The Declaration of the Four Nations on General Security, or Four Power Declaration, was signed on 30 October 1943, at the Moscow Conference by the Big Four: the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China. The declaration formally established the four-power framework that would later influence the international order of the postwar world.[1] It was one of four declarations signed at the conference; the others were the Declaration on Italy, the Declaration on Austria, and the Declaration on German Atrocities.[2]
The declaration was drafted by US State Department advisers such as Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles, who presented it to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 10 August. Their proposal eschewed the regional councils, preferred by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in favour of establishing an international postwar organization.
It omitted any discussion of the potentially-controversial establishment of a permanent peacekeeping force after the war. Instead, its stated aim was simply the creation "at the earliest possible date of a general international organization."[3]
Roosevelt revealed the proposal to Churchill and Anthony Eden when they met at Quebec. Roosevelt stressed that the declaration would "in no way prejudice final decisions as to world order" and that the declaration was only an interim agreement. Churchill and Roosevelt reached a consensus that the declaration should be given high priority at the Moscow Conference, but Stalin wanted the conference to focus on the ongoing war against Germany. The Soviets also objected to the inclusion of the Republic of China as the fourth Great Power of the declaration, officially on the grounds that the Moscow Conference was planned as a meeting between three Great Powers (the US, UK and the Soviet Union). Roosevelt suspected that Stalin's true motivations were to avoid antagonizing the Japanese with whom they had signed a non-aggression pact in 1941. Churchill's view was that Stalin had a similar reluctance to recognize China as a Great Power.[3]
YouTube Encyclopedic
-
1/3Views:1 470 9641 4935 840
-
What you might not know about the Declaration of Independence - Kenneth C. Davis
-
1st January 1942: Declaration by the United Nations agreed
-
November Prophetic Prayers/Declarations - Apostle Joshua Selman Live | (Koinonia Messages 2021)
Transcription
"All men are created equal and they are endowed with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Not so fast, Mr. Jefferson! These words from the Declaration of Independence, and the facts behind them, are well known. In June of 1776, a little more than a year after the war against England began with the shots fired at Lexington and Concord, the Continental Congress was meeting in Philadelphia to discuss American independence. After long debates, a resolution of independence was approved on July 2, 1776. America was free! And men like John Adams thought we would celebrate that date forever. But it was two days later that the gentlemen in Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence, largely written by Thomas Jefferson, offering all the reasons why the country should be free. More than 235 years later, we celebrate that day as America's birthday. But there are some pieces of the story you may not know. First of all, Thomas Jefferson gets the credit for writing the Declaration, but five men had been given the job to come up with a document explaining why America should be independent: Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams were all named first. And it was Adams who suggested that the young, and little known, Thomas Jefferson join them because they needed a man from the influential Virginia Delegation, and Adams thought Jefferson was a much better writer than he was. Second, though Jefferson never used footnotes, or credited his sources, some of his memorable words and phrases were borrowed from other writers and slightly tweaked. Then, Franklin and Adams offered a few suggestions. But the most important change came after the Declaration was turned over to the full Congress. For two days, a very unhappy Thomas Jefferson sat and fumed while his words were picked over. In the end, the Congress made a few, minor word changes, and one big deletion. In the long list of charges that Jefferson made against the King of England, the author of the Declaration had included the idea that George the Third was responsible for the slave trade, and was preventing America from ending slavery. That was not only untrue, but Congress wanted no mention of slavery in the nation's founding document. The reference was cut out before the Declaration was approved and sent to the printer. But it leaves open the hard question: How could the men, who were about to sign a document, celebrating liberty and equality, accept a system in which some people owned others? It is a question that would eventually bring the nation to civil war and one we can still ask today.
See also
References
- ^ Garver 1988, p. 194.
- ^ United Nations Documents 1941–1945. Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute Of International Affairs. 1946.
- ^ a b Dallek 1995, p. 420.
Sources
- Dallek, Robert (1995). Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945: With a New Afterword. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-982666-7.
- Garver, John W. (1988). Chinese-Soviet Relations, 1937–1945: The Diplomacy of Chinese Nationalism: The Diplomacy of Chinese Nationalism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-536374-6.
This page was last edited on 28 February 2024, at 02:41