The Crumbling Pillars of Global Peace
Key takeaways
- THANT MYINT-U is a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation and the author of Peacemaker: U Thant and the Forgotten Quest for a Just World.
- War, Empire, and the Forgotten Power of the United Nations.
- Since then, the world has avoided a cataclysmic great-power war.
THANT MYINT-U is a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation and the author of Peacemaker: U Thant and the Forgotten Quest for a Just World.
War, Empire, and the Forgotten Power of the United Nations. The long peace of the past eight decades has rested on two revolutionary convictions: that wars of aggression are intolerable and that empires must end. The first principle emerged from the carnage of two world wars, which together killed a hundred million people. The second came from centuries of colonial subjugation and the fight across Asia, Africa, and Latin America for self-determination. The United Nations Charter, signed in San Francisco in June 1945, gave both convictions political form.
Since then, the world has avoided a cataclysmic great-power war. Even more remarkably, global European empires were dismantled and replaced by a new system of nearly 200 sovereign states. Both achievements combined to make possible extraordinary advances in human well-being. To be sure, the world has witnessed many conflicts since the end of World War II, including savage wars of decolonization, and soaring economic growth has come alongside deep inequalities and environmental destruction. But it remains indisputable that for billions of people, the past 80 years have been a time of peace and rising prosperity.