NATO and the UN:
GROSS, ERNEST A.
Rivals or Partners ? NATO AND THE UN By Ernest A. Gross The communique of the December meeting of the NATO Council was, on the whole, a forward-looking document. It was important to agree to...
...Adherence to NATO is not exclusive or restrictive...
...The Paris "session at the summit" did not mark a sudden change in the affairs of the alliance, but rather an awakening to realities which had overtaken it...
...The tone, as well as the substance of the matter, readily appears from the unanimous Report of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (81st Congress, First Session...
...Nevertheless, five years before, Canada had spontaneously joined with us in the Korean War...
...With even grander sweep, the Senate committee announced its desire to assure that NATO would "not compete with or impair the authority of the United Nations...
...Nevertheless, the very gravity of the problem calls for understanding rather than escapism...
...The inherent limitations of NATO as a mechanism for exclusive political cooperation are only too clear...
...Recently, a well-informed person—himself a warm supporter of both organizations—admonished me when I raised this question...
...Nothing essentially new has occurred since 1949 in this state of affairs...
...Sputnik merely illuminated the scene and set the stage for the NATO Council meeting...
...An example of an almost unconscious repudiation of the value of the UN Charter guarantee may be found in a statement by Secretary Dulles in April 1955...
...Lest even this broad statement be thought by some to have only limited reference to the Security Council—which even then had become immobilized by Soviet abuse of the veto —the Committee took pains to make clear that its desire to avoid competition with the UN applied "not only to the Security Council but to other organs of the UN, which, the Committee understands, the parties intend to use wherever appropriate...
...And in regard to economic cooperation the Three Wise Men warned: "It would not serve the interests of the Atlantic Community for NATO to duplicate the operating functions of other international organizations designed for various forms of economic cooperation [referring to the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the International Monetary Fund, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and other UN agencies...
...For us to surrender in the face of Soviet competition would only be an open confession of Western diplomatic bankruptcy...
...Given such leadership, the United Nations—even if its membership be as large as the planet—will always rally to the call of freedom...
...In this context, there is no need to urge large improvement in the uses of the United Nations in the fields of economic cooperation and development of human rights...
...The difficulty is that the decisive importance of community power has commanded more lip-service than actual loyalty...
...The enemies of freedom are behind our lines...
...Before the war, he served as counsel to the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Labor Relations Board...
...It violated the most essential requirements of a coalition based upon consent...
...But it is quite a different thing to say that it can work better...
...That, after all, is what the responsible leaders were trying to say in 1949...
...Then, it is said, the newly elected members of the Afro-Asian group make the General Assembly undependable, if not downright irresponsible...
...Italics added...
...Yet, much of the tension is itself generated by Soviet refusal to accept either the premises or the processes of good-faith "negotiation" in any rational sense of the term...
...It must be said that, although the NATO communique was forward-looking viewed in this light, it nevertheless reflected a vital deficiency...
...Moreover, almost every major political, strategic and economic problem which besets the members of NATO is rooted in other continents and spans other oceans...
...These all may appear to be merely negative considerations...
...You seem to forget," he said, "that NATO has no connection with the United Nations— none whatsoever...
...NATO provides essential air and naval bases, to which its various members can contribute—each according to its means and capabilities...
...Nevertheless, it is hard either to discard or to discount the careful study on the problem of consultation among NATO members, which is reflected in the same report...
...Turkey and Greece but not Yugoslavia...
...And it requires all the resources of an expanding coalition of freedom, generated in a climate of confidence...
...This is axiomatic and was as clearly perceived by Senator Vandenberg in 1949 as it is today by any realist or exponent of power politics...
...Experience thus far justifies the conclusion that, with sustained United States leadership, the new membership does not undermine or corrode sound policies...
...Nor is NATO a particularly useful forum for a concert of views on Algeria...
...The basic element underlying this question is the nature and function of negotiation...
...Agreement is not precluded by a lack of ingenious formulas or a clogging of the channels of negotiation...
