Foreign Policy Association · 2025
Peace Through Power
FDR's Military Leaders and the Pragmatism of the UN Charter
FDR's Military Leaders and the Pragmatism of the UN Charter
At a time when the UN Security Council's great powers — the United States, Russia, and China — are once again competing in their spheres of influence, current and aspiring foreign and defense policymakers would do well to revisit the vision of Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and their designated military leaders.
Peace Through Power documents that theirs was not an idealistic vision of world government but a prudent and pragmatic framework that has preserved international peace among the Great Powers for 80 years — and, so far, avoided the World War III that the UN Charter's drafters set out to prevent.
In his deeply researched account, Lukas Haynes reveals an entirely new aspect to how the United Nations came into being: the immersive involvement — and profound influence — of the U.S. military in designing the global security architecture that still governs our world today.
As the international order faces its most severe test since the Cold War, Peace Through Power offers both a corrective history and a pragmatic case for why the institutions FDR's generals and admirals helped build remain indispensable to American national security.
Peace Through Power sheds new light on how WWII military leaders saw the future geopolitical challenges to U.S. national security and the book's insights are still relevant today.
Many critics of the UN view it as an idealistic talk shop divorced from the national interests of the United States. In this gripping work of history, Lukas Haynes has unearthed the untold story of the immersive involvement — and influence — of the U.S. military in creating the UN. Peace Through Power highlights the pragmatic national security case for investing in the international system and for recognizing that more global stability and less human suffering ultimately benefit the American people.
In his deeply researched account of the U.S. military's role in helping to design the United Nations, Lukas Haynes has revealed an entirely new aspect to how the global security organization came into being. Haynes' illuminating story contributes a needed and overdue reassessment of the international body's birth.
Lukas Haynes is a recent author and foreign policy analyst whose career spans international relations, philanthropy, and U.S. government service. His book Peace Through Power: FDR's Military Leaders and the Pragmatism of the UN Charter, published by the Foreign Policy Association in 2025, is endorsed by Ambassador Samantha Power, four-star Admiral Samuel J. Locklear, and UN historian Stephen Schlesinger.
Haynes is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, where his research focuses on the intersection of U.S. foreign policy, multilateral institution-building, and great power competition. His work on the UN's founding — and the little-known role of American military leaders in shaping its architecture — offers a revisionist account of international order-building that challenges the prevailing narrative of liberal idealism. He has held visiting fellowships at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and Stanford University.
His career in policy and philanthropy has included senior leadership roles at the David Rockefeller Fund, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as well as service on the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State. He was an early advisor to Barack Obama's 2003–04 U.S. Senate campaign, contributing to the candidate's early positions on U.S. foreign policy and homeland security.
Haynes serves on the boards of the Clara Lionel Foundation and Protect Our Winters Action Fund, and on the advisory boards of the Center for Climate and Security and the Jackson Hole Institute. He is based in New York City.
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