel in the interests of children throughout the troubled and underdeveloped areas of the world. For the needs of UNICEF an appropriation of $5,750,000 has been approved by the Senate and the House for the current fiscal year (July 1, 1951-June 30, 1952). This appropriation, which now awaits the approval of the President, is a marked decrease from the $15,000,000 authorized last year, or even the $12,500,000 requested by the President for this year. Furthermore, a report which still stands on the record as far as the House is concerned, stipulates that the U.S. contribution should not exceed 33% of the amount contributed by other governments, a marked change in the matching formula in which, heretofore, the United States has contributed 72% with 28% from other countries. The funds contributed by the United States, limited as they are for a world program, have stimulated other countries to meet the matching requirement and thus make larger contributions of their own. Forty-eight countries have contributed to the fund. Also, it may be noted that the bill as passed refers to the total amount contributed by other governments; the Senate in its report indicated that the total amount might include internal matching by other governments as well as the regular contributions of donor countries.

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