Abstract
Before we can proceed with this debate we must establish the facts. Here is a brief and nonjudgmental history and description of the United Nations and its predecessor, the League of Nations. No clash of opinion here; the pyrotechnics will be found elsewhere.
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Notes
In the introduction to his The Concert of Europe, Rene Albrecht-Carrie summarizes the salient events of the “Concert” as the prelude to the League of Nations and the United Nations (New York: Walker, 1968), pp. 1–24. Immediately after the Congress of Vienna, which made the first post-Napoleonic settlement, the tsar of Russia, Alexander I, proposed that the great powers should meet regularly to assure that breaches of the peace should be prevented or, if necessary, be subjected to joint military intervention by the Great Powers. This proposal was rejected by the British cabinet on the ground that British arms should not be mobilized for causes in which British interests were not at stake. See F. H. Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), pp. 213–237.
One of the few who did was Sir Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary, who gave voice to his apprehension in a memorable lament: “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”
The positions of Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft, and Lodge, the principal actors in a momentous conflict, are outlined in John Milton Cooper, Jr., The Warrior and the Priest (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1985), pp. 301–302, et seq., passim.
By an ironical train of events, the father of Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., a distinguished permanent representative of the United States to the United Nations throughout the Eisenhower administration (1953–1960). For a thorough account of the historic conflict in the Senate, told from the standpoint of Senator Lodge, himself a historian, see Henry Cabot Lodge, The Senate and the League of Nations (New York: Scribner’s, 1925). See also Ralph Stone, The Irreconcilables; The Fight against the League of Nations (Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1970).
For the history of the drafting of the Covenant and its fate in the Senate, see F. P. Walters, A History of the League of Nations (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 25–74.
But throughout the life of the League there was much American cooperation with the League’s social and economic projects, and many prominent Americans served as League officials. See Walters, note 5, pp. 348–354.
Brazil’s insistence on membership in the Council as a Great Power was based on the argument that in the absence of the United States, Brazil was the largest and strongest member nation in the western hemisphere. It contended that the New World was entitled to at least one permanent representative on the Council.
For a full account of this complex episode, see Walters, note 5, pp. 316–327.
Walters, note 5, pp. 477–495.
Walters, note 5, pp. 623–691, has as good a brief account as a general reader will need. However, the course of these shabby events is an instructive case study in the problems of maintaining collective security through an international organization. For a relentless presentation of the details of the Italian aggression and the failure of the League to apply the provisions of the Covenant, see George W. Baer, The Coming of the Italian-Ethiopian War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 304–350.
Walters, note 5, pp. 75–79. See also The New Cambridge Modern History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), p. 477.
For an account of national interference in the personnel selection of the international civil service in the early days of the United Nations, particularly by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and the McCarthy Committee on Investigations, see Shirley Hazzard, Defeat of an Ideal (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), pp. 3–69. The memoir of Arkady N. Shevchenko, Breaking With Moscow (New York: Knopf, 1984), recounts many instances of Soviet abuse of the concept of an international civil service. While Shevchenko’s veracity as to other matters has been vigorously challenged, there is no reason to doubt his account of the assignment of Soviet intelligence personnel to United Nations civil service duties.
See Article 16 of the Covenant.
This distinction is elaborated in Alf Ross, The United Nations: Peace and Progress (Totowa, New Jersey: Bedminster Press, 1966), pp. 194–198. Ross thought that the distinction was of more theoretical than practical significance.
Brian Urquhart, Hammarskjöld (New York: Knopf, 1972, reissued by Harper & Row, 1984), p. 4.
To maintain an orderly succession, the Assembly of the League of Nations met for the last time on April 18–19, 1946, for the purpose of dissolving the League and transferring the Palais des Nations, and all its other possessions and archives, to the United Nations.
See Thomas M. Franck, Nation Against Nation (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 6–24. Franck impressively documents the naive and unreflective comments of some celebrated political figures of the 1940s in support of American membership and in ill-considered praise of the Charter. It is interesting to observe that no political figures of other nations exhibited such overweening certainty of the prospects for the United Nations’ success in preventing war forever.
The United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, and the USSR.
For a brief but instructive account of the diplomatic antecedents of the Korean War and the United Nations’ part in its origin and prosecution, see Franck, note 17, pp. 33–39.
