Where did the UN come from and why?

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Global Diplomacy: the United Nations in the World

209 calificaciones

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University of London

Global Diplomacy: the United Nations in the World

209 calificaciones

The course offers a well-researched and broad-ranging primer to the United Nations system. Consisting of an introduction to the complex UN family and its history, and a series of ‘snapshots’ of key UN functions, which are used to explore important UN themes and help learners develop important analysis, communication, and policy-based skills. The course is aimed broadly at people interested in learning more about the United Nations system, assuming a level of interest but no necessary previous knowledge, whilst also offering offering sufficient up to date research and new critical perspectives that it will also be of interest to people with more expertise or academic familiarity with the topic as well. The main aim of the course is to provide this wide-ranging introduction in a self-contained, but in-depth form, alongside the important practical skills necessary to understand and discuss UN affairs, and potentially lay the groundwork for greater engagement in future – either in civil society or in further study.

De la lección

Where did the United Nations come from, and why?

This week will provide an overview of the historical circumstances of the beginning of the UN – what early UN agencies were, what were the influential powers and groups at the early negotiations, and what values the UN was founded on, with comparisons to modern-day approaches.

Where did the UnitedNations come from, and why ? - Introduction0:53

Where did the UN come from and why?4:19

Conoce a los instructores

Dr Dan Plesch, SOAS University of London
Dr
Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy (CISD), SOAS

[MUSIC]

The UN, which might more properly be called the United Nations Organization,

grew out of the United Nations, which was the alliance that

defeated fascism in Japan in the second World War and

the idea of an organization was an attempt to preserve

the peace by keeping and being the wartime grand alliance.

That was Roosevelt's notion.

And Roosevelt having been a close bystander of the creation and

failures of the League of Nations as a cabinet officer under Woodrow Wilson and

as a failed Wilsonian Vice Presidential candidate in 1920 was

looking to create a more sustainable organization which was more in keeping

with the realities of world power which wouldn't be like the league, something

which could pass worthy resolutions which were unenforceable and ignored.

And I think when you take a democratic peoples through a horrendous

war that has killed millions of people and wrought destruction,

you want a covenant that we're not going to go to war again so easily,

that we've put up some road blocks that will slow down the rush to war and

provide alternative diplomatic mechanisms for preserving the peace.

Or if finally reduced to that collective security measures for

acting against the aggressor rather than all out each against all war.

>> You're a world leader.

You're facing incredible devastation at home.

Lots of people are hungry.

People are displaced.

Why on Earth would you come up with some sort of airy-fairy institution that's

supposed to promote peace?

But actually, when you put the UN into its context and

you've done a lot of work on this.

And you see it as something that was part of a wartime alliance.

I think it makes much more sense because then, it isn't just some sort of

idealistic institution becomes a very pragmatic response to war.

It's a way of binding countries permanently into this wartime alliance,

creating a set of rules for them to observe and

a much more sort of promising platform for peace.

I think it was very important to see it as that sort of pragmatic response.

So it's not just about the ideals, it's also about saying,

what are the costs of war?

And what are the costs of compromise and cooperation?

And clearly there was a very, I think smart calculation made,

that compromise and cooperation would be much better.

>> Well, the UN really emerges quite literally out of the ashes,

out of the ashes of World War II.

And out of the ashes is really of the failure of the League of Nations earlier.

There was,I think, an emotional and political need not to

repeat that experience of world war which we'd seen twice within a generation.

>> We got the UN, obviously, out of the brutal circumstances

of the Second World War, a war which made many statesmen and

politicians realize that they'd taken the world to the brink.

And this in a sense was the institution that came out of that, and

the fact that over many decades since people have occasionally considered it and

quickly given up the prospect of strengthening the UN by charter change.

The fact it's not happened shows what a disruptive

moment 1945 and the end of the second World War was.

You were able to dream as visionaries of a possible

world of multilateral structures which before and

since has seemed unrealistic.

It took that war purportedly to end all wars to make statesmen

reach the leap if you like of imagination to do something as bold as the UN.

[MUSIC]

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