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How does MM explain the founding of the UN? - Coggle Diagram
How does MM explain the founding of the UN?
Reality of 'the founding moment'
<-- the reality, American liberalism is rendered unviolent and pragmatic
RESTLESS, war in Balkans and Africa, Rwanda genocide, NATO bombing of Kosovo
disdain of UN by Bush presidency, UN headed towards complete irrelevance like LoN
diminishing of multilateralism
CONTINUITY BETWEEN LoN AND UN
✅involvement of JAN SMUTS --> also worked on LoN
greatly involved in arguing for and help draft UN preamble
officials drawing UN outlines - Smuts's 1918 pamphlet outlining the League was regarded as "surprisingly apt today". Smuts was not the only official associated with LoN and UN drafting
criticised by WEB Dubois
greatly in favour of international organisations :
neoliberalist institutionalism explains that unilateralism pursued by the Bush administration runs against the grain of the rational multilateralist tradition in post-war American foreign policy
✅BRITISH IMPERIAL THOUGHT
KEY INTERCONNECTED HISTORICAL AXIOMS
UN rose from WWII, uncontaminated by association with pre-war failure LoN
it was above all an American affair: product of public debate and private discussion in which other countries played little part
"Instead I present the UN as essentially a further chapter in the history of the world organisation inaugurated by the League and linked through that to the question of empire and the visions of global order that emerged out of the British empire"
Whitehall: many policymakers coming up with proposals for UN were the same officials involved in establishing LoN
✅UN - product of evolution, not revolution
imperial internationalism: articulated by Smuts in the aftermath of the Boer war and demolished by Nehru in policy moves between 1946 and mid-1950s
✅minorities: less protection under UN than LoN, showed by events in Eastern Europe and Palestine, right to protection rejected
cooperative group of indpendent states like the LoN
✅ colonies rebranded 'non-self-governing territories'
designed for interstate cooperation and stability in a world of empires and great powers
this acknowledges the existence of empires
why UN couldn't support Smuts's annexation, but still enforced empires
"It was one thing for the UN discreetly to connive in the preservation of the old empires; quite another, to allow them to actually expand, for this threatened to make a nonsense out of the Trusteeship scheme altogether"
Utopianism associated with UN & LoN
debunking the 'utopian savour' idea of institutions, doing what was necessary to bring peace to Europe
Unilateralists VS internationalists (Roosevelt.., George W. Bush
historians "saw it as their job to provide accounts of American internationalism and far-sighted multilateralist statesmanship as a means of criticising the nationalistic Vulcans in the Bush I cabinet
general criticism
"warning-bells": 1940s commentators expressed a more wary view of the new world organisation than historians currently tend to
involvement of Jan Smuts
he was a South African statesman premier and architect of white settler nationalism
HOWEVER
UN doubts: ideological diversity makes it difficult to trust
IKENBERRY - "in the words of American political scientist Ikenberry 'when all is said and done Americans are less interested in ruling the world than in creating a world of rules"
note: America is key to UN. If this is the view on America, does it still mean the UN is bad, as USA is not the only member
USA and USSR in the same organisation - safetynet?
LoN and UN differences
UN run by great powers even more than the league, less confidence in international law
UN's attitude towards colonialism at the outset a little less tolerant than the leagues
diminished role of European states