President Trump’s “Board of Peace” may well prove a decisive blow for an already beleaguered United Nations. The UN has been in pretty tough times before, with big states ignoring the Charter almost since inception. But never has the UN’s principal founder and the world’s preeminent power since WW2 attempted to create a rival global peace organization. It’s important at this juncture to remember that animosity by many in the US towards the UN has a very specific history. (1/6) The UN during its first couple of decades was enormously popular with both US political leaders and the general public, even as America’s inbuilt majority in the General Assembly waned over the 1950s. Washington believed it could still count on the early Secretaries-General to remain faithfully aligned; U Thant’s role in deescalating the Cuban Missile Crisis only underlined a sense of UN usefulness. But in February 1965 everything changed when U Thant began to publicly criticize the war in Vietnam and questioned whether the American people were being told the truth. Even more annoyingly, he had begun seeking a brokered peace. For Washington the UN went from being an occasionally helpful tool to a dangerous political headache. (2/6)