Parliament and the Press: Forging the United Nations in Wartime Britain, 1939–45

During the Second World War, not only the United States but also Great Britain played a leading role in planning and establishing the United Nations (UN) as a new international organisation to replace the League of Nations. While scholarship on post-war planning is extensive, relatively little exists on how the planning process was discussed and depicted publicly in Britain. The purpose of this article is to fill such lacunae by examining the two most important domains for public discussion at the time, the press and parliament. It will argue, first, that the League of Nations’ experience – its inability to use collective force and its optimistically democratic structure – overwhelmingly shaped public discourse in reference to the UN. By referring to the past, the press and politicians alike in Britain were content to relinquish interwar ideas such as equal rights and equal representation for all nations. Second, apart from the lessons of history, the less democratic structure of the new world organisation was justified from the perspective of great power politics. The desire to make the grand alliance between Britain, the United States of America, and the USSR functional despite all mutual suspicions, directed the view of the UN, and typically overrode all other concerns relating to post-war planning. Finally, throughout the wartime planning of the UN, public opinion, in so far as press and parliament were concerned, held fast to the idea that the British empire was not to be touched by the UN. In public, the establishment of the UN was hardly considered as a starting point for decolonisation. Instead, the UN was designed to become the post-war embodiment of the grand alliance, a vehicle through which the victory over the Axis powers would be managed at the global level: such management did not envision the need to let empire go. Viewed this way, it also becomes clear that nationalism and internationalism were not mutually exclusive or binary visions, but coexisted and shifted in importance throughout the period examined.     

Rhetoric versus reality in the rise of policing in UN peace operations: ‘More blue,less green’?

ABSTRACT

United Nations police (UNPOL) have become increasingly important to operational effectiveness of peace operations. For some time, their contribution to re-establishing the rule of law in conflict-affected states has been seen as a cornerstone for building sustainable peace and enabling mission exit strategies. In a departure from traditional peacekeeping and post-conflict assistance, recent years have seen UN peace operations directed to stabilise countries and protect civilians in the context of on-going violent conflict. As a result, UNPOL have had to undertake a range of expanded tasks, exacerbating long-standing challenges and producing new impediments to their operational effectiveness. At the same time, a ‘pragmatic turn’ is generating increased interest in more police-centric concepts of peacekeeping as a possible alternative to today’s expensive and military-focused peace operations. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in multiple peace operations and at UN headquarters, this article examines the changing roles of UNPOL in a new breed of UN peace operations, identifies the major associated challenges and proposes a series of recommendations for overcoming them. It argues that if police are to respond to unfolding challenges while becoming more central to peacekeeping outcomes, then significant reforms and further research into their impacts will be required.     

‘How Time Flies’: Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the 1960s

Recent histories of human rights have identified the 1970s as the most decisive epoch in the birth of the modern rights era. These works have tended toward a parenthetic dismissal of the period 1948–70 as years of interregnum, of marginal impact to the ‘breakthrough’ moment which followed. This article argues for a more complex periodisation, and reclaims the importance of the 1960s. Far from an undifferentiated abyss, the two decades between the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the 1968 International Human Rights Year held their own shifts, integral to the evolution of modern human rights. A crucial transition in the status of the UDHR occurred across the mid-1960s, roughly aligned with the terminal years of liberal post-colonialism. Through a comparison of two hitherto neglected events in the history of human rights, the fifteenth and twentieth anniversary commemorations of the UDHR, in December 1963 and 1968, this article traces the trajectory of that transition. These commemorations, concentrated moments of explicit reflection on the meaning of human rights, encapsulated the gulf between the early and the late 1960s. In the space of five years, any vestigial consensus on the vision enunciated in 1948 was obliterated.     

The United Nations at Niagara: Borderlands Collaboration and Emerging Globalism

In 1946 a group of Western New York and Southern Ontario business leaders proposed locating United Nations headquarters on Navy Island, Canadian territory in the Niagara River. One of the most visionary proposals ever to come from the region, it was a genuinely binational project, grounded in the symbolism of the peaceful relationship along the Niagara after the War of 1812. The proposal revealed a high level of cross-border economic and cultural integration in the Niagara region that had been strengthened by the shared experience of World War II. However, the region was increasingly marginalized from its national and state/provincial cores as it struggled to integrate itself into an ever more globalized economy.     

