A. TPK into PVAs and informal adult education since 1970s. For this elderhostel: modified Torch Club approach: i.e., lecture for the sake of discussion.

B. What you should remember after these five sessions:

    -- structure of UN: especially what the Security Council can and cannot do

    -- where UN fits as one technique of a score or more among 21st Century Peace         Techniques

    -- what counts in the USA as democratic foreign policy

    -- channels for you to influence US foreign policy and the UN

C.   We start today by "unpeeling an onion": moving backward in time. After that, for the rest of the course, we shall move forward step by step systematically filling in historical gaps in the unpeeled onion.

II. From 1946 back to 1914. UN. League of Nations

A.  We begin: let's UNPEEL the UN onion back to before World War I.

    1. Imagine our way back toward a time before any  permanent IO for peace. A world of "billiard ball" territorial nation-states.

    2. While secondly looking at ways USG makes foreign policy via treaties.
 
    3. Also: the UN was created in a rich conceptual world, choosing "collective security" as only one of a couple dozen generic approaches to keeping the peace among nations. UN yes!All other ways, yes, too!

    A. THE UNITED NATIONS (1946 to 2009)

 -- UN: locations (NEW YORK), 6 major organs: security council, assembly, civil service, ECOSOC, court, trusteeships. In Security Council five permanent members have vetos.

B. LEAGUE OF NATIONS (1920 - 1946)

--  LEAGUE OF NATIONS: locations (GENEVA), 3 major organs: council, assembly, civil service. No vetos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_of_the_League_of_Nations

http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/leagueofnations.htm  (26 articles text)

C. MOVEMENT TOWARD A PERMANENT WORLD INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION (IO)

--  19th Century Specialized International Organizations, e.g., river commissions, the Universal Postal Union and the International Telegraph Union.

http://www.law.leiden.edu/organisation/publiclaw/publicinternationallaw/accountability-conference.jsp#N100AF

--  1899 and 1907 Hague Conferences: (26 and 46 nations attending)

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h989.html

    D. EVOLUTION IN US WAYS OF NEGOTIATING TREATIES

--  1898-Spanish American War Peace Negotiations.

--  1803 Louisiana Purchase (828,800 square miles).

--  1819 Secretary of State John Quincy Adams's treaty with Spain.  Very simple structure. Secretary of State negotiates. President sends text to Senate for advice and consent.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/sp1819.asp

-- 1918: December 4: Wilson sailed for France aboard the S.S. George Washington

Wilson's mistakes: led US delegation in person, a Presidential first. No Congressmen. Only one Republican: a career civil servant, Henry White.

Carried hordes of INQUIRY planners. Wilson typed his own papers. One assistant. Isolated from own Secretar of State, Lansing.

He was accompanied by Secretary of State Robert Lansing and his closest personal advisor, Colonel Edward House, as well as Henry White, a respected career diplomat and Republican, and General Tasker Bliss.

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1333.html

During interim return to Washington, Wilson lectured Senators like school boys re draft treaty. In Europe: fresh demands for territories, punishment of Germany.

Wilson cools toward Colonel House.

US publics: Former President Taft leads League to enforce peace.

--  March 1920    Senate rejects Treaty of Versailles/U.S. membership in League of Nations. By seven votes. 49 to 35.

http://encarta.msn.com/sidebar_761594078/senate_rejects_treaty_of_versailles.html



-- The League had 10 good years. Then fell apart. Some border adjustments.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/leagueofnations.htm

The League experienced success in:

The Aaland Islands (1921). Islands could stay with Finland (v. residents who wanted tdo join Sweden) but must be demilitarized.

Upper Silesia (1921). Treaty of Versailles: referendum by people of Upper Silesia. League split between Germany and Poland.

Memel (1923). After Versailles, Memel and port was controlled by League. Lithuanians invaded. League gave area around Memel to Lithuania but made port an "international zone."

Turkey (1923) Failed to prevent war. But sent doctors to help refugees. Economic investment.

Greece and Bulgaria (1925) Border incident. Greek army invaded Bulgaria. League ordered Greece out of Bulgaria, fined Greece. Both sides accepted.

