The Third World UN, 1960–80

Abstract

The decline in US dominance of the UN began in 1955 when America lost its ‘automatic’ two-thirds majority in the General Assembly. For in that year, after much superpower wrangling, sixteen new members were admitted. (Until then, Security Council vetoes or a lack of the required number of positive votes barred admission to any states expected to side with either superpower in the cold war.) Within a few years decolonisation had transformed the UN into a third world dominated organisation: out of 114 members in 1964, fifty-seven were Afro-Asians. In consequence, the UN of the mid-1960s would have been ‘hardly recognisable’ to those who were at San Francisco.¹