The UN and the Postwar Global Order: Dumbarton Oaks in Historical Perspective after 75 Years

The history of ‘Dumbarton Oaks’ is overshadowed in the formation of the postwar order, most notably by the San Francisco conference of April 1945 that gave birth to the United Nations Organisation. Yet in a number of important ways it was the Dumbarton Oaks conference, or the ‘Washington Conversations on International Peace and Security Organization’ to give it its full and formal title, that fundamentally shaped a ‘postwar international organization.’ In other words, the United Nations that has been an omnipresent feature of International affairs since 1945 owes a considerable debt to the gathering in the late summer and early autumn of 1944 in Washington DC.