Cold War and
Decolonization
United Nations
 Established on 24 October 1945
 At its founding, the UN had 51 member states (now 193)
 During the Second World War, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt
initiated talks on a successor agency to the League of Nations
 April–June 1945: United Nations Charter
 January 1946: The first meetings of the General Assembly (London)
 The General Assembly selected New York City as the site for the
headquarters of the United Nations, and the facility was completed
in 1952
 UN’s primary mandate was peacekeeping; The organization
participated in actions in Korea and the Congo, as well as
approving the creation of the state of Israel (1947)
 The division between the US and USSR often paralyzed the
organization
 1956: The first UN peacekeeping force was established to end the
Suez Crisis
The UN’s Organization
 The UN’s principal organs:
 The General Assembly (the main deliberative assembly); the
Security Council (for deciding certain resolutions for peace and
security); the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) (for
promoting international economic and social co-operation and
development); the Secretariat (for providing studies, information,
and facilities needed by the UN); the International Court of Justice
(the primary judicial organ); and the United Nations Trusteeship
Council (inactive since 1994)
 UN System agencies include the World Bank Group, the World
Health Organization, the World Food Programme, UNESCO, and
UNICEF
 The most prominent officer is the Secretary-General
 The organization’s membership grew significantly following
widespread decolonization in the 1960s, and by the 1970s
General Assembly
 The General Assembly is the main deliberative assembly of the
United Nations; composed of all member states
 The assembly meets in regular yearly sessions, but emergency
sessions can also be called
 The assembly is led by a president, elected from among the
member states on a rotating regional basis, and 21 vice-presidents
 A two-thirds majority of those present is required on important
questions
 Examples of important questions include recommendations on
peace and security; election of members to organs; admission,
suspension, and expulsion of members; and budgetary matters
 Apart from approval of budgetary matters, resolutions are not
binding on the members
 The Assembly may make recommendations on any matters within
the scope of the UN, except matters of peace and security that are
under consideration by the Security Council
Security Council
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The Security Council is charged with maintaining peace and security
among countries
The Security Council has the power to make binding decisions that
member states have agreed to carry out, under the terms of Charter
Article 25
These are known as United Nations Security Council resolutions
The Security Council is made up of fifteen member states, consisting of
five permanent members and ten non-permanent members
The five permanent members hold veto power over UN resolutions,
allowing a permanent member to block adoption of a resolution, though
not debate
The ten temporary seats are held for two-year terms, with member states
voted in by the General Assembly on a regional basis
The presidency of the Security Council rotates alphabetically each month
Secretariat
 The UN Secretariat is headed by the Secretary-General, assisted
by a staff of international civil servants worldwide
 It provides studies, information, and facilities needed by United
Nations bodies for their meetings
 The UN Secretariat also carries out tasks as directed by the
Security Council, the General Assembly, the Economic and Social
Council, and other UN bodies
 The Secretary-General acts as the de facto spokesperson and
leader of the UN
International Court of Justice
 The International Court of Justice (ICJ), located in The Hague, is
the primary judicial organ of the UN
 Established in 1945 by the UN Charter, the Court began work in
1946 as the successor to the Permanent Court of International
Justice
 The ICJ is composed of 15 judges who serve 9-year terms and
are appointed by the General Assembly; every sitting judge must
be from a different nation
 The ICJ's primary purpose is to adjudicate disputes among states,
but it has heard cases related to war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and
other issues
 The ICJ can also be called upon by other UN organs to provide
advisory opinions
People’s Republic of China
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The end of the Chinese Civil War:
Major combat ended in 1949 with the Communist Party in control of most
of mainland China, and the Guomindang retreating offshore, (Taiwan,
Hainan, and their surrounding islands)
1 October 1949: Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the
People’s Republic of China
1950: The People’s Liberation Army succeeded in capturing Hainan from
the ROC and incorporating Tibet
Mao’s Great Leap Forward, a large-scale economic and social reform
project, resulted in an estimated 45 million deaths between 1958 and
1961, mostly from starvation
1966: The Cultural Revolution, sparking a period of political recrimination
and social upheaval which officially lasted until Mao’s death (1976)
October 1971: The PRC replaced the Republic of China in the United
Nations, and took its seat as a permanent member of the Security Council
Cold War
 Political and military tension between the Western Bloc (US, its
NATO allies and others) and the Eastern Bloc (Soviet Union and
its allies in the Warsaw Pact)
 There was no large-scale fighting between the two sides, although
there were major regional wars, in Korea, Vietnam, and
Afghanistan supported by the two sides
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The beginning of the Cold War:
Marshall Plan (April 1947)
Cominform and the Tito–Stalin split (1948)
Containment and the Truman Doctrine
Berlin Blockade and airlift (1948-1949)
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1949)
Korean War (1950-1953)
Korean War
 A Security Council resolution authorizing a US-led coalition to
repel the North Korean invasion of South Korea, passed in the
absence of the USSR
 Taiwan
 Japanese rearmament
Cold War
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Warsaw Pact and Hungarian Revolution
Competition in the Third World
Space race
Berlin Crisis of 1961
Cuban Missile Crisis
Confrontation through détente (1962–79):
French NATO withdrawal
Czechoslovakia (Prague Spring)
Brezhnev Doctrine
Third World escalations
Sino-American rapprochement
Second Cold War (1979–85):
Soviet war in Afghanistan
Polish Solidarity movement and martial law
Soviet and US military and economic issues
Decolonization
 Definition: the withdrawal from its colonies of a colonial power; the
acquisition of political or economic independence by such colonies
 The process may involve either nonviolent revolution or national
liberation wars by pro-independence groups
 The United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization was
created in 1961 by the General Assembly with the purpose of
monitoring implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of
Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples and to make
recommendations on its application
 It has stated that in the process of decolonization there is no
alternative to the colonizer allowing a process of selfdetermination
Methods and Stages
 Decolonization is a political process, frequently involving violence
(war of independence, revolution, civil war)
 More often, there was a dynamic cycle: negotiations, minor
disturbances escalating into more violent revolts, further
negotiations until independence was granted
 In rare cases, the actions of the pro-independence movements
were characterized by nonviolence (Indian independence –
followed by an “Indian civil war”), and the violence came as active
suppression from the occupying forces or from forces representing
minority local communities who felt threatened by the prospect of
independence (settlers, minority groups)
 Decolonization generally progressed through one or more stages:
including the introduction of elected representatives, degrees of
autonomy or self-rule
The Third World
 The emergence of this new political entity, in the frame of the Cold
War, was complex and painful
 Several attempts were made to organize newly independent
states in order to oppose a common front towards both the
American and the Soviet influence
 The Non-Aligned Movement constituted itself, around the main
figures of Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Sukarno (Indonesia), Tito
(Yugoslavia), and Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt)
 1955: After the Geneva Conference (1954) which put an end to
the First Indochina War, the Bandung Conference gathered
Nasser, Nehru, Tito, Sukarno, and Zhou Enlai (Premier of the
People’s Republic of China)
 1960: The UN General Assembly voted the Declaration on the
Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples
The Non-Aligned Movement
 1961: The Non-Aligned Movement was officially created in
Belgrade, and was followed in 1964 by the creation of the United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) which
tried to promote a New International Economic Order (NIEO)
 The UNCTAD wasn’t very effective in implementing this New
International Economic Order, and social and economic
inequalities between industrialized countries and the Third World
kept on growing throughout the 1960s until the 21st century