NEW HORIZONS FOR THE UNITED NATIONS

...Support of the United Nations can, however, provide a rallying point for men of good will everywhere...

...Ever since the founding of the United Nations, many American and European officials concerned with international affairs have expressed two widely divergent views about it...

...few are subtracted...

...Most of them soon sensed that this did not go down at all well in their new environment, and they moderated their speech and behavior accordingly...

...There was a time when "letting Dag do it"—that is, permitting a concensus to develop in the United Nations and to be expressed through its Secretary-General, rather than putting forward our own policy—was regarded as an abdication of United States responsibility...

...In the new United Nations, with its majority of African, Asian, and Middle Eastern nations, the United States may function far more effectively from the wings than by pre-empting the center of the stage...

...We are already seeing some indication that this process is taking place in the United Nations...

...The lengthening United Nations agenda is more symptomatic of the state of the postwar world than of the state of the United Nations...

...Through their recently won and zealously cherished sovereignties, the new nations assert their diversity...

...It pounds at the ears of listeners like wave after wave of surf...

...We shall have to resign ourselves to the fact that the peaceful settlement of disputes is a tedious and time-consuming process...

...Such self-restraint would, for one thing, commend itself to the Afro-Asian nations in their prevailing mood...

...that the uncommitted countries supporting the operation should maintain enough cohesion among themselves...

...Such pitifully few settlements as have been made in the postwar world have usually been the result of direct negotiation, outside the United Nations, by the parties concerned...

...They are becoming, as individuals, members of an orderly international community...

...The greater weight of world public opinion and the danger of any resort to force mushrooming into World War III have combined to inhibit cutting today's Gordian knots with the sword...

...Behind this facade, the Americans and the British were able, gratefully and even gracefully, to withdraw their expeditionary forces...

...We cannot remold the world in our image, even if we wanted to...

...privately, they have complained that it has been oversold and have tended to dismiss it as a mere cave of winds...

...They have failed to give due weight, for example, to the steady and increasing influence for a more orderly world which this young world organization is exerting through its own distinctive and developing personality...

...The new nations are bound to learn that, in this rapidly narrowing world, independence is not enough...

...A stronger United Nations is in our interest as well as theirs...

...So far, I have emphasized the role of the United Nations as a sort of debating club exerting a marked civilizing influence on its members—much as the House of Commons has acquired, and deserves, the reputation of being "the best club in London...

...Analyzing the current session of the Assembly, Robert Stephens, the diplomatic correspondent of the London Observer, concluded that it now "matters vitally what the Assembly decides...

...However talented our ambassadors, however effective the U.S...

...there needs to be meaningful interdependence as well...

...More and more, the delegates are addressing their arguments to their fellow-delegates and seeking to persuade rather than alienate them...

...This does not imply, as many Americans initially assumed, that they are neutral between democracy and totalitarianism, or between good and evil...

...To the extent that it can be strengthened (and that it is a prime objective of American statesmanship to strengthen it), we may be able to move from the frozen rigidities of the cold war to a future of growing international order...

...But, even apart from its own not infrequent shortcomings in this respect, it is ill-fitted to play the role of a sort of international Emily Post...

...So far, it has had a meager record of achievement in settling even those issues in which the great powers were not directly involved as antagonists...

...If what is said at the United Nations still occasionally grates on the ears of diplomats of the old school, it is usually considerably milder than what is said elsewhere...

...Many of these nations claim to follow a policy of "positive neutrality...

...It meant that, for all their bitter internecine rivalries, the Arab states had been shocked into the realization that they would have to put up at least a facade of unity in order to get the great powers off their necks...

...But now, when important Asian and African nations support a resolution, the Russian leaders think twice before crossing them...

...Dag Hammarskjold has rightly observed that it is the smaller nations, rather than the greater ones, which need the protection of their independence that the United Nations can give...

...Will the Russians observe a similar self-denying ordinance...

...Information Agency and the Voice of America, we cannot expect that support of the United States will become a politically feasible position for most Asian and African leaders— and if we demand it of them, we may simply succeed in isolating and destroying them...

...We are too much inclined to deplore the possibility that an Afro-Asian bloc might emerge in the United Nations, and too prone to take satisfaction in the appearance of fissions within this group—some of which we have helped to initiate...

...We might well take them at their word, and accentuate the positive...