...It is the undervaluation of the UN...
...These facts account for the realistic limits which the Committee of Three Foreign Ministers set on the scope of NATO action...
...In fact, the common economic concerns of the member nations will often best be fostered by continued and increased collaboration both bilaterally and through organizations other than NATO...
...In others, it might be more difficult to get a majority, but this works as an element for stability quite as much as for obstruction...
...Moreover, the French resist NATO discussions on Algeria because most NATO members are unhappy about the diversion of French-NATO forces to North Africa...
...Indeed, the Committee went so far in heeding his warning as to say that ''consultation under Article 4 should not be sought unless the United Nations is for some reason prevented from dealing with the situation giving rise for consultation...
...No more guarantees are needed...
...The NATO Council, with an almost wheedling tone, stated its "willingness to promote, preferably within the framework of the UN, any negotiation with the Soviet Union likely to lead" to disarmament...
...It is to make them feel that, rather than being sheltered by an Iron Curtain from behind which they can prowl, they are sealed in by a fence of their own contriving...
...Then the formula was that America should help in defending Europe in our own self-interest...
...Dulles's only references to the United Nations were limited to disarmament...
...They are both instruments of diplomacy and it is injurious to both to ignore their complementarity...
...Is it that times have changed, that the perspective of 1949 had become obsolete by 1957...
...It is conceded that all this, notwithstanding the fact that the expressions are reasonably clear, may be subject to the normal discount on Senatorial prose...
...After the war, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Occupied Areas, State Department Legal Adviser, and Assistant Secretary of State...
...Soviet abuse of the veto does indeed make the Security Council undependable...
...Such power rests upon an international network of communication, warning, interception and delivery systems...
...Yet freedom requires clearly understood goals and practicable means to advance toward them...
...Vital as this problem is, it touches only one aspect of the vast complex of political, strategic and economic diplomacy essential to a just peace...
...Nor is it necessary or desirable for NATO members to form a 'bloc' in such organizations...
...They properly stressed the vital importance of timely discussion as an integral part of national policy-making...
...Consultation" is simply another word to describe negotiation among friends...
...Nevertheless —again as the Senate Committee saw so clearly in 1949 —such an understanding cannot be developed through only one diplomatic forum...
...The point is that, in dealing with the enemies of freedom in general and the Kremlin in particular, military aggression is only one of the major threats we face...
...Similarly obvious are the built-in limits upon the use of NATO for economic cooperation, as the three foreign ministers have pointed out...
...In the essential task of cementing the coalition, several basic facts must be kept in mind...
...A look at the map supplies part, but not the whole, of the answer...
...The strategic requirements of the nuclear age rest upon an old truth amply proved by history: No security exists except collective security...
...By the end of 1957, we were beginning to realize that all along we had also been asking Europe to help in our defense in their self-interest...
...As the Senate saw so clearly in 1949, unless NATO is actually (not merely nominally) regarded as a bulwark of the United Nations security guarantee, all sorts of hopeless difficulties arise...
...When the Soviets wish to come to terms, as in the lifting of the Berlin Blockade, it is not "negotiation" which produces the solution...
...The geography of NATO in this perspective shows strategic and political limitations as well...
...Clearly, such a danger would exist if consultations under the pact became so frequent they tended to replace United Nations machinery, or if such consultations resulted in a crystallization of views in advance of United Nations meetings and encouraged pact members to vote as a 'bloc' It would be particularly unfortunate if our government took part in 'exclusive' consultations with Atlantic Pact members over situations of deep concern to friendly states in Asia, Africa, Latin America or the Middle East...
...From the Soviet perspective, their only hope is to win as much support as they can muster in the larger forum...
...Starting with the by now trite observation that NATO was "conceived within the framework of the UN Charter," the Senators pointed out that the treaty would come into operation only against a nation which violated the Charter, and then only until the United Nations had taken measures necessary to restore and maintain peace...
...of the weapon is only one link in the chain of nuclear power...