-- Expelled USSR over invasion of Finland. (This guaranteed League would not be resuscitated after WW II or Geneva be headaquarters of the United Nations.)

League's greatest successes were EDUCATIONAL and SOCIAL. Awareness raising of problems. Tackling hard problems. e.g.:

Many of the groups that work for the United Nations now, grew out of what was established by the League. Teams were sent to the Third World to dig fresh water wells, the Health Organisation started a campaign to wipe out leprosy. This idea - of wiping out from the world a disease - was taken up by the United Nations with its smallpox campaign.

Iin the Third World:  improved the status of women. Child slave labour. was also targeted. Drug addiction and drug smuggling. 

The greatest success was simply informing the world that these problems did exist and that they should be tackled. No organisation had done this before the League.


-- Italy (1919). League did nothing when Italy wrested Fiume from Yugoslavia.

-- Teschen (1919). Coal mines. Poland and Czechoslovakia fought for them. League awarded coal suburbs to Czechoslovakia. Dispute lingered for 20 years.

-- Vilna (1920). In 1920 only 2 % of traditional capital of Lithuania were Lithuanians! Poles invaded. League did not prevent this.

-- War between Russia and Poland (1920 to 1921). In 1920, Poland invaded land held by the Russians. Doubled its size, adding 80,000 square miles. League did nothing. Britain, France, America also attacked USSR during this time.

-- The invasion of the Ruhr (1923). To collect debts Belgium and France invaded the Ruhr. League did nothing.

-- Italy and Albania (1923). Border demarcation violence. Italy demanded Greece pay a fine. Italy bombards Corfu. Greece appealed to League -- which fined Greece!

-- Isolationism. But 1921 - 1922 naval conference.

-- 1927 -8: Kellogg-Brian Anti-War Pact. Outlawry as peace technique.

ala09_un_outline-#_03_suppl

Wilson at Versailles

http://www.patrickkillough.com/international-un/1945_league+un.html

Through the increasingly dangerous isolationist years from 1920 until the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the spiritual heirs of Woodrow Wilson mourned his errors and made sure not to repeat them. In September 1939, within days after the German invasion of Poland and the British and French declarations of war, Secretary of State Cordell Hull began America's postwar planning. The Secretary also moved quickly to assure that he and the State Department would dominate the official side of that postwar planning. Harry Hopkins, to name someone who might have challenged Hull, helped make the UN but did not play the postwar planning role which Colonel House and his Inquiry had 1917 - 1919. (n. 09)

By 1942 and 1943 Secretary Cordell Hull and Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles were leading a 45-member Presidential Planning Committee which included eight members of Congress and ten private persons. On January 9, 1943 Representative Sol Bloom, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, joined the Advisory Committee on Post-War Foreign Policy. James T. Shotwell, historian, Director of the Division of Economics and History of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) had joined earlier, in June 1942. The Committee had a Political Subcommittee, chaired by Under Secretary Sumner Welles. In June 1942 Welles's Political Subcommittee established its own Subcommittee on International Organization (IO). Between July 1942 and June 1943 the International Organization Subcommittee met 45 times. James T. Shotwell was a member and so was Clark Eichelberger, who, in addition to myriad activities in private foreign policy associations, was then serving as consultant to Dr Leo Pasvolsky's State Department Research Staff. (n. 10)

In 1943 Sol Bloom saw to it that the House of Representatives handily passed the Fulbright Resolution. And later that year Senator Tom Connally, also a member of Secretary of State Hull's Planning Committee, gave his name to a resolution substituting for one originally proposed by the young internationalist Senator Joseph Ball. Both the Fulbright and Connally resolutions put the U.S. Congress on record,prior to negotiations, in support of a postwar international peace organization.

Among private associations primarily focused on foreign affairs, six worked especially closely with the State Department from 1939 onward (n. 11). Deserving particular attention is the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace (CSOP). The CSOP had been founded in November 1939 by James T. Shotwell (n. 12). Virginia Gildersleeve, Dean of Columbia University's Barnard College for women, was a charter member and Clark Eichelberger was its Director. The six private groups supplied ideas and in some cases staff to the State Department planning team lead by Russian born economist Leo Pasvolsky, formerly with the Brookings Institution.

