The UN and the Global South, 1945 and 2015: past as prelude?

Abstract

The United Nations is hardly a popular pursuit in today’s academic and policy literatures, and so it is unsurprising that an examination of that multilateral structure before 1945 shows an even more egregious absence of analytical attention. Such ignorance conveniently ignores the forgotten genius of 1942–45, namely in the wide substantive and geographic relevance of multilateralism during World War II and in the foundations for the contemporary world order. This collection of papers critically reviews the worlds of 1945 and 2015, of then and now, to determine the role of continuity and change, of the ongoing bases for compromise, and for the clashes between the Global South and Global North.

Keywords:

• Global South
• United Nations
• postwar multilateralism
• San Francisco conference

Acknowledgements

This special issue and the deliberations leading to its quality control would not have been possible without generous financial and administrative support from several sources. We are enormously grateful to Vartan Gregorian and Stephen del Rosso for the flexibility to continue our research beyond the original time frame for the grant that enabled it (see Funding), this time with an exclusive focus on the Global South. The editors and authors gratefully acknowledge constructive comments at the workshop on 24 October 2015 by several discussants and in particular Stephen Chang, Philippe Cullet, Stephen Hopgood, Mushtaq Khan and Chris Landsberg. The co-sponsors, the Ralph Bunche Institute of The CUNY Graduate Center and the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the University of London’s SOAS, supported the organisation and staffing of that session in and the finalisation of this special issue to be published later as an edited book. It is particularly appropriate that this volume appears in 2016, the centenary of SOAS’s efforts to study the languages and cultures, history and politics of the Global South. Among the many helping hands necessary to bring the authors and commentators together, we would like to acknowledge the efforts of Leah Owen, who ensured that the Russell Square trains ran on time; Eli Karetny, who guided administrative arrangements; and Danielle A Zach, who sharpened the presentation in these pages.

Funding

We are most grateful for the essential backing from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which had the foresight to sponsor this and an earlier investigation of the period 1942–45 under the auspices of the grant ‘Wartime Origins and the Future United Nations’.

Notes

1. South Centre, For a Strong and Democratic United Nations; South Centre, The United Nations at a Critical Crossroads; South Centre, Enhancing the Economic Role of the United Nations; and South Centre, Reforming the United Nations.

2. See Plesch and Weiss, Wartime Origins; Plesch, America, Hitler and the UN; and Schabas et al., “The United Nations War Crimes Commission.” See also Helleiner et al., “Principles from the Periphery.”

3. Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan.

4. Acharya, The End of American World Order, 5, 59–78.

5. Acharya, The End of American World Order, 6–11.

6. Ruggie, Multilateralism Matters.

7. Drezner, “‘Good Enough’ Global Governance and International Finance”; and Patrick, “The Unruled World.” For more historically informed interpretations, see Plesch and Weiss, “1945’s Lesson”; and Plesch, “1945’s Forgotten Insight.”