...These tumults could foreshadow the relegation of the United Nations to the ashcan of history, where the League of Nations went before it...

...There must be few regular attendants at United Nations sessions who have not wearied of the endless amount of gabble that goes on...

...Often the language of resolutions is pounded into a condition almost devoid of meaning in order to get a majority...

...If we sit back a little and give them some individual leeway, we may find ourselves less often cast in the role of the universal scapegoat...

...War has been called the ultimate argument of kings—and it was, at least, ultimate...

...Publicly they have—with a few forthright exceptions, such as General Charles de Gaulle—paid it glowing lip service...

...Can the United Nations be more than that— more even than a "resoluting" body whose resolutions, as we are repeatedly reminded, are frequently ignored...

...Most of these peoples have more in common with us than with the Russians, and they are rarely swayed by Communist slogans except when they are suspicious of imperialist designs on the part of the West...

...but the process of compromise on words is at least a beginning toward compromise in fact...

...While it is a nuisance to have all this inflammable rubbish cluttering the agenda of the United Nations, it is certainly preferable to having it burst into flames...

...Thus, when Greece and Turkey took their quarrel over Cyprus to the United Nations and discovered that there was no substantial support for the maximum demands of either, the way was cleared for ultimate compromise...

...But the further evolution of modern weapons systems has downgraded the strategic importance of the area, while the world-wide surplus of oil has reduced its economic significance...

...They come with their preconceived ideas and prejudices—some, indeed, in their national costume...

...There is no lack of pessimists...

...Yet somehow, in these surges of oratory, the sharp edges of the issues do get rounded and smoothed...

...Once the crisis touched off by the Anglo-American landings in Jordan and Lebanon got into the special session of the United Nations General Assembly, it soon was becalmed in vast shoals of words...

...The last paragraph suggests some guidelines for United States' policy in the United Nations which are well worth consideration...

...and that the executive instrument, the Secretary-General and his staff, should remain trusted as politically impartial interpreters of the common peacekeeping interest...

...And to the extent, often considerable in the case of the newer nations, that the United Nations delegates are persons of consequence to their governments at home, they are helping their nations to find a place in an orderly world...

...Recently, in a fit of pique, the government of Guinea demanded that all United Nations personnel leave the country forthwith —only to discover that two of the four people they were about to banish were Russians, one a Yugoslav, and the fourth a citizen of determinedly neutral Switzerland, which is not a member of the United Nations...

...Perhaps the greatest dividend from a more tactful and unobtrusive American policy in the United Nations could be the opportunity it offers for the revival of Asian and African confidence in the United Nations...

...As I have observed its proceedings over the years, I have repeatedly been struck by an analogy with the British Parliament...

...The new nations can acquire the habits of diplomacy much more readily, while at the same time preserving their dignity and self-respect, through participation in an assembly in which they sit as equals...

...So long as Britain ruled India, it was easy for Indians to blame her for everything that went wrong...

...So far, it must be confessed, the United Nations has had little impact upon the deepest and most dangerous dispute of all, the cold war...

...firmly-held concepts tend to outlive their factual foundation—that airing disputes at the United Nations tended to exacerbate them, because delegates could not resist the temptation offered by this world forum to play to the radio and television grandstand by taking extreme positions...

...Their obligations to the world are not discharged by invoking a ritual "curse on both your houses" nor by grinding their own axes at the expense of the United Nations, which some of them are inclined to do...

...Some settlements outside the United Nations have been facilitated by preliminary airings of the issue there...

...It matters, first," Stephens commented, "because military and economic power are not the only realities...

...It is of the utmost importance to restore this confidence, and build upon it...

...Some critics have become so accustomed to listing the United Nations' liabilities that they have failed to note its growing tally of assets...

...Through a combination of the nuclear stalemate and the legal powers of evading the Security Council veto with which the Western [nations] themselves equipped it, the Assembly can authorize and bring about a military intervention, as in the case of Suez and the Congo...

...The habit persisted for a while after independence (as it may with the United Nations), but the time came when the Indians addressed their complaints to themselves, rather than to London...

...So long as it was merely a question of confronting the "automatic majority" of the Western powers, the Soviets did not hesitate to brandish their veto...

...From another point of view, it was both meaningful and helpful...

...Can it be more effective in the future in settling disputes among nations...

