From ‘Peace by Dictation’ to International Organisation: Great Power Responsibility and the Creation of the United Nations

Abstract

This article examines the attitudes of US, British, and Soviet policy-makers as they planned for the forthcoming peace during the Second World War. It charts how they moved from planning a 'peace by dictation' of the great powers, to planning one which would be based on a model of collective security involving all members of the United Nations alliance. The latter plan would reflect both the great powers' special responsibilities for maintaining international peace and security and the stake which lesser powers had in such a venture. In addressing these historical developments the article employs two concepts familiar to International Relations scholarship, namely concert and hierarchy. It shows how the understandings which the principal post-war planners had of these conceptsand crucially of their inter-relationship -changed over time and the consequences of these changes. The article makes two core claims: firstly, that as post-war planning progressed, the attitudes of the Big Three towards the acceptable nature of the great power-lesser power hierarchy changed radically; and secondly, that the structure and nature of today's United Nations Organisation is in significant part a consequence of these changes.

The United Kingdom’s special responsibilities at the United Nations: Diplomatic practice in normative context

“…Preponderant powers are, as the classical international lawyer Emer de Vattel observed, ‘in a position to lay down the law to others’ (Bull, 1977: 104). Their responsibility to avoid doing anything that upsets international order is thus ‘special’ because it requires them to exercise relatively more restraint than the non-great powers (Claude, 1971: 71–73, 154; Claude, 1986: 726; Jackson, 2000: 139; Morris, 2013: 515–516).…”

“…Moreover, English School pluralism is not too far removed from the idea of ‘Global Britain’ and existing UK practice at the United Nations. As noted, UK diplomats are regarded as the most consultative of P5 members, and UK politicians, including Winston Churchill, have long realised that ‘the world organisation cannot be based on a dictatorship of the Great Powers’ (Churchill quoted in Morris, 2013: 529). Conscious of the United Kingdom’s relative material weakness, the Foreign Office realised in 1945 that the United Kingdom’s ‘global standing could only be maintained through an engagement with and coupling to the Dominions’ (Morris, 2013: 524–526).…”

Unpacking the politics of great power responsibility: Nationalist and Maoist China in international order-building

“…Ravaged by another world war, this order-building period focused on establishing the terms for peace and cooperation through the institutionalisation of great power managerialism (Morris, 2013). How the great powers debated and projected ideas about their roles and responsibilities, however, have been given less prominence in the literature.…”

Great power management and ambiguous order in nineteenth-century international society

“…This then would appear to challenge Justin Morris's claim that 'the conferment of recognition' amongst the great power managers themselves 'is dependent at the very least on: acceptance that each member of the club is of equal standing and esteem'. 133 At least in the nineteenth century, it would appear that perfectly equal and uniform status recognition was not always a precursor to the practice of great power management and that institutionalised forms of management were relatively durable even under conditions of ambiguity. The degree to which particular elements of great power managementfor example, whether Bull's first order task of managing relations between themselves as compared to his second order task of managing relations between the great and lesser powersare affected differently by such ambiguity may well be a fruitful area of future research based on these findings.…”