Abstract
Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations Organization’s second secretary-general, was weary of great power politics. He welcomed decolonization and believed that the UN’s General Assembly with its growing number of newly independent states should have a bigger say in international governance. The Swedish diplomat was markedly at odds with Charles de Gaulle who firmly believed in the right of a few powerful nations to decide on war and peace – the five Second World War victors who were, and still are, sitting on the Security Council. Yet the French president did share with Hammarskjöld the idea that the world needed a place like the UN where ‘all nations could meet on an equal footing and discuss together the matters of the universe’.