At the conclusion of the 1945 San Francisco Conference that established the United Nations, President Harry Truman delivered a cautionary exhortation to his fellow Americans "to recognize, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please."
"This is the price which each nation will have to pay for world peace," he said. "Unless we pay that price, no organization for world peace can accomplish its purpose. And what a reasonable price that is."
Truman understood from the start what the Bush administration today seems unwilling to concede: that the benefits of international cooperation are well worth the cost. Indeed, by joining the U.N. -- the first worldwide security organization in which the United States had ever enlisted -- Truman helped the U.S. overcome a history of stubborn insularity. George Washington once warned his fledgling nation to "steer clear of permanent alliances." For most of the 19th century, the United States had conducted its foreign policy on a unilateral basis. In the first part of the 20th century, the country briefly dallied with the League of Nations, but then eschewed participating in it.
Now, in the final days of World War II, the U.S. was suddenly seated in the U.N., violating its own most hoary and cherished precepts of independence.
The Senate vote in July 1945 was overwhelmingly in favor of U.N. ratification -- 89 to 2. Two world wars within three decades in which more than 100 million people lost their lives had convinced political leaders from both parties that we could neither afford another planetwide conflagration nor prevent a new one alone.
Of course, no one really believed that the U.S. would have to give up all the prerogatives of its position. With the U.S. the richest, most powerful nation on Earth and the driving force behind the creation of the U.N., most American officials believed we would have little difficulty setting the general direction for the organization. To the extent we were not able to get our own way within the organization, we would have our Security Council veto power to fall back on.
By and large, this turned out to be right. We have gotten our wishes in the U.N. for most of its almost 60 years of existence. For example, the U.N. backed our dispatch of forces to Korea in 1950 to stop a communist attack, into Kuwait in 1991 to turn back Saddam Hussein, into Haiti in 1994 to reinstall Jean-Bertrand Aristide and into Afghanistan in 2001 to toss out the Taliban. It helped us settle the Suez crisis of 1956 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It has even periodically reformed itself at our urging. When the U.S. has made up its mind at the U.N., it usually has called the tune.
