United Nations (Mere Men)

This Mere Men article has not been expanded past 1948 yet.

United Nations
Flag of the United Nations
Abbreviation	UN
Predecessor	League of Nations
Formation	1941 (Joint Declaration) 1942 (Declaration of the UN) 1948 (UN Charter)
Type	Intergovernmental organization, military alliance
Official languages	English, French

United Nations, often abbreviated to just UN is an intergovernmental organisation and a military alliance. Officially, the United Nations' purpose is maintaining international peace and cooperation, but it is very limited in its capabilities. The United Nations evolved directly from the Allies of the Second World War.

History

After the German invasion of Poland on 1 Septmber 1939, the United Kingdom and France formed the Anglo-French Supreme War Council on 12 September to coordinate military actions against Germany, forming together with Poland the basis of the Allies. More nations joined the Allies as the war continued, although France temporarily withdrew in June 1940 after the German invasion. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States entered the war. Very soon, the American president Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Leopold Amery signed the Joint Declaration, in which the two powers outlined their aims in the war. Other Allied nations including several governments in exile soon also signed the Declaration.

After lengthy negotiations, caused by American unwillingness to declare war on the Soviet Union, which was the only major Fourpartite Pact member to not declare war on the United States after the Pearl Harbor attack, a second declaration called the Declaration of the United Nations was signed, calling for the unconditional surrender of the Fourpartite Pact for the war to be over. With the new declaration, the signatories which had not done so earlier officially declared war on Germany, Japan and Italy, but, under American pressure, did not have to declare war on the Soviet Union until German surrender. When the Soviet Union invaded Germany in 1943, the Soviet government asked to sign the Declaration, but this was refused by the British government.

After the fall of Berlin in 1946, a decision was made by the leadership of the United Nations, now consisting of James F. Byrnes for the United States and Clement Attlee for the United Kingdom, to offer peace negotiations to the Soviet Union and end the war in Europe. The conference in Havana resulted in an armistice with Soviet Union. President Byrnes, who was the main initiator of the negotiations, argued that the Soviet Union could not be considered a Fourpartite Pact power since the invasion of Germany in 1943. After the surrender of Japan in 1948, a conference was called to New York, where the United Nations Charter was signed in the New York City Building, proclaiming itself as the continuation of the League of Nations. France, which rejoined the Allies after the German withdrawal in 1944, objected to the adoption of the Charter and left the United Nations, becoming the last war-time Allied nation to not sign the Charter, after Yugoslavia and Greece, whose governments in exile were signatories of the Declaration of the United Nations before entering into coalition with communist partisan governments, who were not interested in attending the New York conference.

After the war, it soon became clear that Roosevelt's initial plan for a global alliance was to remain unfulfilled as France withdrew and Britain continued to oppose Soviet membership, especially after Byrnes suggested that the USSR would join the United States, United Kingdom, China and at the time France as the fifth major power, which would later receive veto rights. However, the alliance would regain purpose after the People's Republic of China was proclaimed and the Kuomintang government fled to Taiwan, when the American president Douglas MacArthur, whose plan for an invasion of Chinese mainland was rejected by the Congress, delivered a speech in which he proposed to reinvent the organisation as a multilateral military alliance to defend against further spread of communism. This speech is often considered as the official declaration of the Silent War.

Member states

Member state	Date of admission
Argentina	1952
Australia	1948
Belgium	1948
Bolivia	1948
Brazil	1948
Canada	1948
Chile	1948
China	1948
Colombia	1948
Costa Rica	1948
Cuba	1948
Dominican Republic	1948
El Salvador	1948
Ethiopia	1948
Guatemala	1948
Haiti	1948
Honduras	1948
India	1948
Italy	1948
Luxembourg	1948
Mexico	1948
Netherlands	1948
New Zealand	1948
Nicaragua	1948
Norway	1948
Panama	1948
Paraguay	1948
Philippines	1948
South Africa	1948
Sweden	1948
Switzerland	1948
United Kingdom	1948
United States	1948
Uruguay	1948

List of secretaries general

Portrait	Name	Took office	Left office	Country
	Lester Bowles Pearson (1897–1972)	1948	1958	Canada