There is a woeful neglect of the current United Nations in the 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 1942–1945, namely in the wide substantive and geographic relevance of multilateralism during the World War II and in the foundations for the contemporary world order. The wartime and immediate post-war United Nations was not simply dictated by the US State Department, Whitehall, and the foreign ministries of the West—even a generation before decolonisation had proceeded apace and two-thirds of UN member states moved into the limelight as erstwhile colonies. These essays interrogate the extent to which anti-colonialists and other nationalists resisting imperial rule embraced the promise of a rule-based world order as a normatively and operationally valuable projection in 1945. They critically review the worlds of 1945 and 2015, of then and now, to determine the role of continuity and change, of the continuing bases for compromise and for the clashes between the Global South and North. This book was previously published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.
Introduction The UN and the Global South, 1945 and 2015: past as prelude? 1. Idea-shift: how ideas from the rest are reshaping global order 2. Emerging powers and the creation of the UN: three ships of Theseus 3. The revolt against the West: intervention and sovereignty 4. The South and disarmament at the UN 5. Arab agency and the UN project: the League of Arab States between universality and regionalism 6. Normative human rights cascades, North and South 7. Managing the global commons: common good or common sink? 8. Developing countries and the right to development: a retrospective and prospective African view 9. Economic growth, the UN and the Global South: an unfulfilled promise
Thomas G. Weiss is Presidential Professor of Political Science and Director Emeritus of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at The City University of New York’s Graduate Center. He was named 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and 2016 Distinguished IO Scholar by the International Studies Association. Pallavi Roy is a lecturer in International Economics at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS, University of London.