美英在联合国中国代表权问题上的分歧与协调(1950-1951)

有关中国在联合国的代表权问题,美国的基本立场是反对中国代表权变更,尽管在朝鲜战争爆发前后有微妙的区别,此前主要是私下操纵,此后则公开阻挠。英国的投票立场经历了从弃权、赞成中国代表权变更到最终支持美国在联合国搁置对中国代表权问题讨论的演变过程。而且,英国赞成新中国取得合法代表权并不意味着取缔国民党集团的非法代表,其政策转轨亦不同步。在1950年1-6月,英国开始由弃权走向有条件赞成新中国取得席位,美英分歧凸现,各自为自己的立场游说其他安理会成员国。1950年6月-1951年1月是美英分歧与协调的高峰时期,英国逐渐走向赞成接纳新中国代表同时驱逐国民党非法代表的立场。美国则不遗余力地反对中国代表权的变更。1951年2-6月,英国由赞成中国代表权变更转向支持美国在联合国搁置对这一问题的讨论,美英纷争基本平息。美英在这一问题上的分歧除了反映两国对华政策的差异外,也折射出两国对联合国组织的不同理念。     

美国与1966年联合国中国代表权问题

1964年以后,国际社会支持中国恢复在联合国席位的力量日益增强。在1966年联合国关于中国代表权问题的讨论中,为阻止中国进入联合国,美国投入了极大的精力。在这一过程中,美国及其盟国和蒋介石集团发生了尖锐的矛盾,经过讨价还价,美国在盟国的压力下作了相应的让步,美蒋最终达成妥协,中国仍然被排除在联合国之外。     

历史要重演吗?——1948年的周鲠生、胡适之争及其意蕴

1948年初,周鲠生与胡适就国际局势问题爆发了一场争论。争论主要围绕两个问题展开。第一,如何看待"西方民主国家"的对德对日政策?第二,苏联是不是一个可怕的侵略势力?周鲠生认为,第二次世界大战结束后英、美的对德对日政策,可能会导致德、日两国军国主义的复活,从而重蹈第一次世界大战后西方民主国家对德政策的覆辙。胡适则认为西方民主国家并未放弃防制德、日侵略势力复活的政策,而苏联已成为一个可怕的侵略势力。从世界范围看,这场争论实际上是第二次世界大战结束后美国国内两种不同的外交主张的分歧在中国的反映,其思想根源则在于两种不同的自由主义理念,反映了战后中国自由主义的复杂走向。     

‘What has Ghana Got That We Haven't?’ Party Politics and Anti-Colonialism in Botswana, 1960–66

This article offers a re-examination of the period leading up to independence in Botswana, formerly known as the Bechuanaland Protectorate, between 1960 and 1966. With the use of original archival material from Botswana and the United Kingdom, it aims to explain why the Bechuanaland Democratic Party overwhelmingly defeated the Bechuanaland People's Party in the March 1965 elections for self-government. Botswana's post-colonial transition was unusual for being without a mass, social movement for national self-determination. The Democratic Party, led by Seretse Khama, favoured close cooperation with the British colonial authority and a gradualist transition to independence, while the People's Party closely adhered to the ideology of anti-colonialism and demanded immediate independence. This article will argue that the Democratic Party won independence due to its sacrifice of anti-colonial credentials, in the short term, in favour of a political platform that addressed the long-term challenges of Bechuanaland's quest for viable statehood. The research helps to explain why Botswana was slow to develop closer relations with fellow independent African states. As a provincialised history of decolonisation, this article shows the potential for variance within the wider anti-colonial movement, which incorporated diverse actors, agendas and geopolitical conditions.     

