Volume 45, Number 12 · July 16, 1998

Looking for the Sheriff

By Brian Urquhart

BOOKS REFERRED TO IN THIS ARTICLE

FDR and the Creation of the UN
by Townsend Hoopes, by Douglas Brinkley

Yale University Press, 287 pp., $30.00

United Nations: The First Fifty Years
by Stanley Meisler

Atlantic Monthly Press, 386 pp., $24.00

The Reluctant Sheriff: The United States After the Cold War
by Richard N. Haass

Council on Foreign Relations, 148 pp., $24.95

Preventing Deadly Conflict: Final Report
by the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict.

Carnegie Corporation of New York, 257 pp.

In 1942, only a few months after the United States had entered World War II, as Hitler plunged deeper into Russia and Japan was advancing victoriously throughout the Pacific, President Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and his deputy, Sumner Welles, along with many politicians, journalists, and academics, were already involved in a debate on postwar arrangements. Many of the proposals were far-reaching, even revolutionary. In no other country did the shock of war create such a response at a time when the Nazis and the Japanese were still clearly winning. Such activities contrast strikingly with the negativism and lack of verve that now, in our peaceful time, characterize the discussion, when there is any, of international organization for the future.



Review, 6986 words

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