38
The idea behind a council of nations working to support global peace was first introduced by President Woodrow Wilson during World War I. After the first World War, the League of Nations was created. However, in the wake of the war, the experience of fighting a war abroad left the US Congress wary of committing America to further obligations in Europe. The failure of the US to join the League, combined with the international tensions inherent in the peace deal ending World War I, meant that the League of Nations was destined to fail. In the wake of World War II, the world’s leaders, headed up by the Allied victors, the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, replaced the League of Nations with a new peacekeeping body known as the United Nations. Formed in October of 1945, the United Nations would work to create peace and stability around the globe through diplomatic relations.
At the outset, the United States took a leading role in the United Nations in terms of policy and military support of those policies. Through the Cold War years, the tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States often rendered the United Nations unable to act. And in the wake of the Cold War, the United States pushed the bounds of UN support as it pursued its own interventionist foreign policy agenda. So while the United States helped to found and continues to be a strong presence within the UN, they do not always agree on the definition of global security or the path to achieve it.
Origins & First Test:
The reality of the post-World War II world, was that traditional powers like Great Britain or France were no longer strong enough to police the globe. The United States realized that it would have to make a permanent change in its foreign policy, shifting from relative isolation to active engagement in global politics.
Part of this was taking a leading role in the establishment of the United Nations (UN). Created in October of 1945, the UN would work to create global peace. The UN charter established a Security Council, or “upper house,” which authorizes any actions, such as economic sanctions, the use of force, or the deployment of peacekeeping troops. Each of the “Great Powers” — the United States, Great Britain, France, China, and the Soviet Union — holds a permanent seat on the Security Council. The main body of the United Nations is called the General Assembly. Every member nation holds a seat in the General Assembly.
The first test of the role the United Nations would play in international struggles came in 1950. In what came to be called the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a decades-long struggle for technological and ideological supremacy around the world. A primary tension within the Cold War was the containment of communism. After the war, the Korean Peninsula had been divided; a communist North and democratic South. In June 1950, with Stalin’s permission North Korea invaded South Korea.
The UN was quick to react. On June 27, the UN Security Council denounced North Korea’s actions and called upon UN members to help South Korea. As a permanent member of the Security Council, the Soviet Union could have vetoed the action, but it had boycotted UN meetings following the awarding of China’s seat on the Security Council to Taiwan instead of to Mao Zedong’s People’s Republic of China.
A U.S.-led invasion at Inchon on September 15, 1945 halted the North Korean advance and turned it into a retreat. As North Korean forces moved back across the 38 parallel, UN forces under the command of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur followed. But with the help of the Chinese, the North Koreans were soon able to send the MacArthur and his forces into retreat.
By July 1951, the UN forces had recovered from the setbacks earlier and pushed North Korean and Chinese forces back across the thirty-eighth parallel. Peace talks began. After two years an armistice agreement was signed on July 27, 1953. A border between North and South Korea, one quite close to the original thirty-eighth parallel line, was agreed upon. A demilitarized zone between the two nations was established, and both sides agreed that prisoners of war would be allowed to choose whether to be returned to their homelands.
This first test of the United Nations efforts to keep peace in the world failed to achieve its original purpose of reuniting the Korean Peninsula. But it did demonstrate that the United Nations would be willing to deploy combat troops in order to protect member nations and global security more broadly. US notions of global security dictated the UN’s initial policy in the absence of the Soviet Union. However, as the Cold War crystallized, the countervailing veto powers of the United States and the Soviet Union served often to inhibit the Security Council from taking meaningful action. Thus, the United Nations had a limited impact on global security during the Cold War era.
The post-Cold War UN
In the 1990s the Cold War finally came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War, however, did not put an end to the need for the United Nations.
When tensions in the Middle East began to heat up in the 1990s, the UN supported US involvement in the region. In the wake of its 8 year war with Iran from 1980 to 1988, Iraq had accumulated a significant amount of foreign debt. At the same time, other Arab states had increased their oil production, forcing oil prices down and further hurting Iraq’s economy. Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, tried to negotiate with the oil-producing states. When talks with these countries broke down, and Iraq found itself politically and economically isolated, Hussein ordered the invasion of oil-rich Kuwait in August 1990.
