A Brave New Vision for International Cooperation

Modern History and Pope John XXIII’s Quest for Peace

Fr. Frederick Edlefsen  

Pope Leo recently warned that “war is back in vogue”.  Speaking to diplomats on January 9, 2026, he lamented the current language of peace through force rather than justice.  He was echoing the theme of Pope Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical, Populorum Progressio, that said “[human] development is the new name for peace”.   International law must not give way to the logic of power, he said. “The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined,” said the pontiff, noting that this mindset threatens the rule of law itself.  

What is the “principle established after the Second World War” that he was talking about?   And what did the Catholic Church say about it?  

Flashback to the 1920s 

After the horrors of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles founded the League of Nations on January 10, 1920.  President Woodrow Wilson was its primary architect.  The preamble of the League’s Covenant was wordy: “THE HIGH CONTRACTING PARTIES, in order to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war…by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among Governments…”  

Wilson left office the following year, and the U.S. never joined the League.  Moreover, Britain’s financial hegemony lapsed. The U.S. was unwilling to pick up where Britain left off as the leader of trans-Atlantic finance.  Throughout the 1920s, easy money boomed the U.S. economy, and banks were over-lending and over-leveraging.  Furthermore, German war reparations – “We will squeeze the German lemon until the pips squeak,” said Sir Eric Campbell – were tied to Allied war-debt repayments to the U.S., interweaving European debts with over-leveraged American capital.  War debts were restructured and refinanced through bank programs like the Dawes Plan (1924) and the Young Plan (1929).  The stage was set for a meltdown.  The bubble burst on October 29, 1929.  Banks retrenched.  Money liquidity dried up.  Prosperity gave way to depression, fueling nationalism and antisemitism in Europe.  The League, without U.S. leadership, was not equipped to “achieve international peace and security”.  Tragedy ensued.     

Flash forward to 1945   

Despite the League’s failure, it bore witness to the need for “international law as the actual rule of conduct among Governments.”  After World War II, there was no turning back.  Nations either cooperate for peace or risk mutual destruction.   Cordell Hull (U.S. Secretary of State), John Foster Dulles (senior U.S. advisor on the U.N.), and Anthony Eden (U.K. Foreign Secretary) were the lead statesmen in crafting the forthcoming Charter of the United Nations.   

Written in San Francisco shortly before the war’s end, the U.N. Charter was open for signature on June 26, 1945 by any sovereign nation willing to abide.  Fifty nations signed it that day.  

The Charter’s Preamble begins, “We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small…”  

The tone changed from the preamble of the League’s Covenant to the preamble of the U.N.’s Charter.  The former is addressed by “THE HIGH CONTRACTING PARTIES”.  The latter begins with, “We the peoples…”   The bloodbath of two world wars, a financial crash, a depression and poverty, racial nationalism, and six-million dead in a holocaust perhaps inspired this more humane choice of words.  There was a greater moral awareness:  We are all in this together.  

Article 1 of the Charter expressly states that the purposes of the U.N. are (1) to maintain international peace and security, (2) to develop friendly relations among nations, (3) to achieve international cooperation in solving international problems, and (4) to be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.  

On the following July 31, President Harry Truman authorized dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6 and another bomb on Nagasaki on August 9.  Japan surrendered.  But the Allied victory could be but a brief calm if concrete arrangements for peace were not soon forthcoming.   The aims of the U.N. Charter were more important than ever – and the stakes were critically higher.

The groundwork for the Charter of the United Nations

The Charter’s groundwork began in 1941.   When much of Europe and the Asian Pacific had fallen to Axis powers, the Allies were drafting principles and plans to secure world peace, cooperation, and development.  In June of that year, fourteen Allied nations met at Saint James Palace in London and agreed that peace requires cooperation among free peoples.   

That August, less than four months before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill secretly met on ships off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.  They proposed an Atlantic Charter of eight principles for post-war peace, saying that countries (1) were to seek no aggrandizement, territorial or otherwise; (2) no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the people's concerned; (3) respect for the rights of peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live, (4) that all states, great and small, have access on equal terms to trade and raw materials needed for their prosperity; (5)  full collaboration among nations to improve labor standards, economic advancement, and social security; (6) peace which affords all nations the means to live safely within their boundaries, free from fear and want; (7) unhindered sea travel; and (8) abandonment by all nations of the use of force, along with the disarmament of aggressors, “pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security.”   The Atlantic Charter was a pencil-sketch of what was to come.  

