The Society of Nations and the United Nations are the successive children
of the same project of perpetual peace through collective security.
The United States was the initiator of this project and it imposed itself,
at the end of the First World War, as the umpire of the world balance
of power. With the creation of the Society of Nations, three key questions
were raised : who should be associated ? What police power ?
What economic bases ? The Society of Nations was an extraordinary
“first experiment”, but it was probably bound to fail, given the enormous
discrepancy between goals and means. The United Nations
drew the lessons from these shortcomings but could not help be
confronted again to the very structure of the world system which was
articulated around sovereign and highly unequal national states,
unwilling to give up their main asset, i.e. the control of their armed
forces.
Référence électonique : Philippe MOREAU DEFARGES, "From the Society of Nations to the United Nations", Pouvoirs, revue française d’études constitutionnelles et politiques, n°109, 109 - L’ONU,
p.15-26
. Consulté le 2023-02-03 03:55:58
. URL : https://revue-pouvoirs.fr/From-the-Society-of-Nations-to-the.html