ABSTRACT
Rhetoric and declarations of support for the United Nations (UN) were all very well, but doubts lingered over whether the UN would be any more successful than its predecessor. If decisions regarding relatively unimportant areas of the world, such as the Horn of Africa, were meaningless, then there was little hope for the future of the UN. Whereas the League had faced that threat in Ethiopia in 1936, and failed, the UN would face it in Korea. The larger question was not the future of Italian Somaliland or Eritrea, but whether the authority of the UN would be enough to supersede the wishes of either of the superpowers. The subsequent Resolution, formerly adopted by the UN General Assembly on November 21, 1949, pledged that “Italian Somaliland shall be an independent sovereign state” after a ten-year period of trusteeship, administered by Italy on behalf of the United Nations.