...Furthermore, as both the Senate and the Three Wise Men clearly saw, it is at least as dangerous—perhaps even more so—to give greater emphasis to consultations within the NATO structure than within the UN as it is to do just the opposite...
...It is only one of the instruments available for this purpose...
...Nevertheless, the General Assembly and other UN bodies are not veto-bound, because they take action under majority rule...
...What is essential is practical means for carrying out the pledges we already have, rather than the delusive procedure of giving and seeking new ones...
...It was important to agree to establish stocks of nuclear warheads and to place intermediate-range missiles "at the disposal of the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe...
...The treaty embraces three oceans and two continents, plus Algeria in Africa and Turkey in Asia Minor...
...As Secretary Dulles wrote in his celebrated "massive retaliation" article in the April 1954 Foreign Affairs: "Without the cooperation of allies, we would not even be in a position to retaliate massively against the war industries of an attacking nation...
...The objective must be to induce in the Soviet leaders the will to modify their lawless course, to abandon subversion and terror as instruments of policy and to relax the rigid processes of the police-state...
...At the same time, failure to understand the prerequisites of successful negotiation (which can, of course, employ debate as an adjunct in order to mobilize pressure* or to increase public understanding) results in clamor for private negotiation with the Soviets for the purpose of ending tensions...
...Nevertheless, side by side with the enunciation of this so-called doctrine, our concept of the strategy of the nuclear weapon was: "We make it...
...Indeed, I have often thought that the United Nations is a modern way of carrying on "old-fashioned" diplomacy...
...This is so whether the escape be toward the unifying vision of world government or, on the other extreme, toward fragmentation into the dozens of ill-defined arrangements to which we are now party...
...Dulles lest the United Nations machinery be replaced or impaired by "excessive consultations" among the NATO members...
...Far from belittling the importance of NATO to the free world's defense of the Charter principles, these facts merely show how vital is the connection between the two...
...But the forces of freedom are also behind theirs...
...Direct evidence that the 1949 Senate views are not obsolete is found in the December 1956 report of the NATO committee of the Three Wise Men...
...This, however, cannot be realized unless one differentiates between debate and negotiation...
...Possession Ernest A. Gross is intimately familiar with the workings of the United Nations...
...The Committee concluded: "Nor do there now appear to be significant new areas for collective economic action requiring execution by NATO itself...
...Disarmament is, however, only one example...
...Disarmament is a good illustration...
...In his December 23 broadcast to the nation following the recent NATO meeting, Secretary Dulles read from the Senate Committee Report the sentence quoted above concerning the unfortunate effect of "excessive consultations with Atlantic Pact members...
...In the sharply divided world of today, this refers to negotiation among friends, as well as negotiation between friends on the one hand and their common opponent on the other...
...Talk about consultation "in NATO" as distinguished from consultation "in the UN" is likely to lose the substance of things in a shadowland of words...
...History is not always as easy to reconstruct accurately as it is in this instance...
...delegate to the third, fifth and sixth sessions of the General Assembly, a member of the UN Far Eastern Commission and of its Peace Commission till 1953, and later legal adviser to Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold...
...we trigger it...
...They have no treaty arrangements of any kind which relate to that part of the world, and that kind of support has never been anticipated...
...As a former United Nations delegate, I would estimate that fully 95 per cent of one's working hours were devoted to this activity...
...The fact is that there is no practicable alternative to the United Nations...
...Obviously, the weight of authority of the persons concerned, as well as the explicitness of their language, precludes dismissal of these views as mere emotion or double-talk...
...Indeed, both the NATO Council and the Soviets are right in expressing their preference for the United Nations forum...
...Frustration induced by such palpable fraud is not a sufficient reason for ending efforts to seek a solution of the arms race and its fearful fruit...
...In the past twelve years, no mode or channel of negotiation has been left untried in the effort to find a reasonable disarmament accord with the USSR...
...Such a coalition can have no fixed frontiers...