...Most of them came to aspire to be—and many succeeded in becoming—"good House of Commons men...

...We should rather seek to encourage Afro-Asian solidarity, using our influence to help steer it into constructive channels...

...Another sign of the times, and one which played an important part in the Security Council vote to strengthen the United Nations mandate in the Congo, was the private admission of many African delegates (whatever some of them said publicly) that they had themselves been at fault in not giving the United Nations more authority at the beginning...

...Here the United Nations can be of .invaluable assistance...

...Or they could, if the United States shows sound and imaginative statesmanship, be the birth pangs of a stronger United Nations in a more orderly world...

...A situation is developing, however, in which the decisions of the U.N...

...In earlier and simpler times, many of these issues would have been resolved by force or the threat of force...

...The United States has much to gain from the development of rational and mannerly discourse among nations...

...Most Americans in responsible foreign policy posts have by now come around to the conclusion that our own interests will be adequately served if the new nations can maintain their independence...

...To some extent, they are already doing so...

...It simply represents a prudent desire to keep the great powers at some distance from their affairs...

...Chaos in the Congo and Nikita Khrushchev's turbulent twenty-five days at the General Assembly last fall, added to the stresses and strains of its sudden expansion from eighty-two to ninety-nine members, have shaken the world organization to its foundations...

...General Assembly may have' a more significant impact upon disputes than in the past...

...through the United Nations, they can move toward integration with a wider world...

...It used to be said—and still is, since DAVID C. WILLIAMS writes from the United Nations and Washington for a number of European and Asian publications...

...It may be that they will make mistakes, and that we shall have to bail them out, financially or politically, but there is no real learning that does not involve the making of mistakes...

...This desire can in itself, as in the case of the Lebanon-Jordan landings, be a very strong incentive for the smaller nations to settle their own differences, before they widen to such an extent that they invite the intervention of the great powers...

...Some new issues are added at each session...

...The United Nations is having much the same influence on many of the delegates of the newer nations...

...Most of them like to describe themselves as "uncommitted"—and they seem about to add Brazil to their ranks...

...This is by no means as common now as it was some years ago...

...It reached an all-time high on September 19 of last year, when the General Assembly vote of seventy members to none on a crucial Congo resolution left the abstaining Soviet bloc almost isolated...

...Again and again, fiery young radicals have been elected to the House of Commons and have begun by making the same sort of speeches they had been accustomed to give at the mine mouth or the mill gate...

...But before long they are in conventional business suits, carrying briefcases stuffed with facts and figures, and base their speeches on them rather than on the inflated currency of nationalist rhetoric...

...Valuable time was gained...

...Fixing more responsibility for the United Nations on the Afro-Asian nations is a policy with distinct risks, but the risks are not unlimited...

...And it is perfectly in order to remind them that votes in the United Nations are worse than meaningless unless those who cast them are prepared to back them up, when necessary, with money and with men...

...Moreover, the application of such a policy by the United States would fix the responsibility for the future of the United Nations where it belongs...

...Thus, the danger of great power involvement in the perennial Middle Eastern squabbles has appreciably diminished...

...There finally emerged a resolution, sponsored by all the Arab states, according to which they promised—in effect—not to be beastly to one another...

...This kind of operation depends for its success on three things: that the great powers should acquiesce or at least refrain from active interference in the overriding interest of peace between themselves...

...In fact, the balance of nuclear terror between the great powers makes the total balance of power between them even more dependent upon their ability to influence the political ideas of the great mass of people who are not closely aligned with one bloc or another . . . "The Assembly's voice matters, secondly, because, in certain limited circumstances, it is no longer entirely without power...

...This pervasive skepticism has been reinforced by the recent accession to United Nations membership of many new, small, and allegedly irresponsible states, each by virtue of its sovereignty casting the same single vote in the General Assembly as ancient, more populous, and more powerful nations...

...The United Nations may not have settled many disputes, but at least it has kept them in the area of verbal rather than real battle...

...Nevertheless, there is much justice in the criticism that the agenda of disputes before the United Nations lengthens year by year...

...The Hat-fields and McCoys of the Middle East have not ceased their incessant feuding...

...There are now many other forums for anti-colonial oratory—before cheering crowds at home, and at gatherings of like-minded militants in Casablanca, Konakry, or Cairo...

...From one point of view, this was sheer, rank hypocrisy...