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The Cold War and the United Nations

 

            The United Nations is an organization founded upon the aftermath of the Second World War to act as the hub of forthcoming international cooperation, aiming to be a forum of deliberation where moral values were to be spread to maintain peace and security, assuring the development of friendly relations between nations and improving the world by employing non-forcible measures. All members states were given a vote in the General Assembly. However, the Security Council, which objectively ranked higher in power on the UN hierarchy, was solely composed by the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom, France and Taiwan siting in for China. The main antagonisms leading to the Cold War rose almost simultaneously with the birth UN; the very nature of the antagonisms was deeply ideological: one could pragmatically put it as a US vs. URSS - Capitalism vs. Communism confrontation. Naturally this division was apparent not only in the polarization of nations around either Super Power, but in the latter's behavior within the UN. Hindering was only to be expected, but for what reasons and in what ways these two poles failed to aim into the same goals: the goals of the UN itself?.
             When the Korean War broke in 1950, the Security Council consisted only of pro-western powers, since the USSR was boycotting the UN as a response to the US' refusal in 1949 to recognize Mao's PRC. When it was learnt about a full-scale invasion of North to South Korea, the US took the crisis to the UN and was ready to fight under its flag, but the USSR was not there to use its veto: this clearly defeated the UN's principle of collective security. While a resolution was passed in order to assist South Korea, the US had already started its own uni-lateral campaign in name of "collective self-defense", deploying troops and bombardments. A latter Anglo-French resolution for an unified command to fight in Korea was passed as a result of a lack of soviet veto.


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