The UN Charter: a case study in international governance

Introduction

• While the veto for permanent members of the Security Council was likely close to inevitable, the inclusion of France as a permanent member was highly contingent. The broad interpretation of the veto may also have been somewhat contingent, though Cold War tensions probably made it fairly likely.
• Intellectuals and civil society groups played a significant role in the drafting of the Charter.
• US domestic politics and public opinion exerted strong influence on the Charter.
• Most of the work happened before the San Francisco conference, and most of the work was done by the US and the UK.
• Unlike the League of Nations, which was a very idealistic project, the UN seems to have been inspired by a mixture of idealism and pragmatism.

• This note is based on 20 hours of preliminary research, and hasn’t been reviewed by domain experts. The main sources used were Schlesinger (2003), Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations and Ehrhardt (2020), The British Foreign Office and the Creation of the United Nations Organization, 1941- 1945. Where not otherwise stated, information comes from those books.
• It focuses on the lead up to the creation of the UN charter, rather than the history of how the UN unfolded over the subsequent 80 years.

What is the UN Charter?

• The League of Nations (established in 1920) was the main precedent for the UN (though historians often look even further back, to agreements like the 1814–15 Congress of Vienna and the 1899 and 1807 Hague Conventions drawing up the laws of war).
• On 1 January 1942, the ‘Big Four’ nations (US, USSR, UK, China) signed the Declaration by United Nations. This formalised the coalition of the Allies against the Axis powers, and was signed by 22 nations the following day, and an additional 21 by 1945.
• On 30 October 1943, the Big Four signed the Declaration of the Four Nations / Moscow Declaration. This declaration stated for the first time that those governments “recognize the necessity of establishing at the earliest practicable date a general international organization, based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving states, and open to membership by all such states, large and small, for the maintenance of international peace and security.”
• Between August and October 1944, the Big Four agreed to the Dumbarton Oaks proposal. This was effectively the first draft of the UN Charter, including things like the basic structure of the UN, the composition and powers of the Security Council, and voting procedures.
• By the eve of the San Francisco conference in 1945, the broad parameters of the UN Charter had already been agreed. 

• Purposes and Principles (chapter 1): The Charter sets forth the UN's objectives to preserve international peace and security, encourage friendly relations and cooperation among countries, and coordinate actions in achieving common goals, emphasizing peaceful dispute resolution, the sovereignty of member states, and the prohibition of force in international relations, barring collective defense.
• Membership (chapter 2): Countries were eligible for initial membership if they had previously signed the Declaration by United Nations (i.e. joined the allies against the Nazis); or if they attended the San Francisco conference.1

  The Charter also sets out procedures for admitting, suspending, and expelling members.
• Organs (chapters 3-5): These chapters detail the UN's six principal organs: the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, the International Court of Justice, and the Secretariat.

  • The General Assembly consists of all member nations.
  • The Security Council consists of 5 permanent members US, USSR, UK, China, France, and 6 (later increased to 10) rotating two-year members.
• Pacification Functions and Powers (chapters 6-7): Chapter 6 encourages the peaceful resolution of disputes, while Chapter VII grants the Security Council significant powers to act against threats to peace, breaches of peace, or acts of aggression, including economic sanctions and military action.
• Other matters (chapters 8-18): regional arrangements (chapter 8); the Economic and Social Council (chapters 9–10); non-self governing countries and trusteeship (chapters 11–13); the International Courts of Justice (chapter 14); the Secretariat (chapter 15); miscellaneous provisions (chapter 16), transitional arrangements (chapter 17) and the amendment procedure (chapter 18).

• The balance of power between the Security Council and the General Assembly:

  • The Security Council has a monopoly over security matters; the Assembly has no equivalent monopoly over economic & social matters. 
  • Assembly resolutions, while carrying an important symbolic weight, are not binding; Security Council resolutions are binding upon all members.2

  • The Assembly meets annually, whereas the Security Council can meet at any time.
• The veto: Security Council decisions on ‘procedural matters’ can be made by a ~60% majority (7 of 11; later 9 of 15). Decisions on all other matters require a ~60% majority and affirmative votes from all five permanent members. 
• Military enforcement: the Security Council is empowered to solve international disputes to enforce peace, including via non-military measures, and — if these are inadequate —military measures against aggressor states. All UN members are required to make forces available when asked to do so.

Brief timeline3

• 1795: Immanuel Kant wrote Toward Perpetual Peace, laying out some foundational thinking on global federations.
• 1815 –1822: Conferences between European powers after the Napoleonic Wars, beginning with the Congress of Vienna. Through the rest of the century, the leaders of Europe’s leading states, referred to as the Concert of Europe, gathered thirty times to discuss urgent political issues. 
• 1864: Creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Arguably the first treaty-bound international organization. 
• 1899: First Hague conference which codified the treatment of civilians and neutrals and provided a mechanism for the peaceful settlement of disputes. 26 countries in attendance, including all major powers. 
• 1907: Second Hague conference, with 44 nations (including most of Latin America).