As early as the 1930s, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull foresaw the need for international cooperation in trade and finance.  In 1944, Cordell Hull, British economist John Maynard Keynes, and U.S. Assistant Secretary of Treasury Harry Dexter White met with delegates from Allied countries in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to make plans to stabilize the post-war global economy.  Hull, White, and Keynes agreed that the 1930s depression resulted from a void in financial leadership due to a weakened Great Britain and an unwilling United States.   They foresaw the need for a multilateral agreement on trade and finance to prevent another financial meltdown – and another world war.

Keynes proposed a global central bank called the International Clearing Union to even-out trade imbalances and a supra-national currency called a Bancor.   White nixed the idea as impractical and excessive.   In July 1944, the Bretton Woods Agreement was signed, establishing the U.S. dollar as the world’s first truly “global” reserve currency, pegging it to gold at $35/troy ounce.  It also established the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to maintain liquidity in cash-strapped countries and to avoid another depression.  They hoped this arrangement would enable free trade, fostered by a proposed International Trade Organization (ITO).   While the ITO did not pass the U.S. Senate, a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was established in 1948 for the same purpose.    

Bretton Woods aimed to establish a stable financial order that would enable institutions like the United Nations to promote peace and development.  The U.N.’s Charter would make further progress a month later at the Dumbarton Oaks Conversations in Washington, DC, which preceded the San Francisco Conference and finalizing the Charter in June 1945.   

Challenges for the United Nations

and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The U.N. Charter – underwritten by the principles of the Atlantic Charter and the financial arrangements of the Bretton Woods Agreement – established the organizational structures of the U.N.’s General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, Secretariat, International Court of Justice, and a Trusteeship Council (which ceased in 1994).  

Overwhelming challenges – straining the capacities of U.N. institutions – came to pass:  the Cold War, the nuclear arms race, conflicts over the new State of Israel (1948), and over eighty former colonies becoming independent nation-states between 1945 and 1960.   The U.N. often became the stage for political jockeying and ideological agendas.   But at least the platform was there. 

On December 10, 1948, at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  It “was drafted in direct response to the calamities and barbarous acts experienced by the peoples of the world during the Second World War” (U.N. Introduction, 2017).   

Arguably, the Declaration is a masterpiece of human civilization.  The Declaration’s preamble begins, “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world…”   The Declaration consisted of thirty articles.   It stated that the Articles are principles of universal human rights which are a “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance…”  

Article 1 states, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”   Article 3 says, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”   Article 6 says, “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”   It is also notable that Article 14 says, “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”   Other Articles speak of “the right to own property alone as well as in association with others” (Article 17) and the right to “freedom of thought, conscience and religion” (Article 18).

The Declaration’s resonance with the founding principles of United States is curious.  The Preamble of the U.S.’s Declaration of Independence speaks of “self-evident” and “unalienable” rights: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  

From the American Declaration of Independence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, political and legal action is proposed to promote personal rights and the common good all people – on a global scale.  Benjamin Franklin famously said, "Tis a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind; and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own".  On the last page of the U.S. Passport is a quote in small print from Anna Julia Cooper: “The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class – it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.”

The problem of uneven development

Uneven development among nations was a critical post-war challenge.  The progress of emerging states was often tied to finance: the need for cash reserves to import necessities, fluctuations in commodity prices (on which many countries were dependent), domestic corruption and institutional issues, the benefits and burdens of multinational corporations, and access to advanced medicine from Western countries.  In the 1950s, for example, conflicts within Guatemala and Cuba – which were tied to American corporate investments in fruit production – foiled attempts to establish democracy, human rights, and economic sovereignty.  The ideological crossfire of the Cold War often derailed democracy and hindered economic and social development.  

In addition to the World Bank and IMF, the U.N. created organizations to promote human development: the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the United Nation Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD, established in 1964) – to name a few.  Economic Commissions were also established to address regional issue in Africa, Europe, Latin American and the Caribbean, the Asian Pacific, and Western Asia.  The tasks of these organizations were enormous and often thankless.  Sometimes they fell short.   But much good was accomplished.  