20世纪70年代初台湾当局对美“外交”与联合国中国代表权问题

1971年第26届联合国大会前一年内,在尼克松政府的要求和现实的压力下,台湾当局在联合国中国代表权问题上不断让步,但最终还是没能保住其在联合国的席位。在决策过程中,蒋介石表面上不断展示强硬立场,实质上却并非如此。他手下的高级"外交官"们为保住台湾当局在联合国的席位而倾向于妥协,但在威权体制下难于向蒋介石进言。     

美国迫使台湾当局从华南边境和沿海岛屿撤兵问题研究

肯尼迪政府时期的美国对华政策已经开始孕育着一些变革。其政府内部先后讨论过一些调整方案,但在国际国内各种复杂因素的制约下没有取得重大突破,其中台湾当局不断施加的干扰和阻碍是一个重要原因。在此时期,美国曾迫使台湾当局从缅泰老“金三角”地区撤军,并试图透迫蒋介石从金门、马祖等沿海岛屿撤防,双方施压与抗压、牵制与反牵制的互动关系十分明显。尽管美国政策设计者们已经认识到美国对华政策必须服务于美国和整个“自由世界”的广泛利益而非台北政权一家的利益,但实际上还是难以摆脱台湾当局的牵制。另外,更重要的阻力来自于美国国内政治的掣肘,而其政策调整的幅度局限于“两个中国”之类的方案,也是根本行不通的。     

"中国世界秩序"观之影响及其与中国古代边疆研究--费正清《中国世界秩序:中国传统的对外关系》读后

本文概述了费正清“中国世界秩序”观及其对西方中国近代史研究的影响,认为费氏的理论在中国边疆史地研究中也有着积极意义,特别是在中华民族共同意识和共同价值观的形成以及历代边疆的治理及中国疆域的确立等方面。     

Arguing for a worldwide perspective: Italy and the reform of the international monetary system between transatlantic cooperation and European integration (1971–73)

The end of the Bretton Woods system, following the US decision of August 1971, and the simultaneous re-launch of the European integration with the enactment of the Werner plan came at a critical moment of internal weakness for Italy. This article highlights how the Italian government and the monetary authorities – while not always on the same wavelength – tried to tackle these challenges with a view to preserving the principles of multilateral cooperation that had promoted the country's recovery in the post-war years. By launching the project denominated ‘Global Approach’ in the summer of 1972, Italy tried to interconnect the modification of the Werner plan with the reform of the international monetary system within the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in order to restrain the growing trends towards unilateralism. However, despite all efforts, both initiatives were doomed to failure while the country entered a dramatic period of political instability and social unrest.     

Laying it down in stone: delimiting and demarcating Iraq's boundaries by mixed international commission

Mixed international commissions have been centrally involved in shaping the outer margins of the state territory of Iraq over the last century and a half. Laborious Anglo-Russian efforts to narrow the traditional Perso-Ottoman frontier in the seventy-year period before the Great War contrasted with the League of Nations' ostensibly speedy treatment of Iraq's more arbitrary northern and north-western territorial limits in the early inter-war years. Most recently, a team appointed by the UN Secretary-General finalised definition of Iraq's international boundaries with Kuwait when the emirate was liberated from Iraqi occupation in the spring of 1991. This article scrutinises the role played by these bodies in the boundary evolutionary process from a review of their primary records. It highlights the fact that the evolution of Iraq's (and those of its Ottoman forbears) international boundaries to the east, north and west was rarely straightforward and reflected both regional considerations and imperial contexts. The problem of reconciling inadequate textual definitions with features on the ground has been a constant phenomenon. Deciding whether commissions actually delimited or demarcated territory was as valid a question following the UN's Iraq–Kuwait settlement as in the mid-nineteenth century. Whether many historical treaty delimitations were ever designed to be anything more than territorial allocations is another theme explored in this article.     

台美英围绕联合国中国代表权问题的交涉（1951-1955）

中国代表权问题不仅是美苏为首的两大阵营对抗的最重要的冷战问题之一,而且是美国阵营内部歧见纷呈的问题。朝鲜战争爆发后,维护台湾在联合国的中国代表权符合美国的战略利益,但是英国并不紧随美国的指挥棒合拍地起舞。台湾利用美苏阵营的尖锐对抗,以小搏大,竭力争取美国支持直接否决反对台湾在联合国的中国代表权的方案。台美英三方均有各自的立场与考量,有时限的“缓议案”是三方博弈后的产物。随着美苏阵营对抗的渐趋缓和,台湾当局所能做的必定越来越多的是妥协与退让。