• 1916: Wilson first articulates his vision for a league of nations, and commissions a secret multidisciplinary group (The Inquiry) of geographers, historians, political scientists, and other experts to develop plans. The Inquiry’s research director was Walter Lippman, then 28. 
• 1918: Wilson enshrines his vision for the League of Nations in the Fourteen Points peace proposal to the Germans. The final point calls for forming “a general assembly of nations” to afford “mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity”—the future League of Nations.
• 1919: Wilson encounters major domestic opposition to the League of Nations in the US, from isolationist Republicans. The Senate vetoes US accession to the League. This and health issues undermine Wilson’s efforts to lead the project. 
• 1920: The League of Nations officially comes into being. 
• 1930s: The League fails to handle several major crises: the Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931); Germany exiting the League (1933) and occupying the Rhineland, Czechoslovakia, and Austria (1936–38); the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935); and the USSR invasion of Finland and its subsequent expulsion from the League (1940).

• 14 August 1941: The Atlantic Charter is signed between the US and UK. It sets out principles for post-war order (full text). It doesn’t include explicit mention of an international organisation, but does acknowledge that it is “pending the establishment of a wider and more permanent system of general security”.
• 1 January 1942: The Declaration by United Nations is signed by the Big Four (US, UK, USSR, China), followed by 22 allied nations the following day. There is no mention of an international organisation.
• 30 October 1943: The Declaration of the Four Nations / Moscow Declaration, makes the first mention of an international body: the governments of the Big Four “recognize the necessity of establishing at the earliest practicable date a general international organization, based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving states, and open to membership by all such states, large and small, for the maintenance of international peace and security.”
• 1–22 July 1944: The Bretton Woods Conference establishes the post-war global financial order and what would become the World Bank and IMF.
• 21 August to 7 October 1944: The Dumbarton Oaks Conference between the Big Four leads to a more detailed proposal for the establishment of a "general international organization" (proposal text).
• 4–11 February 1945: The Yalta conference between the UK, the US, and the USSR. Stalin commits to the Soviet Union joining the United Nations and demands a veto for the great powers. It was agreed that membership would be open to nations that had joined the Allies by 1 March 1945.
• 12 April 1945: Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in office; and is succeeded by Truman. Truman learns about the atomic bomb.
• 25 April 1945: The United Nations Conference on International Organization begins in San Francisco. 
• 8 May 1945: Germany surrenders; VE day.
• 26 June 1945: After working for two months, 50 nations signed the Charter of the United Nations. The charter stated that before it would come into effect, it must be ratified by the governments of China, France, the USSR, Great Britain and the United States, and by a majority of the other 46 signatories. 
• 16 July 1945: The Trinity test.
• 17 July to 2 Aug 1945: The Potsdam Conference between the UK, the US, and the USSR.
• 6 and 9 August 1945: atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• 2 September 1945: Japan surrenders; the end of WW2.
• 24 October 1945: The UN officially comes into existence after ratifications.
• June 1946: The Baruch Plan for international arms control is presented to the UNAEC.
• 30 Dec 1946: The Baruch Plan fails to pass due to USSR veto.

Tentative observations

The P5 & the veto

• The Dumbarton Oaks Charter gave the Big Four a kind of meta-veto in the drafting process for the Charter: they could veto amendments from lesser countries.4

• The US Congress made clear that they required a veto (and that the lack of a veto was why Congress had previously scuppered the League of Nations). And a US veto would need to be mirrored, at least, by a veto for the USSR.
• It’s important to remember that initially, member countries were imagining that the UN would have its own serious UN force under the Military Staff Committee. This possibility presumably made a veto seem even more important (though ultimately the Military Staff Committee became “a non-functioning body” because of Cold War tensions, and was effectively defunct by 1948).5

   

• The addition of France to the ‘Big Four’ was largely a demand of the UK / Churchill, who apparently wanted another European power to counterbalance US influence within the Western bloc. Interestingly, France had to be persuaded to accept the seat.
• As for the veto’s impact, the hinge point wasn’t necessarily the Charter per se but the subsequent formation of norms for what constituted ‘substantive’ issues within scope of veto (as opposed to ‘procedural’ issues, which are outside the scope of veto). Within a couple years, the US and USSR both used the veto for non war-and-peace matters, establishing the obstructionist norms that have persisted since, and rendering the UN pretty ineffectual throughout the Cold War. 

  • However, given the Cold War, it’s hard to say how contingent this use of the veto was: perhaps it was very likely that the US and the USSR would interpret it in this way.