...Upon his return from Canada, where he had been discussing the off-shore island problem in the Formosa Straits, Mr...
...the Federal Republic of Germany but not Austria or Switzerland...
...we hold it...
...An article written at that time by several staff members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—one of whom is now the able Assistant Secretary of State for UN Affairs—reminds us that the Committee views just quoted were in response to a danger signal raised by Mr...
...It is true that military cooperation cannot be carried on in a vacuum of political understanding...
...There is only one possible hope of inducing such a change in the attitude of the Soviet dictators...
...On the contrary, it is their desire for settlement which brings about the negotiation...
...Italics added...
...The reasons usually advanced to support the contention that the United Nations is "undependable" apply for the most part to the major political issues which either confront or divide the free world...
...Within 48 hours, the Kremlin leaders replied with a blast of anti-American lies and threadbare slogans of peace...
...This is not to say that the United Nations is a panacea, nor even that it is adequate to its objective...
...This is a tall order...
...After all, it is the same governments— yes, the same individuals—who create the relationship, as is attested by the ubiquity of our Secretary of State...
...This necessity is only too obvious...
...Slow transformation had occurred in the chemistry of the coalition since the organization of NATO in 1949...
...In certain issues, existing majorities are increased...
...He was alternate U.S...
...Before dismissing the Senate Committee Report as a faded relic, we should consider why it was thought reasonable in 1949—and why it remains reasonable—to insist that NATO and the UN have a reciprocal and mutually supporting diplomatic relationship...
...As an Army officer in World War II, he was chief of the economics section of the War Department's Civil Affairs Division...
...One may point, although scarcely with pride, to Suez as perhaps the bitterest example...
...It was, moreover, a study materially assisted by the present Secretary of State, then Senator, John Foster Dulles...
...Reliance upon nuclear deterrence obviously placed a high premium on our reliance upon the "cooperation of allies," which alone made retaliation possible...
...The vital diplomatic work in and around the United Nations area takes place in private discussions far from microphones and rostrums...
...The communique of the NATO Council shows that balance is now being introduced—or reintroduced—into the alliance...
...It was a comment which would have startled many of those in both parties who led in shaping our postwar foreign policy—and none more than the late Senator Arthur Vandenberg...
...There is no such thing as an "independent" thermonuclear power...
...The very attempt to use NATO for this purpose would therefore inflame the problem and make it more difficult of solution...
...Algeria (as a French department) but not Morocco or Tunisia...
...Without such a relationship, constantly manifested and vigorously led by the United States, it seems not too much to say that both organizations will continue to suffer and that neither may survive...
...Skill and imagination are required in the balancing of NATO and UN diplomacy...
...The coalition of freedom must expand in order to survive, since freedom is the natural condition of man...
...One is the vital importance of moral power as an actual component of strength...
...Moreover, recommendations of the Assembly which are vague, or which do not command wide voting support, do not generate much compulsive quality...
...Norway but not Sweden or Finland...
...These must be supplied by leaders who inspire, in order to out-do drivers who coerce...
...They do, however, point to a truth, the realization of which is essential before any valid answers can be found: NATO is not, and is not likely to become, any more effective than the United Nations for the solution of major issues which divide the coalition...
...They asked for "a meeting of representatives of the two strongest powers, the U.S.A...
...Indeed, just as in the case of the communique itself, Mr...
...This is a never-ending process which varies from problem to problem and from time to time...
...This was not only a contemptuous bid for a sphere-of-influence agreement with us...
...The implication that the United States might become involved in major conflict without the support of the United Nations is indeed a very far cry from the concept of NATO as a defensive arm of the UN Charter, which has justly been called the "greatest non-aggression pact in history...
...Major problems arising outside the area, but deeply affecting its members, are usually brought into sharp and decisive focus in the United Nations...
...Secret talks, private meetings of foreign ministers, summit meetings, plenary UN sessions, semi-private discussions in the Disarmament Subcommission—all these have been tried, and tried with persistence...
