A New United Nations for a New Era: Security, Development, and the 'Regional Solution' (The Case of Latin America)

The United Nations was signed into creation in 1945 against the backdrop of the end of World War II. At the time, the victorious powers and their allies were convinced that the world required an organization to oversee and provide guidance for and prevent conflict between both established and developing nation-states. The organizational design of the United Nations when it was established in the mid-1940s was intended to deal with the political and economic realities facing modern nation-states as they existed at that point in history. This thesis will explore the possibilities that exist for reorganizing the current United Nations in ways that would either establish or strengthen regional oversight and management structures of and by the nation-states of particular regions. The United Nations could, in this fashion facilitate the pooling of sovereignty by nation-states of the various regions to deal with the fact that many of the troubled regional hotspots of the world today will become the war zones of tomorrow. It is argued that strong, regional political frameworks with the backing of the United Nations could better address the extreme poverty, the inequitable division of wealth and the disorder and anarchy that contribute to the deteriorating quality of life for large numbers of people in the most troubled regons of the world today.