The United Nations began as an alliance during World War II. Eventually, however, the UN
came to approximate a universal organization-ie, open to and aspiring to include all States.
This presents a legal question, for Article 4 of the Charter contains substantive criteria to limit
admission of States to the UN and no formal amendment has touched that part of the
Charter. This book gives an up-to-date account of admission to the UN, from the 1950s
'logjam'through on-going controversies like Kosovo and Taiwan. With reference to Charter …

It may seem decidedly archaic in 2009, and not a little eccentric, to devote a 300 page
monograph to the topic of admission of Member States to the United Nations. After all, there
are, on current evidence, less than a handful of entities that could possibly be called 'States',
and thus possibly qualify for admission. This entails a generous interpretation of the status of
Taiwan and Kosovo. In short, it would seem to make the topic, really, a non-starter,
something that may have been of interest in the 1950s but surely no longer in the early 21st …