The United Nations (UN) was established toward the end of World War II in 1945 as the successor intergovernmental organization to the League of Nations. The UN's primary purpose is to maintain or restore international peace and security, and to this end the founding members established a potentially powerful executive organ, the Security Council, that consists of fifteen members, five of which are permanent (China, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France). The idea was that the Security Council would take collective security measures to deal with threats to or breaches of international peace, for example, through the imposition of economic sanctions against member states violating or threatening peace or through the use of armed forces put at the Council's disposal by member states.

One of the effects of the Cold War (1945–1989) between the United States and the former Soviet Union was that the Security...