At least 90 percent of the thinking behind the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals (the negotiating basis for the future UN Charter) originated outside the State Department, much of it contributed by private Americas and such members of Congress as Fulbright and Ball. Aother big difference from World War One: this time American women had the vote. President Roosevelt also made himself personally accessible to representatives of private groups. He not only met on several occasions with Clark Eichelberger but also authorized Mr Eichelberger to float trial balloons to test how far Americans were ready to go towards an organization to succeed the League of  Nations.

When the UN Charter treaty was negotiated in San Francisco in April, May and June of 1945, the seven American negotiators on the ground included four leading members of Congress (two Democrats and two Republicans) and two  representatives of the public: one a man who had resigned as Governor of Minnesota to become a  Commander in the Navy and the second a woman who was Dean of Barnard College as well as a founder of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and also of the naval women's auxiliary, the WAVES. The delegation was led not by the President (as Wilson had done at Paris) but by Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. (n. 13)

    In June 1943 Hull made John S. Dickey Special Asst/Liaison to American PVAs

    Dumbarton Oaks. October 1944

L. Creation of the United Nations Charter at San Francisco April - June 1945

-- July 28, 1945. 89 - 2 vote.

Once the UN Charter was made, President Truman presented it simply and briefly to the Senate. Among the members of that body in July 1945 were two men who only days earlier in San Francisco had signed the United Nations Charter as Delegates of the United States of America. They were Senators Tom Connally and Arthur Vanderberg, Chairman and Ranking Minority member, respectively, of the Foreign Relations Committee. They led in committee work and floor debate and were among the 89 Senators voting to accept the Charter.

Two other Congressional co-signers of the UN Charter, Representatives Sol Bloom and Charles Eaton, attended some of the Senate hearings of public opinion of the Charter. Unlike the Treaty of Versailles, the San Francisco agreement was not a peace treaty. Thus the matter to be ratified by the Senate was much simpler than in 1919 - 1920.

http://www.state.gov/www/background_notes/united_nations_0997_bgn.html

24 October 1945
United Nations is created as its Charter is ratified by the five permanent members of the Security Council and the majority of other signatories, and comes into force.

10 January 1946
First General Assembly, with 51 nations represented opens in Central Hall, Westminster, London.    

17 January 1946
Security Council meets for the first time in London, adopting its rules of procedure.

24 January 1946
General Assembly adopts its first resolution. Its main focus: peaceful uses of atomic energy and the elimination of atomic and other weapons of mass destruction.    
1 February 1946
Trygve Lie of Norway becomes first Secretary-General.

24 October 1947
"United Nations Day" officially designated by the General Assembly.    
June 1948
First UN observer mission established in Palestine -the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO).

10 December 1948
General Assembly adopts Universal Declaration of Human Rights.    
7 January 1949
A UN envoy, Ralph Bunche, secures cease-fire between the new State of Israel and Arab States.

24 October 1949
Cornerstone laid for present UN Headquarters in New York City.    
June 25 1950
Security Council, acting in the absence of the Soviet Union, calls on Member States to help southern part of Korea repel invasion from the north.

27 July 1953

The Korean Armistice Agreement is signed on  by the UN Command and the Chinese-North Korean Command.

1954
UN High Commissioner for Refugees wins first of two Nobel Peace Prizes, for its work with European refugees.

1965
UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

At its best US foreign-policy making is led by the Secretary of State in close collaboration with both houses of Congress and with two-way communication with important American publics.

The League of Nations was structured to slow the rush to an UNPLANNED war. It failed to prevent World War II and is to that extent a failure. But many of its initiatives are carried over into the UN.

The UN was a reaction to a PLANNED war. It was to be prevented by the THREE (or FOUR) Policemen. Collective Security is its core. So long as there is no World War III, the UN is at bottom a success.

NOTE: Four one-page handouts are distributed. Their titles

-- UNPEELING TWO ONIONS BACKWARDS 2009  to 1919: FROM THE UN THROUGH THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

--  CHRONOLOGY

--  KEY CONCEPTS AND TERMS

--   SOME PEOPLE