Not including the specialized agencies, whose budgets depend on the voluntary contributions of those nations desiring to participate.
See the Charter, Articles 9–22.
General Assembly Resolution No, 377 A(V), November 3, 1950.
The Uniting for Peace Resolution has received much scholarly attention. I have found the discussion by Alf Ross and Thomas Franck particularly useful. Ross, note 14, pp. 44–45, 176–177; Franck, note 17, pp. 39–41, passim. See also Linda M. Fasulo, Representing America; Experiences of U. S. Diplomats at the UN (New York: Praeger, 1984), interview with Ambassador Ernest A. Gross, pp. 41–45. Dean Acheson, our secretary of state at the time, recounts his intentions in drafting this resolution in Present at the Creation (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), pp. 450–451. Conceding that the American veto would be weakened in the long range, he argued that “present difficulties outweighed future ones, and we pressed on.”
Urquhart, note 15, pp. 179–183.
It is said that in the republic of Zaire, when it was admitted to the United Nations in 1960, there were fewer than 10 citizens who were university graduates. That was an extreme case, but there were other African nations that were not much better provided with elites of administrative competence upon attaining their independence.
General Assembly Resolution 3379 (XXX), November 10, 1975. For two discussions of the antecedents of this resolution, see Fasulo, note 23, pp. 165–167 (interview with Rita A. Hauser, former U. S. delegate to the General Assembly) and pp. 205–206 (interview with former Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan). See also Franck, note 17.
That is, all delegates are “distinguished,” and all chairmen of any sessions are to be complimented on their wisdom, learning, and discretion.
For a fairly comprehensive account of the Economic and Social Council, with a reasoned appraisal of most of the activities it coordinates, see Evan Luard, The United Nations: How It Works and What It Does (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), pp. 55–71.
Article 2, § 7 of the Charter: “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such settlement under the present Charter....”
Ernest A. Gross, The United Nations: Structure for Peace (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962), pp. 86–89.
For an account of the Namibian episode and its antecedents up to 1965, see Ross, note 14, pp. 381–384.
In November 1985, the United Kingdom and the United States vetoed a proposed resolution calling for mandatory sanctions to be imposed by all member states against South Africa because of its refusal to terminate its occupation of Namibia. See The New York Times, 16 November 1985.
The comments of Alf Ross, the Danish jurist, are on the mark: “Even though the forces that during the past 20 years have led to the collapse of the colonial system were not conjured up by the United Nations, there can scarcely be any doubt that the Organization has precipitated this process.... The more the former colonial territories. . . crowded into the General Assembly... the more one-sided and insistent the Assembly became in its demand for the unconditional and immediate ending of all colonial rule. The Eastern bloc states have... supported this demand as a move in the cold war and the competition to gain friends and win sympathy among the young states.” Ross, note 14, p. 406.
See Appendix B for the full text of the Statute.
Ross, note 14, p. 143, cites six principal legal systems as qualified under the statute—common law, Roman law, Marxist law, Islamic law, Indian law, and Chinese law—but concedes that there is no consensus about these six. He cannot “connect any idea with the phrase ‘main forms of civilization.’ “
Ibid., pp. 145–146.
Luard, note 28, p. 96.
Article 99.
See Hazzard, note 12, for an account of this episode, for which she vigorously criticizes Lie as responsible for the demoralization of the U.N. civil service.
Brian Urquhart, his biographer, noted that “he had been proposed originally by the Western permanent members of the Security Council on the mistaken assumption that as Secretary-General he would be a safe, rather colorless, non-political technocrat.” Brian Urquhart, “International Peace and Security: Thoughts on the Twentieth Anniversary of Dag Hammarskjöld’s Death,” Foreign Affairs 60(1) (Fall 1981), pp. 1–16.
Hammarskjöld’s moving response to Khrushchev in a speech before the General Assembly is reproduced in full in Urquhart, note 15, pp. 463–464. Urquhart records that the Assembly responded with a protracted ovation while Khrushchev and Gromyko pounded the table with their fists.
Shevchenko, note 12, p. 102. Shevchenko adds that “friends working on African affairs once told me that they had seen a top-secret KGB report indicating that the aircraft [on which Hammarskjöld had been traveling] had been shot down by pro-Soviet Congolese forces penetrated and guided by operatives from the USSR (p. 103). Urquhart is skeptical; “so far none of [the conspiracy theories] is backed by anything other than rumor, speculation, and fantasy.” Urquhart, note 15, p. 593.
