ABSTRACT
For a generation after the founding of the United Nations, American presidents, to varying degrees, saw and employed the world body and its associated entities as critical structures in the liberal world order, meant to save the world from the scourge of world war. In the maintenance of peace and security in the nuclear age and the amelioration of the underlying social and economic causes of war, the United Nations was a useful instrument of foreign policy. Despite the cold war stalemate, presidents from Truman to Carter, buoyed by a domestic internationalist consensus, supported UN action (e.g., Korean War, Suez Crisis, Kashmir Crisis, Arab–Israeli Wars), or sought to lower the threat of conflict through UN diplomacy (e.g., arms control, Cuban Missile Crisis). Beginning with the Truman administration, for more than three decades, the United States employed the United Nations to advance its goals for international development, decolonization, and human rights, in the effort to create a world reflective of American democratic values and the peaceful resolution of disputes. However, by the end of Jimmy Carter’s term in office, there was a growing public backlash to what was seen as an anti-American orientation in UN politics. In the ascendancy was a new hostility to the UN as a valued component of U.S. foreign policy.
