Working together The Economist has

Working together

The Economist has a review of a new book on the politics and diplomacy leading up to the creation of the U.N. in 1945, here: "Flags of convenience". I was struck by these paragraphs from the review:

"...The most striking aspect of this tale is that in 1945 America's global dominance was even greater than it is today. All other great powers lay in ruins, while America itself was unscathed by bombing or invasion. America's factories were working at full tilt. Its armed forces were the most powerful in the world by far, and it was only months from unveiling a terrible new weapon, the atomic bomb, which no other country possessed. America's economic output, by some estimates, was half of the world's total.

At the peak of America's powers, in other words, its leaders were determined to create a multilateral institution involving as many nations as possible as a primary mechanism for ensuring American, as well as global, security. In his speech before the San Francisco conference, Truman was explicit about the price of doing so. “We all have to recognise—no matter how great our strength—that we must deny ourselves the licence to do always as we please.” For America itself, Truman argued, this was a price well worth paying. The contrast with the attitude of most subsequent American governments, and especially the current one, could not be more stark. Many Bush administration officials seem to view the UN either as an irrelevance or as a dangerous constraint..."