When the U.N. Justified Itself ... A Little
R., H.
WATCHING THE PROCEEDINGS Of the U.N. Security Council during the August crisis, one could not fail to be impressed by the young representative of Czechoslovakia, Ian Musik, who calmly and...
...But such conferences were held even before the League of Nations...
...In fact, some such agencies are deliberately being kept outside the U.N...
...World opinion may be a rather elusive concept, and one can also point to the great number of occasions when the United Nations failed to bring that power to bear on an offender, or only appeared to assist in a world crisis...
...Still, the U.N...
...But in the Czech case of 1968 it was capable of providing a unique service, and successfully...
...The logic of their defeat may in turn have resuscitated some of the trust in collective security which had all but vanished these last years.—H...
...was there, a forum and sounding-board that for once could be put to good use by an outraged nation...
...Security Council during the August crisis, one could not fail to be impressed by the young representative of Czechoslovakia, Ian Musik, who calmly and without any rhetoric read the documents which refuted the Soviet claims...
...World opinion still had no armed divisions in 1968, and I am sure the Russians would not have minded being watched with awe any more than in 1965...
...That resonance, in turn, was fed back to the Czech people over the radio and fortified their will to resist...
...He stated that there exists a legitimate government of Czechoslovakia...
...was the only agency available to call the aggressor to order yet proved itself unable to do so...
...In other cases—and here we may think of the tragic futility of its protests against the invasion of Hunga-y in 1956 or its inability to settle last year's Mideast War—the U.N...
...lent its premises to a ministers' conference, and a U. N. resolution confirmed the truce...
...Conceivably, these same documents might have been sent to the individual chancelleries of the various powers, but that would not have been the same thing as submitting them to the U.N...
...For no one denies that whatever freedom is left to the Czechs and whatever room for maneuver they have preserved, they owe to themselves, to their own courage and coolness, as a nation and as individuals...
...But the skillful combination of resistance in Prague and statements in the Security Council, the cumulation of the Russians' inability to find a Quisling in Prague, their inability to rally the Communist parties of other countries or to justify their crime in the eyes of governments with whom they desire to transact other business—all this may have forced the Kremlin to moderate its policy vis-avis the Czechs...
...for certainly, knowing that the world is watching makes some difference...
...that no authorized person had called the Russians...
...but this service is purely technical and could have been set up by the powers under other auspices...
...and that in fact they had crossed the Czech border in contravention of all existing treaties and laws...
...was not the force that made a recalcitrant power yield...
...but he might have done that in a neutral capital, too...
...Or rather this service was used successfully...
...WATCHING THE PROCEEDINGS Of the U.N...
...The U.N...
...framework in order to allow the Chinese to participate whenever they are ready...
...has been an agency to handle the logistic and financial problems of a peace force or an armistice commission...
...Delegates' lounge...
...In the first Suez War, the U.N...
...Security Council, gathered in a solemn session and providing the Czech complaint with a worldwide resonance...
...In fact, world opinion could be brought to bear only because the Czech government had a policy and knew how to use the U.N...
...Thus, the crisis of the Berlin airlift was settled after an American delegate approached the Russian Ambassador in the U.N...
...In all these cases the U.N...
Vol. 15 • November 1968 • No. 6
