Introduction: The Search for Meaning in Defeat and Victory

Author(s):  
Barak Kushner

World War II dragged on in East Asia for three more months than in Europe, where the Allies declared victory on May 8, 1945. The formation of the United Nations was announced in San Francisco on June 26, 1945, and soon it became clear that Japan’s imperial demise would be entirely different from the Nazi collapse. World War II fractured the political spectrum in East Asia: the result was a cacophony of groups vying for postimperial authority in a situation where nothing was preordained and where no result was inevitable....

1952 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence S. Finkelstein

Seven years have passed since the UN Charter was signed in San Francisco in the month of June 1945. In that short time, events have disproved some of the most important assumptions about the postwar world on which the 1945 decisions were based.Efforts have been made, notably in the improvisations of the Korea police action, in the creation of the Interim Committee, and in the Uniting for Peace Resolution, to adapt the structure conceived at San Francisco so that it would more closely meet the needs of the world as it emerged from the crucible of World War II.


1969 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 559-588
Author(s):  
Lawrence S. Finkelstein

It was above all to avoid the recurrence after World War II of threats to world peace and order that the United States set out to design and bring into being the United Nations and the congeries of related agencies. “From the very beginning,” says the report of the American delegation to the United Nations Conference on International Organization at San Francisco, “the problems of post-war peace and security were paramount.” This seemingly obvious observation is not as trivial as it may sound, for it is a benchmark by which to measure the transformation that has occurred in the character, emphases, and achievements of the United Nations. It will no longer do to say, as was once possible, that the UN's value can be judged solely by its success in avoiding international conflict. Today, the United Nationsvery likely would command American attention and participation even if it had no utility in the realm of peace and security.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Giles Scott-Smith

The United Nations Information Office (UNIO), dating from 1942, holds the distinction of being both the first international agency of the embryonic UN network and the first to hold the United Nations label. Run from 1942 to 1945 from two offices in New York and London, these two were merged at the end of World War II to form the UN Information Organisation, and subsequently transformed into the Department of Public Information run from UN headquarters in New York. This article adds to the history of the UN by exploring the origins and development of the UNIO during 1940–41, when it was a British-led propaganda operation to gather US support for the allied war effort. It also examines the UNIO from the viewpoint of the power transition from Britain to the United States that took place during the war, and how this reflected a transition of internationalisms: from the British view of world order through benevolent imperialism to the American view of a progressive campaign for global development and human rights.


Author(s):  
Jussi M. Hanhimäki

The International Peace Conference in 1899 established the Permanent Court of Arbitration as the first medium for international disputes, but it was the League of Nations, established in 1919 after World War I, which formed the framework of the system of international organizations seen today. The United Nations was created to manage the world's transformation in the aftermath of World War II. ‘The best hope of mankind? A brief history of the UN’ shows how the UN has grown from the 51 nations that signed the UN Charter in 1945 to 193 nations in 2015. The UN's first seven decades have seen many challenges with a mixture of success and failure.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-283
Author(s):  
Margaret P. Karns

The seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations in 1945 invites us to look back at the achievement of creating this new organization even before the guns had fallen silent in World War II. It also prompts us to ask: Where is the organization today? How well has it fulfilled and is it still fulfilling the high ideals of its Charter? Even more importantly, how confident can we be that what has grown into the complex UN system will not just survive but also provide its member states and the peoples of the world with the organizational structures, resources, and tools needed to address twenty-first century challenges?


1947 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 356-357

As a result of an agreement concluded with the United Nations, the ILO became the first intergovernmental organization created before World War II to be integrated into the framework of United Nations. The 29th Conference of the ILO effected a revision of the Constitution in order to facilitate a working relationship with the United Nations.


Author(s):  
Sally M. Horrocks

Commentators and politicians have frequently argued that the performance of the British economy could be significantly improved by paying more attention to the translation of the results of scientific research into new products and processes. They have frequently suggested that deficiencies in achieving this are part of a long-standing national malaise and regularly point to a few well-worn examples to support their contention. What are conspicuous by their absence from these debates are detailed and contextual studies that actually examine the nature of the interactions between scientists and industry and how these changed over time. This paper provides one such study by examining three aspects of the relationship between the Royal Society, its Fellows and industrial R&D during the mid twentieth century. It looks first at the enthusiasm for industrial research to be found across the political spectrum after World War II before examining the election as Fellows of the Royal Society of men who worked in industry at the time of their election. Finally it considers the extent to which industrial R&D was incorporated into the way in which the Royal Society presented itself to the outside world through its Conversazione. Despite the absence of formal structures to translate the results of the work of scientists employed in other institutional contexts to industry, there is much evidence to indicate that there were plenty of other opportunities for the exchange of information to take place.


Author(s):  
Derrick M. Nault

Chapter Four assesses Africa’s contributions to ‘third generation’ rights—‘solidarity’ or ‘group rights’ that emerged in tandem with decolonization after World War II. It traces the genealogy of three such human rights incorporated into the mandate of the United Nations (UN) from the 1950s to 1980s—the right to self-determination, the right to racial non-discrimination, and the right to development—arguing that African political lobbying proved decisive for the recognition and codification of these interrelated rights at the UN. Through writings and speeches critical of colonialism, racism, and global inequality; cultivating alliances with non-African Third World nations; and making the United Nations a more inclusive and representative international body, African leaders, it is shown, helped redefine human rights at the UN in ways that continue to reverberate in our own era.


Author(s):  
Mary Ann Heiss

This book explores the implementation of international accountability for dependent territories under the United Nations during the early Cold War era. Although the Western nations that drafted the UN Charter saw the organization as a means of maintaining the international status quo they controlled, newly independent nations saw the UN as an instrument of decolonization and an agent of change disrupting global political norms. The book documents the unprecedented process through which these new nations came to wrest control of the United Nations from the World War II victors that founded it, allowing the UN to become a vehicle for global reform. It examines the consequences of these early changes on the global political landscape in the midst of heightened international tensions playing out in Europe, the developing world, and the UN General Assembly. The book puts this anti-colonial advocacy for accountability into perspective by making connections between the campaign for international accountability in the United Nations and other postwar international reform efforts such as the anti-apartheid movement, Pan-Africanism, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the drive for global human rights. Chronicling the combative history of this campaign, the book details the global impact of the larger UN reformist effort. It demonstrates the unintended impact of decolonization on the United Nations and its agenda, as well as the shift in global influence from the developed to the developing world.


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