Institutions of War and Peace

Abstract

The author conducts a comparative analysis of international institutions that emerged as a result of two world wars in the twentieth century — the League of Nations and the United Nations, and shows their fundamental diff erence. The author rightly believes that the League of Nations was unable to prevent the Second World War due to the imperfection of its Charter and the lack of universal principles embodied in it. These shortcomings, according to the author, were due to the instability of the Versailles-Washington system, which failed to overcome the contradictions that later led to a new world war. Unlike the League of Nations, the United Nations, established after the Second World War, was able to take into account the systemic shortcomings that were originally embedded in the statutory principles of the former organization. The author focuses on the "veto" rule, which is the fundamental principle of the UN Charter, and shows its fundamental diff erence from the principle of "liberum veto" of the Statute of the League of Nations, which allowed any dissenting state to block a decision regarding the defi nition of a threat to peace and condone aggressor countries to freely exercise their expansionist plans. The author takes into account that the UN is an organization of the “nuclear age”, since the Yalta system determined the status of permanent members of the Security Council as victors in World War II and leading nuclear powers in the UN Charter. The author argues that complex international confl ict situations can only be resolved through the joint eff orts of the world community. With the help of various international mechanisms, regional confl icts must be resolved by political and diplomatic methods, and they must not be allowed to develop into a global confl ict, since a new world confl ict in the context of globalization can only be at the nuclear level. The UN Charter lays down the principles for resolving international regional problems and their settlement by political means. The author comes to the conclusion, that the United Nations is a stable international institution to prevent a new world war and maintain international security. Unlike the League of Nations, which failed to prevent the Second World War, the UN is an institution for actually preventing world crises and building a new post-war world order, which has been ensuring the sustainable development of mankind without global wars for more than 75 years.