In response to the invasion, an unprecedented international coalition of thirty-four countries, led by the United States and including many members of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the Middle Eastern countries of Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt, was forged to oppose Iraqi aggression.A deadline was set for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait by January 15, or face serious consequences. When Hussein refused to comply, Operation Desert Storm, a one-hundred-hour land war involving over 500,000 US troops and another 200.000 from 27 other countries. The succeed in expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait by the end of February.
In April 1991, UN Resolution 687 set the terms of the peace, with long-term implications. Its concluding paragraph authorizing the UN to take such steps as necessary to maintain the peace was later taken as the legal justification for the further use of force, as in 1996 and 1998, when Iraq was again bombed. It was also referenced in the lead-up to the second invasion of Iraq in 2003, when it appeared that Iraq was refusing to comply with other UN resolutions.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States and the launching of the global war on terror, a faction within the US government argued that Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and posed an imminent threat to the United States.
Following the Gulf War, inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission and International Atomic Energy Agency had in fact located and destroyed stockpiles of Iraqi weapons. Those arguing for a new Iraqi invasion insisted, however, that weapons still existed. The head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, Hans Blix, dismissed these claims. Blix argued that while Saddam Hussein was not being entirely forthright, he did not appear to be in possession of WMDs. Despite Blix’s findings and his own earlier misgivings, Secretary of State Colin Powell argued in 2003 before the United Nations General Assembly that Hussein had violated UN resolutions. Much of his evidence relied on secret information provided by an informant that was later proven to be false. On March 17, 2003, the United States cut off all relations with Iraq. Two days later, in a coalition with Great Britain, Australia, and Poland, the United States began “Operation Iraqi Freedom” with an invasion of Iraq.
Even though the UN did not support the initial invasion of Iraq, they have subsequently supported the effort to create stability in the region. UN Security Council Resolution 1546 was unanimously adopted on June 8, 2004. This resolution reaffirmed the right of the Iraqi people to determine their own political future through democratic elections, and ended the occupation (but allowed for a multinational force to remain in Iraq as long as the situation there continued to constitute a threat to international peace and security). This resolution was renewed three times, the last being in 2008. Although the UN did not endorse the invasion in Iraq, they have continued to play a role in working to achieve peace in the region.
George W. Bush addresses the United nations Sept. 19 2006. Whitehouse Archives.
A move toward Human Rights
The Security Council is the only council within the United Nations with the ability to require action. It uses a multinational military force to back up its resolutions. But it is not the work of the security council that dominates the work of the United Nations. The other councils within the United Nations put Human Rights at the center of the peacekeeping mission, along with humanitarian aid and sustainable development. The United States is one of the largest contributors towards the UN’s overall budget and hosts a UN headquarters in New York City that is the location of most General Assembly meetings, Security Council meetings and at least 2 dozen UN organizations.
Attribution:
OpenStax, U.S. History. OpenStax CNX. Jul 27, 2017 http://cnx.org/contents/a7ba2fb8-8925-4987-b182-5f4429d48daa@3.84; and Wright, Ben and Joseph Locke, Eds.(2017). The American Yawp. Retrieved from http://www.americanyawp.com/index.html
With adjustments by Margaret Carmack.
Resolution on Iraq Weapons Inspections
Attribution:
https://www.c-span.org/about/copyrightsAndLicensing/
Situations
This is an interactive map of current UN Refugee situations. It shows where the UN has designated issues and information on the work the UN is doing in that area.
http://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations
Structure of the United Nations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew_3f-o4pVY
Attribution:
Open UOW (October 9, 2014.) Structure of the United Nations. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew_3f-o4pVY
Summary
The UN can point to many solid accomplishments. Among them: sending peacekeepers to war-stricken areas, making recommendations on how to raise literacy and health rates in the Third World, and even authorizing the use of force against aggressor nations. In 1945 as well as today the UN gives cause for the belief that nations can get along together. In a world with conflicting histories, agendas, and political posturing, one international group — the United Nations — remains above the day-to-day fray.
At its initial founding the UN seemed to promote a US anti-communist agenda. But as the Cold War heated up, the tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States left the United Nations limited in its ability to shape global security. But when the Cold War ended in the 1990s, many citizens around the globe once again looked to the United Nations with renewed hope of building a safer, stronger planet. Since then the United States and the United Nations have both worked to promote individual nations self-determination, peace, and security, at times clashing over how best to achieve that goal. Overall, the United States has been a strong supporter of the United Nations in their military actions as well as efforts to promote global human rights.