To save the world from hell: "SIXTY years ago the battered victors of the second world war gathered in San Francisco to plan the creation of the global organisation that would not “bring us to heaven”, as the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr, put it, but might “save us from hell”. President Franklin D Roosevelt began the creation of the UN, but when he died, 13 days before the San Francisco conference, Harry Truman took over. Truman makes President George Bush look well-travelled: he had been to Europe only once, during service in the first world war. Yet he understood the importance of US engagement with the UN. “America can no longer sit smugly behind a mental Maginot line,” he wrote (1). The stakes were too high: “In a world without such machinery, we would be forever doomed to the fear of destruction. It was important for us to make a start, no matter how imperfect” (2).
The UN’s imperfections were manifest from its creation. It was built upon some obvious contradictions. It was necessary because greedy and bellicose states could not be trusted to avoid war, respect the rights of their citizens or care for people suffering outside their borders. Yet the new UN would rely upon those selfish states to enforce its principles.
Just as the US constitution hailed equality but legitimised slavery, so the UN charter proclaimed self-determination and encouraged decolonisation, but was steered by many member states that resisted surrendering their colonies. (In the UN’s first two decades, membership, originally 51 states, soared to 117 - it now has 191 members.)
The UN gave equal voice to dictatorships and democracies, but its charter took sides, calling on members to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms. The UN, like any other organisation, depended on authoritative leadership, but power was put in the hands of the Security Council, a squabbling committee dominated by five permanent members with widely divergent interests and p"
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1 comment:
I disagree completely. I couldn't tell if this was translated or written by an ESL student. It reads like a high school civics report containing conclusions and speculation not borne out by facts. An in-depth history lesson would show that the UN has struggled and in some cases succeeded in its 60 year history, and the focus on the last year reveals the bias of the writer.
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