...Others range widely over the fields of political tension—as in the Middle East and North Africa—economic relationships, human rights and the universal aspiration for higher standards of living...
...In other words, NATO does not stop, like a medieval map of the Mediterranean, at the edges of the area...
...This group, composed of the Foreign Ministers of Canada, Norway and Italy, dramatized in its very composition the geographical expanse, the cultural diversity and the new-world-old-world cantilevers by which NATO is supported...
...The question is not whether consultations should take place in the United Nations, but how and when they should be conducted...
...In the case of Cyprus, NATO has not proved a practicable framework for settlement because, among other reasons, Greece feels it has more support on this issue in the UN than in the regional grouping...
...The attitude with which consultation is carried on, rather than the "framework" in which it is operated, is the decisive factor...
...Escapist solutions simply do not meet the hard reality...
...Of course, it is of high priority to concert our policies to the maximum practicable extent with those of our principal allies...
...It requires a habit of mind, a vigorously shaped attitude...
...This would only alienate other friendly governments...
...It is a long-range job...
...A greater fraud even than this was stamped on the same Kremlin announcement...
...It must be used in skilful combination with regional diplomacy and, most particularly, with good old-fashioned bilateral diplomacy...
...An excerpt from the report concerning Article 4 of the treaty, providing for consultation, focuses the matter sharply: "Some sincere friends of the UN have expressed concern lest Article 4 be implemented in such a way as to impair the usefulness of the United Nations...
...There is no better hole to crawl into...
...Others outside NATO, who are intimately affected, would deeply resent a NATO "bloc" approach...
...Portugal is in NATO but not Spain...
...Unanimous reports of Senate committees are not as easy to come by now as they once were...
...This was an illusory posture of strength...
...It might be more accurate to speak of this changed perception as one of physics than chemistry: The nuclear stalemate had from the beginning decisively affected the requirements of the coalition...
...The UN is potentially an effective instrument of American diplomacy only to the extent it serves to strengthen an ever-expanding coalition of freedom...
...Nevertheless, they went on to caution that the deepening of political cooperation "does not imply the weakening of the ties of NATO members with other friendly countries or with other international associations, particularly the United Nations...
...If it is thought of as enacting a new or separate code of international conduct, the security value of the UN Charter is itself debased...
...The supreme advantage of NATO, which makes it one of the few exceptions, is its limitation to a fairly precise military task...
...Other decisions, including the pooling of science and technology, were belated though welcome promises to carry out recommendations made in December 1956 by the Special Committee on Non-Military Cooperation in NATO—the celebrated "Three Wise Men...
...The Secretary, however, did not refer to the context of the sentence, which was the risk that such consultations might tend to "replace United Nations machinery...
...Except on the issue of disarmament, where it could hardly avoid the obvious, the communique was ominously silent on a vital question: What is the relationship between NATO and the UN...
...Dulles said: "We have never expected that if there were a war in the Formosa area the Canadian Government would be a participant in that war...
...For the Soviet rulers were proposing to discuss disarmament in the same Assembly which, a few sentences earlier in his speech, Gromyko charged with having adopted the Western disarmament approach under what he termed "gross United States pressure...
...Algeria, Cyprus and Indonesia are but recent examples...
...The only "treaty arrangement" then existing was, of course, the United Nations Charter...
...It is essential to find a proper balance...
...This involves far more than a mere phrase or two in an occasional communique...
...Yet it must be said that even then unanimity was not a product of automation—certainly not in the exploration and debate to which the unprecedented North Atlantic Treaty was subjected...
...From our point of view, the coalition we must rally around our position is vastly wider than NATO...
...No one would contend that the United Nations can work perfectly...
...Even more, it is dangerous as an instrument of diplomacy for any matters in which the Soviets can use the veto power with mischievous intent...
...The fallacy is not merely overemphasis of the political potential of NATO...
...and the USSR," to precede a special UN General Assembly session...
Vol. 41 • January 1958 • No. 4
