ABSTRACT
The United Nations was designed to address some of the core deficiencies of the League-
both the need to maintain universal membership and to create a security decision-making
body that was not constrained by a unit veto system. A Faustian bargain was struck that
ensured that major powers joined and remained in the organization: the designation of five per-
manent members of the UN Security Council and granting them the veto. It was an arrangement
that was initially resisted (Hurd, 2007) and dialectically threatens the legitimacy of the body to
this day, particularly the further we get from 1945. The UN is essentially a fusion of great power
political balancing and a revised system of collective security, founded on lessons learned from
the deficiencies of the League.
