Abstract
The United Nations was born out of the Second World War. Even while the League of Nations was in its death throes there was widespread recognition that a new international body would have to be created in its stead. The League could not be revivified: its wounds were too great. Now it was discredited by its partial membership, by its failures, and above all else by the war. The Soviet Union had been expelled from the League but if there were to be a new international organisation the USSR was determined to be centrally involved in its creation. However, the Soviet Union was not the central player. The United States, immensely strengthened by the war, had worked to prepare the ground. Bretton Woods, Dumbarton Oaks, Potsdam and Yalta — all had felt the pressure of American diplomacy and growing American power. The United Nations, above all else, was an American creation. This was a circumstance that would — in concert with other developments — help to shape the lineaments of the Cold War.
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Notes
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© 1994 Geoff Simons
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Simons, G. (1994). Cold War. In: The United Nations. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23389-2_4
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