ABSTRACT
The United Nations (UN) system was in many respects a child of the League of Nations, the attempt following World War I to organize a global political community sufficient to prevent war. The League is viewed by most historians today as a failed project, and those who designed and conceived the UN viewed the UN Charter as a means of remedying the manifest inadequacies of the League’s structure. The UN was conceived, designed, and established even before World War II ended. The UN is formally centered around a General Assembly consisting of representatives of each member state in the organization, a Security Council composed of the great powers and a rotating set of other members, a Secretary-General, and a Secretariat to handle administrative tasks. The theoretical foundation of the original UN security system was that at the call of the Security Council, member states would take adequate action to put an end to aggression or unlawful use of force.
