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NO ENCHANTED PALACE: THE END OF EMPIRE AND THE IDEOLOGICAL

ORIGINS OF THE UNITED NATIONS - Mazower


the story of the ideological origins of the League and of the UN
challenging two interconnected historical myths:
1) that the UN rose from the Second World War pure and uncontaminated by any
significant association with the prewar failure of the League of Nations (like
Aphrodite rising out of the sea from the foam)
2) that the UN was mainly an American affair, the product of public debate and
private discussion in which the other countries almost played no role.
-> Mazower: the UN as a further chapter in the history of world organization
inaugurated by the League and linked though that to the question of empire and the
visions of global order that emerged out of the British Empire in particular in its final
decades.
Debunking the myths:
1) despite the fact that by 1930s the League had become politically toxic, the UN
was in many ways a continuation of the earlier body. They were the same men
that had been involved establishing the League last time. What emerged after
the IIWW was neither a system of powerful regional councils with a small
coordinating centre run by Roosevelts Four Policemen, nor a world
government run by civic-minded rights activists or technocrats, nor the alliance
of democracies some briefly toyed with. It was basically a warmed-up League,
an association of states where the most important novelty was, rather than the
exact form of the organization itself, the entrance of both the US and the USSR
into a permanent organization.
2) the central position of the US in setting up the UN was an optical illusion.
Washington was a driving force in this matter during the war but we need to go
further back in time to understand where we ended up : the importance of the
British imperialist dimension : two outstanding statesmen : J. Smuts of South
Africa and Jawaharlal Nehru of India ; a classicist and a theorist of
internationalism, drafter of the League blueprint in Whitehall : Alfred Zimmern

the UN as a product of evolution, rather then revolution. (it grew out of existing
ideas and institutions, their weaknesses and failures)
a) first evolution: defending and adapting empire in an increasingly
nationalist age : The fact Jan Smuts, the South African statesman and an
exponent of racial superiority, helped drafted the UNs stirring preamble casts a
shadow over the foundation of the UN organization at the end of IIWW. + The
impact of the League as an essentially Victorian institution, based on the
notional superiority of the great powers, an instrument for a global civilizing
mission though the use of international law and a means for ungirding British
imperial world leadership and cementing its partnership with the us. After the
League collapsed in 1930s there were pressures to make sure that next time
round things would have been done better: both keeping the US and the USSR
as members and helping the British carrying out their civilizing mission in Africa.
All this was couched in a language of moral righteousness (Alfred Zimmern )
b) self-determination 1 : the possibilities for imperial internationalism narrowed
sharply in the 1940s. The league had made recognition of new states
dependent on their pledging to treat minorities properly and grant them new
rights under international law that the League itself monitored. During the WWII
that regime was decisively repudiated. The UN became an even fiercer
defender of national sovereignty and treated it as a right. In 1947 the UN
General Assembly narrowly approved the partition of Palestine and the creation
of a Jewish national state.
c) second evolution : an anti-colonial forum : but this was only the start: in the
1950s 1960s the principle of national self-determination was globalized in a
startlingly rapid fashion, and the UN turned from being an instrument of empire
into an anti-colonial forum. Smuts suddenly found himself outflanked: anti
colonialism won out.
d) third evolution: an uncertain future? : as states won independence, anti
colonialism and anti racism quickly lost their radical edge as well at the point
that states often turned into defenders of the status quo. the UN remains
suspended between its twin functions as great power talking shop and supporter
of national self-determination across the world. It tunes into a global club of
national states, devoid of any strategic substantial purpose beyond the almost