Intellectuals and civil society groups

• Leo Pasvolsky, the “foremost author of the UN Charter”.7

  Pasvolsky was a US State Department official who led the work on postwar planning for an international body from 1939 (though efforts only began in earnest in 1942).
• James T. Shotwell, who helped draft the UN Charter. Shotwell was a history professor and a previous member of The Inquiry. He had also been instrumental in establishing the International Labor Organisation and the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace. 
• Clark Eichelberger, who advised Roosevelt and the US delegation. Eichelberger was a peace activist and a prolific advocate for both the League of Nations and the UN. He served as a bridge between the State Department and civil society groups (for example by helping to select attendees and organising side events).
• Gladwyn Jebb, the British Pasvolsky. Jebb was a Foreign Office official who led the UK’s planning for an international body from the early 1940s. He also served as first Acting Secretary General for the UN. 
• Charles Webster, who wrote a series of influential case studies of earlier international agreements. A history professor, Webster was one of two leading figures in British planning (with Jebb), and an expert in the precedent of great power agreements during the nineteenth century. 

• The Commission to Study the Organization of Peace (CSOP) was established  by Shotwell and issued a report on “Fundamentals of the International Organization” which formed the basis for the US State Department’s Dumbarton Oaks proposal. In October 1944, CSOP assembled fifty organizations to discuss pro-UN strategy, and agreed to back a common campaign for the organization.8

   
• Many of the most influential civil society groups were in attendance at the San Francisco conference. They were pre-selected by the State Department for alignment; groups favouring world government and reactionaries/isolationists were not invited.9

• These groups secured three modest victories during the conference (but were ignored on the big issues like security, the veto, and trusteeship):

  • Adding the word “education” into the charter (and thereby giving the UN some remit over such matters).
  • Incorporating “human rights” and establishing a human rights commission.
  • Article 71, enshrining the collaborative relationship between the UN and NGOs via the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

US domestic politics and public opinion

Preparatory work

Idealism and pragmatism

• Wilson was an idealist21

  and an ivory tower academic type. 
• His League of Nations plan failed because it paid insufficient attention to realist great power considerations (toothless enforcement, lack of buy-in from great powers, too democratic / consensus-based)22

  and domestic political considerations (with Congress refusing to ratify the League Treaty). 
• The UN plans were driven forward by a certain amount of idealism from the US, but tempered with pragmatism based on the failed experiment of the League, and that’s why it worked.

• An idealistic faction who remained wedded to the idea of a world federation / government and continued to advocate for this, but lost political influence because of the League's abject failure, including thinkers like H.G. Wells, Clarence Streit, and later Bertrand Russell.
• A more pragmatic faction, who set up think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House, and ‘institutionalised’. They had a more moderate, but still idealistic internationalist worldview, and were the people who were brought into the UN planning—thinkers like Webster, Jebb, Shotwell, Eichelberger, and Walter Lippman.

Other observations

• The failure of the League of Nations loomed large over UN planning. There was a fairly clear historical example of how not to do things. 
• Spying was rife at the San Francisco conference.23

  The US had a huge spying operation during the conference, including wiretapping diplomatic cables. This gave them a decent edge in negotiations, since they had inside knowledge of what other countries were thinking and where their reservations were. The USSR was later revealed to have had its own operation, including some sources within the US delegation.
• Amendments to the UN charter have been rare. Article 108 allows for amendments with support of two-thirds of the General Assembly and all 5 permanent members of the Security Council. Article 109 provides for the convening of a "General Conference of the Members of the United Nations" to consider changes to the Charter, which can be triggered by two-thirds vote in the General Assembly or seven members of the Security Council. Such a convention was scheduled for 1955, but didn’t actually take place. To date there have been five amendments to the Charter. All were between 1965–73, and were to accommodate the increased size of the UN following decolonisation. 
• There have been three major structural changes to the UN made without amendment:

  • P5 abstentions in the Security Council have been interpreted in practice as ‘concurring votes’ with respect to the veto on non-procedural matters.
  • After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia took the USSR’s place on the Security Council.
  • In 1971, the PRC assumed the Chinese seat (previously held by the Taipei Nationalist government) following General Assembly resolution 2758.
• Lots of the Charter is fairly redundant today. For example, the UN Charter envisaged a key role for the UN in economic and social matters, but the UN has been superseded by other bodies on economic matters—namely the Bretton Woods system for international finance.

Appendix: Locksley Hall

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

—Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1842, Locksley Hall

• Truman kept a copy of it in his wallet for thirty years, reflecting in 1952: “it is a prophecy of the age in which we live now. And we are faced with a much greater age than the one that Tennyson dreamed about … I think we are at the door of the greatest age in history in everything. If we can prevent a third world war … the young people today, I think, will see … an age that our fathers and grandfathers dreamed about, but never thought would happen.”
• Churchill called it "the most wonderful of modern prophecies" and quoted it throughout his life, including in his essay Fifty Years Hence.

References