Cooperation Despite Conflict: The United Nations

Despite ideological differences, the Allies shared a commitment to building a new organization to promote peace and prosperity to replace the League of Nations. The League had failed for two significant reasons:

• It lacked the support of all the world’s powerful countries, particularly the United States.

• It lacked a mechanism to act quickly to stop small conflicts from escalating into large ones.

In 1943, leaders of the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China discussed the idea of the United Nations (UN). The UN was established in 1945. (Connect: Write a paragraph comparing the United Nations with the League of Nations. See Topics 7.3 and 7.5.)