forgotten one of preventing another world war. The UN now is then looking, so
far in vain, for a political raison dtre more suited to the needs of the present ..
We cannot indeed claim that our world is perfect or that we have created an
unbreakable guarantee of peace. For ours is no enchanted palace to spring into
sight at once, by magic touch or hidden power. But we have, I am convinced,
forged an instrument by which, if men are serious in wanting peace and are ready
to make sacrifices for it, they may find means to win it. Remake by Lord Halifax,
British ambassador to the US, June 1945
with the end of the Cold War, the dream of a new founding moment: the UN was
marginalized during the standoff. But soon the hope vanished (genocide in
Rwanda 1994; bombing of Kosovo; Iraq war..)
no shortage of calls to reform it: from enlargement of the Security Council,
weakening of the veto power, idea of a military UN army and doing more to stamp
certain values (freedom and democracy, for instance) on the world before it is too
late (i.e. before the Chinese took over).
a world without UN? the discussion on the UNs future role depends on an
understanding of its past: the intensity of present disillusionment is closely linked
to a sense of despair at how far it has fallen short of the lofty (nobili) standard
supposedly set by its founders.
an organization condemned to fade into irrelevance? like the League of Nations
between the wars: the invasion of Iraq was presented by Bush administration, as
adverting to the 1930s its Abyssinia crisis or, perhaps, even Munich
the historical misunderstanding (historical wishful thinking): a great deal os
assumed by a cursory reading of foundational texts, little acknowledgment of
mixed motives that accompanied their drafting. The idea that the emergence of
some kind of global community is not only desirable but inevitable.
the subject of the UN was ignored for many years. It was brought back onto focus
especially with Bush II who prompted many historians to try to show why the UN
matters or at least, why it did once to the US. Pointing to figure such as F.D.

Roosevelt (paving the way for the US to provide global leadership in the early
1940s) and to other wise and prudent internationalists of 1945 (tuned into
visionaries and heroes - Eleanor Roosevelt, Raphael Lemkin, Rene Cassin..) as a
means of criticizing the blinkered unilateralists in the Bush cabinet.
While utopianism is certainly a vital aspect of the UN (and also the League of
Nations)s appeal, giving them energy, support and even valuable political capital,
it can be misleading. Over the last few years a body of literature has emerged that
gives a one sided view of what the UN was set up to do and generates
expectation that its founders never intended to met.
we need to take a more critical link at what the UNS founders actually had in
mind : many left the founding conference at San Francisco (1945) believing that
the world body they were being asked to sign up to was shot though with
hypocrisy (the universalizing rhetoric of freedom and rights too partial): nothing
more than an alliance of the Great Powers embedded in a universal
organization (Webster).
texts do not speak for themselves : the ambiguities of the Charter (especially the
Preamble) and the Universal Declaration on HR and the Genocide Convention
should not be ignored. Many recent critics of the idealist historiography point to the
sheer implausibility of trying to trace the roots of our current humanitarian activism
back to the mid-1940s, when talking about human rights was often a way of doing
nothing and avoiding a serious commitment to intervene (E.G. Simpson suggests
that a real human rights regime emerged only with the ECHR). One should
remember that who did more than anyone to argue for the UNs preamble was Jan
Smuts, the South African premier and the architect of white settler nationalism.

IR scholars have been even less up to the task. Realism emerged in the 1940s
against the pretensions of idealistic internationalists: Lippman, Kennan and
Morgenthau decried the idea of a world organization as a chimera. it was nothing
more than (at best) a legitimising organ for great powers interests. Surely this is a
part of the story, but it ids not the whole story by any means : it would still remain
important to see why certain powers at a certain point in history came to define
their security needs in ways necessitating membership of a world body.

during the 1970s, with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system and the erosion
of US hegemony: is began to take institutions more seriously : NEOLIBERAL
INSTITUTIONALISM, providing explanations for why states may opt for
multilateralism instead of unilateral policy (why international organizations offer
real benefits), although they often do so on the basis of preferences among
bargaining actors rather than analyzing their ideological and cultural context. But
such scholarship does not regard the UN as a body of great importance.
the League contributed from:
1) the strain of Wilsonianism internationalism : while hugely important, not able to
articulate a precise program for the international community he looked forward
to (aiming for a new world democratic order or focusing on what necessary to
bring peace to Europe? Did he really believed the national self-determination
was globally applicable? )
2) British imperialist thought (often neglected) : late 19th century the British Empire
was world hegemon (US a second-raking power)

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