The Catholic Church and international cooperation

The Catholic Church had no direct role in establishing the United Nations.  During the war, however, Pope Pius XII tacitly favored the idea of a multilateral institution akin to the U.N.   Like hidden leaven, Catholic diplomats and intellectuals were actively involved in creating post-war institutions.  For example, (the Venerable) Robert Schuman – architect of the European Coal and Steel Community (predecessor of the European Union) who served as French Prime Minister and later as Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the European Parliament – supported the foundation of the United Nations.  He was among the founders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Council of Europe.   Other Catholic influencers in the post-war internationalism include Konrad Adenaur (West German Chancellor, 1946-1966) and Alcide de Garpari (Italian Prime Minister, 1945-1953).  In brief, post-war structures for peace and prosperity were influenced by Catholics equipped with the ethos of Rerum Novarum (Pope Leo XIII, 1891) and Quadragesimo Anno (Pius XI, 1931). 

Hidden in the background, from the late 1950s until 1966, was Father Louis-Joseph Lebret, O.P., a recognized expert in the challenges of uneven development.  He was an advisor to the U.N. and to several emerging and newly independent countries.   Before his death in 1966, Lebret was a key contributor to Pope Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical Populorum Progressio (On the Development of Peoples).  Its most famous line is, “Development is the new name for peace” (Populorum Progressio 76-80).  The Holy See’s “Permanent Observer” seat at the U.N. was not established until 1964. 

Pope John XXIII and Pacem in Terris

The Catholic Church’s hidden involvement in internationalism went public in 1963.   On April 11 of that year, Pope John XXIII broke new ground in Catholic Social Teaching in his encyclical Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth).  It was his response to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when the U.S. and U.S.S.R. came within a hair’s breadth of nuclear war.  The Pope noted that the incident was not only rooted in Cold War geopolitics but, more profoundly, in the problem of uneven development.   Pacem in Terris was the Church’s first magisterial document addressed to the whole world – to “all people of good will”.   It was published, in its entirety, in The New York Times.  The Washington Post said, “it is the voice of the conscience of the world”.  A conference at the U.N. was later held to discuss the document. 

In Pacem in Terris, John XXIII said that the U.N.’s structures were outdated and strained by the enormity of challenges.  He proposed enhancing U.N. “structures and methods” to address the needs of human development: “It is therefore our earnest wish that the United Nations Organization may be able progressively to adapt its structure and methods of operation to the magnitude and nobility of its tasks.  May the day be not long delayed when every human being can find in this organization an effective safeguard of his personal rights; those rights, that is, which derive directly from his dignity as a human person, and which are therefore universal, inviolable and inalienable. This is all the more desirable in that men today are taking an ever more active part in the public life of their own nations, and in doing so they are showing an increased interest in the affairs of all peoples. They're becoming more and more conscious of being living members of the universal family of mankind” (PT 145).

The Pope said global problems require more than nation-states. Though more important than ever, nation-states alone are not equipped to cultivate their own development.  The U.N.’s institutions must be enhanced to help countries promote development, the common good, and resolve threats to peace:  “We are thus driven to the conclusion that the shape and structure of political life in the modern world, and the influence exercised by public authority in all nations of the world are unequal to the task of promoting the common good of all peoples” (PT 135). The “universal common good” is at stake, said the Pope, as it “presents us with problems which are worldwide in their dimensions; problems, therefore, which cannot be solved except by a public authority with power, organization, and means co-extensive with these problems, and with a worldwide sphere of activity. Consequently, the moral order itself demands the establishment of some general form of public authority” (PT 137). 

The Pope said the U.N. must “progressively adapt its structure” (PT 145) to leverage the effectiveness of the “nation state.”  The “nation state”, said the Pope, was being weakened by global financial arrangements. 

To be sure, John XXIII did not call for a “super-state”.  He emphasized the “principle of subsidiarity” (PT 140; Compendium of Catholic Social Doctrine 441).  Rather, he suggested that the institutional collaboration of states would change the calculus or “law” in which all states – even potential aggressors or miscreants – must act.  In the language of political economy, international law is not something enforced from on high but a structured collaborative atmosphere in which state must operate – a new kind of game theory. 

Furthermore, the Pope said states have a Ius Contrahendi – a juridical personality – to freely conclude treaties and agreements.  States have right and duty to cooperate for their mutual common good.  The point: We need an international agreement that addresses the “rights of nations” (Compendium of Catholic Social Doctrine 435).