For details of this ultimately tragic episode, see Urquhart, note 15, pp. 389–456, 499–529, 545–589.
Opération des Nations Unies au Congo.
For a good brief account of Hammarskjöld and ONUC, see Franck, note 17, pp. 174–177. Much more detail will be found in Urquhart, note 15, pp. 389–456, and 565–589.
Franck, note 17, p. 176. It was at this time that Khrushchev proposed that the office of the secretary-general should be abolished and its administrative functions carried out by a “troika” consisting of three officers representing the West, the socialist states, and the nonaligned states. Shevchenko, note 12, p. 102, characterizes the idea as “zany,” an opinion that was widely shared in the General Assembly. The idea was never put to a vote in either the Security Council or the General Assembly, although the Russians attempted various stratagems to bring about a veto power on the actions of the secretary-general.
Quoted by Franck, note 17, p. 121.
Andrew Boyd, United Nations: Piety, Myth, and Truth (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1964), pp. 121–159.
Franck, note 17, pp. 152–158. Franck holds that negotiation could not have succeeded because as early as 1964 the North Vietnamese knew that they could win and would have accepted no settlement other than complete capitulation. In view of the final outcome of this war, an early attempt at negotiation could hardly have been a harmful exercise and might have saved lives and treasure.
Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization (United Nations General Assembly, Official Records of the General Assembly, Fortieth Session, Supplement No. 1 (A/40/1), September 1985.
Urquhart, note 15, p. 15.
Luard, note 28, p. 101.
Shevchenko, note 12, pp. 220–229.
United Nations Department of Public Information, Basic Facts About the United Nations (New York: United Nations, 1984), p. I.12.
France received the mandate for Syria and Lebanon, the other Mediterranean Turkish provinces, which it retained until the end of World War II.
For a vivid account of conditions in Palestine immediately before World War II, see Hugh Foot, A Start in Freedom (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964), pp. 35–57. Foot was later to become the permanent representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations and served as such during the aftermath of the Six-Day War in 1967.
The negotiation of the armistice was regarded as so significant a contribution to peace in the Middle East that Bunche was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Except, of course, for Egypt, which signed a peace accord with Israel at Camp David under the auspices of President Carter in 1979.
Franck, note 17, pp. 87–93. Franck makes the cogent point that this episode demonstrates a serious weakness in the concept of a U.N. peacekeeping force. A national contingent can be expected to remain in place only so long as the interests of the nation are seen to coincide with the purpose of the emergency force. In the case of UNEF, the Yugoslavian and Indian contingents represented nations with serious reservations about their interests in an Israeli-Egyptian conflict.
For an account of the negotiations preceding the passage of Resolution 242, see Lord Caradon’s article. “The Security Council as an Instrument of Peace,” in Multilateral Negotiation and Mediation; Instruments and Methods, Arthur S. Lall, (New York: Pergamon Press, 1985), pp. 9–13. See also Fasulo’s interview with Ambassador Goldberg in Fasulo, note 23, pp. 103–104, and her interview with William Buffum, pp. 116–120.
Franck, note 17, has a summary account of the Yom Kippur War and the diplomatic maneuvers that accompanied and followed it, pp. 170–177. See also Shevchenko, note 12, pp. 253–261.
For a factual account of the present situation and its antecedents, see Frederica M. Bunge, ed., Cyprus: A Country Study (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1980), pp. 37–52, 155–204. A more recent account is contained in Christopher Hitchens, Cyprus (London: Quartet Books, 1984), Hitchens’s book is written “in sorrow but more—much more—in anger.” Well documented, full of villains to excoriate, sympathetic to the Cypriot people, but devoid of suggestions for the eventual resolution of the persisting conflict, the book is a pessimistic case study. For the Turkish case, see Rauf R. Denktash, The Cyprus Triangle (London: George Allen & Un-win, 1984). See also Kurt Waldheim, In the Eye of the Storm (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985), pp. 78–92, for a compelling account of the difficulties of moderating negotiations between two intransigent parties.
Franck, note 17, p. 179.
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© 1987 Ernest van den Haag and John P. Conrad
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Conrad, J.P. (1987). The Undebatable Facts and Events. In: The U.N. In or Out?. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-5984-3_2
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