The Super-Powers at San Francisco

1946 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
William T. R. Fox
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
New World ◽  
World Politics ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Secondary Powers ◽  
World Organization

The Charter of San Francisco is the modest end-product of the mightiest collective literary effort in history. Fifty delegations, comprising literally thousands of principal and subordinate personnel, labored feverishly for two months to achieve agreement on a constitution for the new world security organization.1 In contrast, the Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted by one of the commissions of the Peace Conference of Paris, on which there sat two representatives of each of the five major powers and one representative from each of nine of the secondary powers. This group of nineteen men met fifteen times.2The very broad participation of the smaller powers in the San Francisco Conference is obviously not to be explained in terms of their growing influence in world politics. Although the number of prospective permanent seat-holders in die Council of the proposed world organization was the same at Paris and at San Francisco, there had been in the intervening quarter-century a reduction rather than an increase in the number of powers of greatest influence.

Origins of the United Nations

2018 ◽  
pp. 40-58
Author(s):  
Justin Morris
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
United Nations ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
World Organization

This chapter analyzes the transformational journey that plans for the United Nations undertook from summer 1941 to the San Francisco Conference of 1945 at which the UN Charter was agreed. Prior to the conference, the ‘Big Three’ great powers of the day—the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom—often struggled to establish the common ground on which the UN’s success would depend. However, their debates were only the start of the diplomatic travails which would eventually lead to the establishment of the world organization that we know today. Once gathered at San Francisco, the fifty delegations spent the next two months locked in debate over issues such as the role of international law; the relationship between the General Assembly and Security Council; the permanent members’ veto; and Charter amendment. One of modern history’s most important diplomatic events, its outcome continues to resonate through world politics.

The Dilemma of the Peace-Seekers

1945 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-30
Author(s):  
Frederick L. Schuman
Keyword(s):  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Blaise Pascal ◽  
Effective Power ◽  
Great Debate ◽  
Peace And Justice ◽  
World Organization

“Right without Might is weakness,” wrote Blaise Pascal three centuries ago. But “Might without Right is tyranny. We must therefore combine Right and Might, making what is Right mighty and what is mighty Right.” To achieve such a combination in the community of nations is, by common consent, the major problem of world politics in our time. Outside of the dwindling ranks of the anarchists, few would any longer dispute the propositions that peace among men is unattainable without the organization of men into government, possessed of effective power to enforce law, and that justice among men is unattainable without the subordination of government itself to law, reflecting men's conception of right. How these goals are to be reached among nations is still a matter of controversy. But after participating in two world wars against tyrants, dedicated to world unity through conquest, most Americans are now agreed that peace and justice among nations depend upon order and law among nations and that these, in turn, depend upon the efficacy of what has long been called “international organization” or, more optimistically, “international government.”The Great Debate of 1944–45, like that of 1919–20, is not over ends, but over means. How can an effective world organization be brought into being, and how can it be made to function for the maintenance of peace, the enforcement of law, and the achievement of justice? In an age whose slogan in grappling with its most fateful problems has too often been “too little and too late,” it is not strange that American discussion of the problem of world order has largely taken the form of old disputes as to the terms upon which the United States should assume membership in an association or league of nations to keep the peace. The tacit assumption behind the discussion is that such a partnership of sovereignties can and will keep peace, enforce law, and promote justice if only it be organized with sufficient cleverness and joined by a sufficient number of states.

Nationalism and Internationalism Reconciled

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-53
Author(s):  
Antero Holmila ◽  
Pasi Ihalainen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
World War I ◽  
New World ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
World War ◽  
National Sovereignty ◽  
World Organization

The carnage of World War I gave rise to liberal visions for a new world order with democratized foreign policy and informed international public opinion. Conservatives emphasized continuity in national sovereignty, while socialists focused on the interests of the working class. While British diplomacy in the construction of the League of Nations has been widely discussed, we focus on contemporary uses of nationalism and internationalism in parliamentary and press debates that are more ideological. We also examine how failed internationalist visions influenced uses of these concepts during World War II, supporting alternative organizational solutions, caution with the rhetoric of democracy and public opinion, and ways to reconcile national sovereignty with a new world organization. The United Nations was to guarantee the interests of the leading powers (including the United States), while associations with breakthroughs of democracy were avoided. Nationalism (patriotism) and internationalism were reconciled with less idealism and more pragmatism.

The League of Nations: A Chapter in World Politics

1928 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Manley O. Hudson ◽  
John Spencer Bassett
Keyword(s):  
World Politics ◽  
League Of Nations

scholarly journals The hierarchical society: the politics of self-determination and the constitution of new states after 1919

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-396
Author(s):  
Maja Spanu
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
International System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
New States ◽  
History Of

International Relations scholarship disconnects the history of the so-called expansion of international society from the presence of hierarchies within it. In contrast, this article argues that these developments may in fact be premised on hierarchical arrangements whereby new states are subject to international tutelage as the price of acceptance to international society. It shows that hierarchies within international society are deeply entrenched with the politics of self-determination as international society expands. I substantiate this argument with primary and secondary material on the Minority Treaty provisions imposed on the new states in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe admitted to the League of Nations after World War I. The implications of this claim for International Relations scholarship are twofold. First, my argument contributes to debates on the making of the international system of states by showing that the process of expansion of international society is premised on hierarchy, among and within states. Second, it speaks to the growing body of scholarship on hierarchy in world politics by historicising where hierarchies come from, examining how diverse hierarchies are nested and intersect, and revealing how different actors navigate these hierarchies.

Nation, Internationalism, and the Policies against Trafficking in Girls and Women after the Fall of the Habsburg Empire

2020 ◽  
pp. 259-282
Author(s):  
Martina Steer
Keyword(s):  
Human Trafficking ◽  
New World ◽  
World Order ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Domestic Institutions ◽  
New World Order ◽  
Habsburg Empire ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
White Slavery ◽  
Democratic State

Interwar Poland inherited the problem of prostitution and human trafficking from its three predecessor states, above all from the Habsburg Monarchy. It soon came into the focus of interest of the League of Nations’ anti-trafficking agencies. Exploring the interaction between the recently acquired national sovereignty of post-Habsburg Poland and the new world order with the League of Nations as its pivotal force is tantamount to understanding how a nation state tried to tackle a transnational problem such as ‘white slavery’, as well as how it struggled with commitments resulting from its new position as a sovereign actor in interwar international politics. This chapter investigates governmental and non-governmental activities against prostitution and human trafficking in Poland, along with the government’s stance on the League’s recommendations. Whereas prewar international Jewish activities to save women from prostitution came to an end, domestic institutions seized opportunities provided by a democratic state and took their place.

Chemistry Made Vital

1935 ◽  
Vol 118 (16) ◽  
pp. 454-454
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
York City ◽  
New World

NEW WORLD OF CHEMISTRY. By Bernard Jaffe, Bushwick High School, New York City. New York, Newark, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco: Silver, Burdett & Company.

scholarly journals The Transnational Dream: Politicians, Diplomats and Soldiers in the League of Nations' Pursuit of International Disarmament, 1920–1938

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 493-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW WEBSTER
Keyword(s):  
League Of Nations ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Transnational Community ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Strategic Perspective

The pursuit of disarmament was central to the work of the League of Nations throughout its existence, but it was a relatively small and consistent set of national representatives who sat on the many bodies created to deal with the issue. Unfortunately, the gradual development of a sense of ‘transnational’ community among these delegates was never able to overcome the more powerful imperatives of national self-interest. Disarmament was always tied too closely to the issue of security for the individual governments of the major powers to view it from anything other than a strictly national strategic perspective.

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