With the end of World War II and the advent of the Nuclear Age, the world's superpowers decided to get together and create a governing body to maintain the status quo that the war had created. In order to garner favor, weaker nations joined this group as junior members, and eventually most of the countries of the world had come together as the United Nations. The U.N. was used to maintain the same power structure by using its own military and financial institutions throughout the latter half of the 20th century and a good portion of the 21st, by which time the large corporations had largely taken over any international relations.