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This chapter discusses the designing and founding of the United Nations. The main problem that U.S. postwar planners faced was how to design a global organization that followed democratic principles and recognized certain universal rights. The discussion looks at the postgeographic ambition of Theodore Roosevelt's new world order and the way the UN was intended to place international diplomacy beyond national differences and geography. It studies regionalism and globalism, and shows that the State Department lacked serious knowledge on Soviet thinking. Other topics covered in the chapter are the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, the “regionalism crisis”, and the activities of the UN until it became an instrument of U.S. foreign policy during the 1990s.

This chapter argues that, if the celebrated speech of January 10, 1945, did not transform Vandenberg into an internationalist, his appointment as a delegate to the conference in San Francisco did. It also tells how Vandenberg needed someone to guide him through the thickets of diplomacy and found an experienced mentor in John Foster Dulles. He found another ally in Walter Lippmann, one of the most influential American political philosophers in the twentieth century. Although Vandenberg and Lippmann’s initial contacts were confrontational, their respect for each other increased due to their shared beliefs that America should build up its defenses and avoid a situation in which intervention in the European war would be a practical possibility. At the San Francisco conference, Vandenberg was concerned about whether or not the Soviets were actually willing to create a world organization. Ultimately, Vandenberg maintained a strong nationalistic position regarding existing American regional commitments while simultaneously supporting collective security and internationalism. He finally recognized both the primacy of the United Nations in America’s future and his own role in making that future possible.

This chapter discusses the impact that World War II had on Vandenberg’s political philosophies. He realized that, when the war ended, some form of international cooperation would be inevitable. Vandenberg was assigned to key Senate subcommittees and it was in these arenas that he honed his budding skills in foreign relations. He developed a foreign policy for himself and the Republican Party that differed from the Democrats’ policy while sharing a general recognition of an imminent internationalist future. Vandenberg and his colleagues encouraged negotiations for a postwar conference that would take place at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., between the United States and its allies—Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. The Dumbarton Oaks proposals called for a United Nations organization, a Security Council, an Economic and Social Council, and an International Court of Justice. Moreover, this chapter details Vandenberg’s speech to the Senate on January 10, 1945, which advocated cooperation between parties in America as well as with the world through the new UN organization. Vandenberg’s speech was a milestone in not only world affairs, but in his own evolution from isolationist to internationalist.

This chapter describes how the protection of human rights came, during World War II, to feature in schemes for creating a new world order, encouraging the drafting of comprehensive codes of rights to be protected. It considers the role of the British and American governments in this development, giving accounts both of private initiatives, such as that of H. G. Wells, and official contributions, as in the Atlantic Charter and United Nations Declaration. It describes the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, and the processes which led to the establishment of the United Nations, and the idea that it should be concerned with the international protection of human rights in the post war world. It examines the resulting expansion of the boundaries of international law at the expense of protected domestic jurisdiction.

The success of the D-Day landing on June 6, 1944 began the last stage of World War II that culminated in victory in Europe in May 1945 and Asia in August 1945. While Roosevelt did not live to see the final victories, his actions in 1944 and early 1945 shaped much of the postwar period. The month after the landings at Normandy beach, forty-four nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire where they established the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In August, delegates from around the world gathered at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in Washington to begin the establishment of the United Nations. In February, 1945, the Big Three met again at Yalta to plan for the end of the war, occupation of Germany, and postwar peace.