Not what the OP calls for, but...
A Failure to Unite.
Anyone who has so much as read a high school level history book from the last forty years will have undoubtedly stumbled upon refernce to an institution that existed in the post war period called the United Nations. Although the institution is still in existance today under the name The Council of Nations, over the decades since 1950 it has been in a perpetual state of decline. The question this paper inteneds to ask is, why?
The organization, like its predecessor the Leaugue of Nations, was conceived with that ever noble idea of the preservation of peace between the nations of the world, and when the institution officialy came into being on October 24th, 1945 it appeaered to everyone that the idea of a world at peace with itself might be atainable within thier lifetimes. However the institution charged with helpping to keep the peace would find itself unable to do so when it faced its first major challenge in June of 1948. It was in that year that the Soviet Union sealed the western controled sector of Berlin off from the rail and road routs that shipped supplies into and out of the half of the city. Although the details of the Berlin crisis of '48 and the airlift are unimportant for this paper, the reaction of the United Nations and its actions are.
When the Soviets under Stalin blockaded the city, the United Nations was quick to pass judgement on the Soviets for thier actions, and the organization attempted to persude its members to put sancations on the USSR even after the Soviets used thier power of veto on the legislation attempting to condem them. The actions of the organization still in its infancy against one of its largest members convinced Stalin that the organization was simply a tool of the western governments against the Soviets, but he proved reluctant to withdraw his nation from the organization at this early date.
Although the blockade of Berlin would end on 12 May 1949, the damge done to the Soviets opinion of the institution would not be healed by the time the next major crisis hit in 1950 with the start of the Korean War. On June 27th of that same year, the security concil met, and all but the Soviet Union voted in favor of military aid to the South Koreans, however the Soviet Union exercised its power of veto blocking direct United Nations aid to the South Koreans. Rather than allow the south to fall to communism, the other nations of the security council intervened in the conflict anyway. This proved the last straw for the aging Soviet dictator, and the Soviet government quickly withdraw from the organization. This would prove the first of a series of fatal blows to the young United Nations.
Following the Soviet withdrawl, the communist nations of eastern Europe(excluding Yugoslavia) involved in the organization followed the Soviets out, and the other nations in the communist block ceased to express in joining. It would prove to be all down hill from there. After Austria was allowed to reunify in 1955, the United Nations expected it join and reverse the trend of withdrawls, but their hopes were dashed when the bill to join was defeated in the Austrian parliament by ten votes. The decolonization of Africa and Asia further sunk the hopes of the organization when only a mear ten percent of the countries gaining independence opted for membership.
The United Nations was delt its most painful blow in 1974 with the withdrawl of the United States under President Nixon. After the withdrawl of the Soviets a generation earlier, the United States had been steadily losing interest in the organization, and under democrat and republican administrations alike had been doing things to limit its involvement. Arguably, the United States membership would probably have continued had it not been for the Peoples Republic of CHina vetoing UN involvement in the renwed conflict in Korea. China had accepted membership in the United Nations as a way to distinguish their brand of communism from the Soviet Union following the Sino-Soviet split, but the change from the RoC to the PRC proved to be at the wrong time.
Although restraints on size prohibit the author of this paper from going into the details, under the urging of president Nixon, congress voted to both withdraw from the UN, and enter into renewed Korean conflict. With the US involving itself anyway, China approched the security concil about applying sanctions against the United States for getting involved, but Britain vetoed this. Mao, now seeing the organization as a farce, withdrew China from it.
Now, with the United States, the Soviet Union, and both China's no longer members, the UN went into a death spiral. between 1975 and 1985, Britain, France, the Scandinavian nations and India all withdrew from the organization. Between 1986 and 2000 the nation lost a full seventy five percent of its memebrship. In 2001 it changed its name to the Council of nations.
Today, the Council of Nations consists of 25 nation scatered throughout the world. It is centered in Belgium. It is sad to think that the United Nations, an organization brought into the world with such nobel intentions, would prove to be as much of a failure as the one it replaced.