United Nations

On January 1, 1942, 26 nations at war with the Axis signed the Declaration of the United Nations in Washington, endorsing the Atlantic Charter and pledging not to make a separate peace. Planning continued at Allied conferences: at Tehran in 1943, Roosevelt proposed an organization in which the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China would enforce peace as “four policemen.” At Dumbarton Oaks in Washington in 1944, the four powers drafted a charter, and at Yalta in 1945 Roosevelt and Stalin settled the Security Council voting rules.

Determined to avoid Woodrow Wilson’s failure with the League of Nations, the Roosevelt administration cultivated bipartisan support; in 1943 the Republican Party endorsed participation, and both houses of Congress overwhelmingly agreed.

The Charter created a General Assembly of all member states; a Security Council with five permanent members, each holding a veto, and elected non-permanent members; an Economic and Social Council; an International Court of Justice; a Trusteeship Council to oversee certain colonial territories; and a Secretariat headed by a Secretary-General. The organization was built on the principle of collective security.

Representatives of 50 nations completed the Charter in San Francisco in the spring of 1945, and the UN came into existence on October 24. Eleanor Roosevelt, appointed to the U.S. delegation by President Truman, chaired the Human Rights Commission that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948. In 1950 the UN called on member states to give South Korea military assistance against the North Korean invasion, and a U.S.-led UN force fought the Korean War. The Soviet Union’s permanent seat and veto made the UN an arena of Cold War rivalry.