“The same law of nature that governs the life and conduct of individuals must also regulate the relations of political communities” (PT 80).  Some nations, he says, may have attained to a superior degree of scientific, cultural, and economic development. But that does not entitle them to exert unjust political domination over other nations. It means that they must make a greater contribution to the common cause of social progress (PT 88).

If nations are (juridic) persons, then economic health requires international cooperation.  “There is also a growing economic interdependence between states. National economies are gradually becoming so interdependent that a kind of world economy is being born from the simultaneous integration of the economies of individual states. And finally, each country's social progress, order, security and peace are necessarily linked with the social progress, order, security and peace of every other country” (PT 130).

Implying the underlying principles of Bretton Woods, John XXIII said no state can fittingly pursue its own interests in isolation from the rest, nor, under such circumstances, can it develop itself as it should. “The prosperity and progress of any state is in part consequence, and in part cause, of the prosperity and progress of all other states” (PT 131). Without cooperation, modern states cannot ensure their common good. “In our own day, mutual relationships between states have undergone a far-reaching change.  On the one hand, the universal common good gives rise to problems of utmost gravity, complexity, and urgency – especially as regards the preservation of the security and peace of the whole world. On the other hand, rulers of individual nations, being all on an equal footing, largely fail in their efforts to achieve this, however much they multiply their meetings and their endeavors to discover more fitting instruments of justice. And this is no reflection on their sincerity and enterprise. It is merely that their authority is not sufficiently influential” (PT 134).  “We are thus driven to the conclusion that the shape and structure of political life in the modern world, and the influence exercised by public authority in all nations of the world are unequal to the task of promoting the common good of all peoples (PT 135).

Therefore, the Pope proposed a new Statecraft – the art of multilateral cooperation that enhances each nation-state’s ability to promote its own common good.  This new Statecraft is about operating within a rules-based international order – not grand strategies, nationalism, and state individualism.  Pope Francis suggested this kind of Statecraft in his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si: “True statecraft is manifest when…we uphold high principles and think of the long-term common good” (LS 178).   Building on Pacem in Terris, Francis said a farsighted politics is a high form of charity, providing for the common good of future generations.  The world needs a Statecraft of international cooperation “…capable of reforming and coordinating institutions, promoting best practices, and overcoming undue pressure and bureaucratic inertia” (LS 181).

Pacem in Terris opened a whole new dimension for Catholic Social Teaching that was perhaps more groundbreaking than Rerum Novarum, the first modern social encyclical by Pope Leo XIII in 1891.  The latter addressed the conflicts of the industrial revolution, which were mostly European and American problems.  On the other hand, Pacem in Terris addressed global problems.  

After Pacem in Terris, Catholic Social Teaching went global.  This profoundly influenced the Second Vatican Council, especially in Gaudium et Spes (The Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World).  Pope Paul VI’s 1967 Populorum Progressio (On the Development of the Peoples) was like “part two” of Pacem in Terris, saying that “development is the new name for peace”.  Henceforward, Catholic Social Teaching had a global consciousness – addressed to “all people of good will”.  

A brave new Statecraft

This history explains Pope Leo XIV’s January 9 words to diplomats.  Today’s tone and talk about war and about imposing economic pressure to get what one wants threatens the rules-based international order.  The threat is not to be taken lightly.  It leaves a trail of bitterness and distrust.  It threatens to undo the good will upon which Western alliances were built and unravel the carefully crafted network of charters, agreements, and institutions established after World War II, with a view to promoting good will and peace for the whole world.  “The principle established after the Second World War which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined,” said Pope Leo.

The weaknesses, problems, and even failures of international institutions – and indeed, problems abound – are not reasons to reject them.  On the contrary, they call for a new Statecraft, per John XXIII.   While institutional failures are often evident, successes are often unobvious and hidden – taken for granted, like background music.   Success is not always headline material.  As the old saying goes, “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.”    

Nations “going it alone” would lead to global anarchy.   No nation – not even the strongest – can prosper simply by shielding itself from enemies and the problems of other nations.  A healthy nation neither hides from the world nor sees it as an enemy.   Rather, it sees opportunities for collaboration and mutual prosperity.  A new Statecraft entails the difficult and tedious art of cultivating solidarity and friendship among all peoples, even among those who resist.   It is painstaking work.  It requires wisdom, perseverance, thought, study, and prayer.  The effort is worthwhile – and prophetic.  We need a brave new vision for international cooperation.