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ement of the development of the UN, the original member states gave the issue of membership much attention during the formative years of the organization. However, the decision by members to support new membership applications took on a decidedly political slant as the Cold War began in earnest during the 1950s and 1960s.

According to the UN Charter, membership is decided upon by current members, and the decision is to be based on the fulfillment of certain conditions. The idea of universality of membership was popular from the outset of the United Nations, but the original members decided that they could not simply grand membership to every state in existence. The states had to have a desire to join the organization and they had to fulfill certain conditions. These conditions were purposely written in such a way as to facilitate, rather than hinder the completion of universal membership. On the issue of membership, the Charter states:

Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.

During the formation of the Charter, there was a general consensus that admission of new members would not occur without the agreement of the major powers. This is a major difference between the League of Nations and the United Nations. The League of Nations required only a two-thirds vote of the assembly to admit a new member state [12] . As a part of the great powers’ special responsibility to ensure international peace and security, they felt they also should have a special role in determining the acceptability of applicant states. It was ultimately decided that new members would be admitted by decision of the General Assembly. However, the General Assembly would make its decision only based on the recommendation of the Security Council. In essence then, though technically the responsibility of the General Assembly, membership decisions were made inside the Security Council. As the Cold War developed, however, both the United States and the Soviet Union were inclined to interpret the admissions criteria outlined in the Charter in their own ideological terms.

The arrangement of the veto, which allows the permanent members of the Security Council to negate an issue as often as they see fit, tied Security Council decisions directly to Cold War politics. The system works well when the big powers are in agreement, since they can almost always persuade two smaller powers to give an affirmative vote on any issue [13] . However, when the powers are divided, as was the case throughout the Cold War, the Council is hindered in their decision-making abilities. In short, the existence of conflict, even ideological conflict, between any of the five permanent members of the Security Council was the determining factor in whether the Council could effectively make decisions on important issues, such as membership.

In 1946, just a year after the signing of the Charter, nine admission applications were received: Albania, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Jordan, Ireland, Portugal, Iceland, Thailand and Sweden. However, only four of the applicants were recommended for admission by the Security Council – Afghanistan, Iceland, Sweden and Thailand [14] . Throughout the debates on these applicant states, both the United States and the S