The United Nations was founded in 1945, with the explicit goal of avoiding another such conflict, and it worked hard to make borders sacrosanct. The old idea that war was merely the continuation of politics by other means, just one of the tools for statecraft, was replaced by the idea that war is a crime and illegal unless in self-defence. European powers gave up the idea of territorial expansion and dismantled their empires, sometimes after revolts and conflict, sometimes peacefully, which meant the end of colonial wars and atrocities. A new Cold War between America and its allies and the
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