Key events

The Dumbarton Oaks Conference was held from August to October.

Its principal objective was to discuss the creation of an international organization to maintain peace after WWII. The United States, the Soviet Union, China and Great Britain attended the conference. The resulting Dumbarton Oaks Charter formed the framework for the U.N. Charter.

The construction of the U.N. Headquarters in New York began after U.S. business magnate John D. Rockefeller donated the necessary land.

North Korea invaded South Korea. The U.N. Security Council responded with a call to all nations to come to the aid of South Korea and repel the invasion. The motion succeeded only because the Soviet Union was boycotting the U.N. Security Council.

Fourteen U.N. member nations, led by the United States, pushed North Korea back across the 38th Parallel. This was the first military action taken by the United Nations.

After the incident, the U.N. Emergency Force (U.N.E.F.) was created and placed in Egypt to protect the canal and "keep the borders at peace while a political settlement is being worked out." Most of the peacekeepers were deployed on the Sinai peninsula along the Egyptian-Israeli border.

Iraq invaded Kuwait. The U.N. Security Council subsequently authorized the use of force to expel him. The United States responded by leading Operation Desert Storm and liberating Kuwait.

President George W. Bush spoke out against Iraq before the U.N. General Assembly, declaring: "Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test ... and the United Nations, a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced ... or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding ... or will it be irrelevant?"