The theme of today's U.N. International Day of Peace is sustainable development to eliminate poverty. It is an attractive goal. The problem is that the U.N.'s plans to diminish poverty leave capitalism in place and the plans to achieve peace ignore the United States as the dominant military power.Franklin Roosevelt was the main influential driver behind the establishment of the United Nations. I have read many books about him, and have learned much.
He was a protégé of President Wilson who like Wilson saw it as a forum where disputes among the nations of the world could be settled through negotiations rather than war. FDR's was brought up in a very comfortable setting that was based on the wealth that some of his ancestors obtained through imposed and exploitative trading activities in 19th century China.
I'm sure that he was never conscious of this and was quite tolerant of his capitalist contemporaries who aggressively exploited workers and resources to obtain similar wealth. He had faith that such activities could be controlled by government. FDR took the system of capitalism for granted and/or assumed that it was the best system possible. He regarded the many losers in this system with a sympathetic form of noblesse oblige which was reflected in many of his New Deal policies. Unlike the imperialist Churchill of Britain he was not so ideologically driven that he couldn't relate honestly with leaders of opposing systems like Joseph Stalin or promote state sponsorship of industries that benefited the nation like the TVA.
Because of his policies he was hated by many of his class who were driven by the capitalist ethos of profits and aggressive use of power. His naive beliefs about the UN as a force for peace was soon undermined by the emergence after WWII of a powerful capitalist-based Anglo-American Empire that took control of this institution so that it could never interfere with capitalist exploitative designs on the world nor their wars.
The biggest banks, transnational companies and financial institutions, like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, structure the U.N. projects while ignoring the massive destruction and dislocation of the wars. The objectives of the U.N. policy makers are to expand capitalist markets, maximize profits and restructure the developing countries more tightly into their economic web—not to redistribute the world’s wealth.
