Ending World War II

In the late 1930s and 1940s, World War II was an opportunity for the colonial and imperial powers to anchor themselves in sharp opposition to the Nazi and fascist regimes. Through this opposition, the superpower themselves as the harbingers and guarantors of a "new global order." This chapter discusses the commitment to human rights as a way to construct a scheme of global rule, a scheme mediated by the United Nations. It shows that the UN&s;s explicit goal from the start was to make sure that all political formations in the world would conform to, and be contained within, its standard models of sovereignty and human rights. The chapter discusses the global teaching of "visual literacy" conducted by the Allies. At the core of the Allies&s; global "curriculum" were two tenets: first, the now-institutionalized distinction between legitimate and illegitimate violence, and second, the distinction between intentional violence and violence exercised as a necessary means for maintaining world order and peace.

Political science · History · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies