THE FUTURE OF THE UNITED NATIONS

...But in a broader sense, Khrushchev's shoe-pounding fury was a reflection of his own frustration, as he struggled with the basic Soviet dilemma concerning the United Nations...

...To employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples...

...Hammar-skjold pointed out more than once that only genuine consensus, not mere vote-counting, gave force to United Nations actions...

...The formula was this: Hammar-skjold would accept from the Security Council, or, if no action was possible there, as was often the case, from the General Assembly, an assignment couched in the vaguest of terms, designed so that none could openly object...

...No less than the political foundation for a vitalized United Nations may be under construction...

...Our dilemma is that a viable United Nations world system would threaten the privileged position of the fortunate classes in Western Europe and North America...

...The question is whether and how the United Nations can help cure this illness...

...Both he and his superiors in Washington, however, have dodged the real issue, which is whether we are willing to give the United Nations the powers contemplated for it by its founders, in a disarmed world...

...Great-power interests were far-flung, and none of the great powers was willing to have the Security Council act against its interests...

...There are gaps in its reflection of the world's troubles, because it does not represent all of the world's peoples...

...If the Congo episode has proved nothing else, it has shown conclusively that the kind of stop-gap, one-man world government—which is what Hammarskjold very nearly was—has no future, it is common knowledge in U.N...

...Just as the United Nations can help the old colonial nations gracefully divest themselves of embarrassing impedimenta, so can it help the Soviet Union adjust itself to the realities of our times...

...A viable Congo meant creating a stronger and "neutralist" central government—and ending the Katanga secession...

...Russia cannot and will not submit to a United Nations world system, unless we are given a much larger voice in the world organization...

...A quarter of the people of the earth are Chinese...

...What of the Western nations...

...The most notorious veto-user was the Soviet Union, whose position in the Council was weakest...

...In 1955 he won the release of American airmen held by the Communist Chinese, by flying to Peking to confer with Premier Chou En-lai, though Communist China was not a member of the United Nations...

...But it does, I submit, indicate a dawning of reason in his mind...

...Since the United Nations is in trouble, the world is in trouble...

...In a disarmed world the United Nations would of necessity be employed in keeping the peace...

...All this, it seems to me, lies in the realm of folklore...

...Even the Soviets have gone along with the Asian-African-American coalition in support ol Thant...

...The United Nations has reached the end of an era...

...We would have to take our chances in the world political arena, where Asians, Latin Americans, Africans, and others have the disquieting habit of speaking up as if they are as good as anyone else...

...The absence of continental China is perhaps the greatest single factor crippling the United Nations...

...This policy reversal has irritated the British, the Belgians, the French, the Portuguese, and the South Africans...

...As it stands, it is the creature of world power politics, in which the United States has played the dominating role, of the scores of new nations refashioned from old colonies, and of the devotion and consummate diplomatic skill of one man—Dag Hammarskjold...

...For the nations of the West the dilemma is of a different order...

...It is a dilemma essentially of power, not economics...

...Then, in I960, came the crisis of the Congo...

...Attacks on Rajeshwar Dayal, Hammarskjold's top man in the Congo, were really attacks on Hammarskjold's policies...

...he cannot, in any event, cease repeating the Communist litany...

...policies...

...We are told that the United Nations is only a forum where people DONAtD GRANT is the United Nations correspondent for the St...

...Neither a world-wide system of economic development nor universal disarmament can be achieved by the world organization without China...

...First the American "automatic majority" vanished...

...No doubt he is still buffeted by stubborn forces — Chinese forces, "Stalinist" forces, and others...

...A vitalized United Nations would not be "against Russia," either...

...He repeated his demand—first made by him the year before in the General Assembly— that the world accept general and complete disarmament within a few years...

...There is a growing feeling among the diplomats of the world that the best way of meeting the problem is to enlarge the Security Council, define more precisely the areas in which the veto can operate, and return to a two-house system...

...innner circles that if Khrushchev had not attacked Hammarskjold when he did, in the fall of I960, the Western Powers led by the United States probably would have...

...the persistence of nationalism beyond its useful life...

...He had not accomplished his mission and perhaps never would have accomplished it...

...talk endlessly and do nothing...

...But the very nature of the United Nations— including its stated purposes—carries with it a threat to the privileges of power...

...In his last important statement to the United Nations, shortly before his death, Hammarskjold raised the question of what kind of a United Nations the world really wanted— "static conference machinery" or a "dynamic instrument" for peace and orderly progress...

...All nations were to be represented in the General Assembly...

...Even emotional attachments to national sovereignty, though real— and existing in Russia as well—would not be determining for the nations of the West, I think, were they not reinforced by a powerful second factor...

...The debate on this issue is rending the Communist nations...

...Occasionally he acted with no formal mandate...

...In 1958 he acted to secure the withdrawal of United States troops from Lebanon and of British troops from Jordan...

...The United States can still block an unfavorable vote in the Assembly, though it cannot always be assured of a positive favorable vote...

...Louis Post-D,s-?atch...

...The world, however, needed more than that...

...The next year he acted vigorously to stcjp the war in the Middle East, launched when Britain...

...This coalition has functioned on issues other than the Congo...

...Such a United Nations would not be directed "against Europe...

...As conceived by its founders, the United Nations was to be directed by the Security Council, with something like the advice and consent of the General Assembly...

...Such a United Nations would be vastly more important than the glass house that now stands on the shores of New York's East River...

...Hard answers are required of every nation if we are to protect ourselves against the awful prospect of stumbling into a nuclear war which no one wants...

...What Khrushchev was saying, I think, and for that matter is still saying, really goes something like this: I can see the possibility that disarmament may become a reality, and I know that under these conditions a world system of some sort will come into being...

...A center of world public opinion, maybe...

...Historically, unity among a diverse peoples has been achieved most often by force...

...For Americans, accepting a reorganized and revitalized United Nations as the alternative to war would mean giving up our power to force or bully our way in the world, in Cuba or elsewhere...

...The Charter is specific when it states the primary aims of the world organization, "To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war...

...The logical corollary, that some kind of a viable world order must therefore be substituted for war, is equally clear...

...and the failure of the rich, old nations to meet the demand of people everywhere for a share in the power, prestige, and physical comforts and conveniences that for several centuries have been the monopoly of limited classes of people in Europe and its off-shoots, particularly North America...

...The real reason—aside from the absence of China—why disarmament has not been appproached seriously in talks between the Western allies and the Soviets is that neither Russia nor the West has been able to resolve its internal dilemma, as both must do even to contemplate a viable United Nations world system...

...General Assembly resolutions could only recommend...

...But as the new nations became members of the United Nations—and it is significant that membership in the United Nations has been a primary ambition of all of the new nations, without exception (even in the case of Communist China, for a long time)—the nature of the General Assembly changed...

...As a result of his experience in the United Nations this year, Ambassador Stevenson believes the United States can take care of its interests very well in such an arena...

...We have taken the first steps toward resolving the dilemma posed by the liberation of colonial peoples in Asia and Africa...

...By using his developing prestige with the Asians and Africans, Stevenson has been able to soften blows directed at the old colonial powers and at the same time urge the European powers to act rapidly on their own initiatives before history overtakes them...

...It might be able to function effectively without including the two Koreas or the two Vietnams, but it cannot function effectively without including the two Germany and the two Chinas...

...Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev moves first one way, then the other...

...Furthermore, the system of one-nation, one-vote, while adequate and perhaps even necessary in a period of tentative development of the United Nations, is by no means satisfactory for an organization that would fulfill Hammarskjold's vision and become the center of a universal community...

...The immediate cause of Khrushchev's attack was that under Ham-marskjold's administration, the Congo proved to be an unfavorable environment for Communist infiltration and domination...

...The task of diplomacy, says Stevenson, is to find common ground between the nations...

...In trying to bring Tshombe to book, Hammarskjold was killed in an airplane crash in Northern Rhodesia...

...The United Nations is the victim of great-power dilemmas...

...Stevenson believes that United States diplomacy in the United Nations can best serve our European allies by helping them come to terms with the realities of the last half of the Twentieth Century, including the obvious necessity for liquidating the last remnants of colonialism...

...Or that it is an Asian-African club...

...The United Nations is all we have...

...Unless the United States and its allies join the Communist world system, or the Soviet Union is prepared to join NATO, no real alternative to a United Nations world order exists...

...Enforcement belonged to the Security Council, paralyzed by the lack of great-power unanimity and by the fiction that Formosa was China...

...Constitutional reform of the United Nations, however, waits on its becoming a universal organization...

...It has aroused furious right-wing opposition inside the United States...

...The United Nations is a mirror of the world, but its image is inexact and incomplete...

...The Kennedy Administration, after its initial fumbling in the Congo, reversed its policy and decided to support the United Nations effort there...

...The final dilemma we all face is that the employment of nuclear force will defeat its aim, and destroy all we seek to defend...

...Though American diplomats under the Eisenhower Administration were slow to realize it, the value of achieving voting victories in the General Assembly is dubious...

...sometimes he acted on the basis of debate in the Security Council out of which no resolution issued...

...for a long time the United States enjoyed what the Russians called an "automatic majority" in the General Assembly...

...It was an open lion's mouth, and Hammarskjold walked into it more than once, with full knowledge of the dangers involved to himself...

...The debate has not yet resolved the Communist dilemma...

...The eleven-nation Security Council was to be dominated by the big five—the United States, Russia, Britain, France, and China—-permanent members, each armed with the veto...

...In practice this can only mean giving up the power that superior armed strength brings and becoming one among equals in a world of technologically advanced nations—bitter medicine indeed for a people who only recently were talking about "The American Century...

...From neutralizing areas of possible world conflict to the next step, creating a positive world system of order, is not really so much of a leap...

...The United Nations presents a choice for Americans...

...it was something else...

...A fully developed Asia, Africa, and Latin America would increase the possibilities for economic growth in the United States...

...It is possible to conceive of a world organization with greatly increased powers in which the United States, accepting the results of United Nations deliberations, would find security in a political relationship with nations representing the majority of the people on earth, the nations of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America...

...United States diplomats thereupon conceived the idea of giving the General Assembly, in effect, the functions assigned by the Charter to the Security Council...

...Limited, inadequate, all but throttled at birth, what kind of an organization is the United Nations...

...In any event, as Hammar-skjold also pointed out, the United Nations was not a world government...

...Katanga meant copper and uranium—mining and industrial enterprises operated for the benefit of Belgian, British, American, South African, and Rliotlesian investors...

...The General Assembly, retaining its one-nation, one-vote system, would be the center of world public opinion, more effective than it now is, because it would not attempt to perform tasks not suitable to its structure...

...What are the factors that constitute a true picture of the United Nations...

...Tshombe was their man...

...This does not mean that Khrushchev has given up the dream of world Communism...

...The question which faces us in the United Nations is whether that ground is firm enough to sustain peace...

...This left the great powers free to repudiate the Secretary General should he interpret his mandate in ways unfavorable to their interests...

...Stevenson already has suggested that a United Nations presence in Portuguese Angola, one day, might be matched by a similar presence in Berlin...

...In addition to strong and open Russian attacks, Hammarskjold was subject, in the Congo, to periodic, vicious, if for the most part veiled, attacks by the Western powers, including the United States—and, regretfully, the American attacks persisted into the first days of the Kennedy Administration...

...It soon became apparent that the notion of big-five unanimity was impractical...

...We can offer no alternative to a world system...

...But the central government, at Leopoldville, was hopelessly weak, and Katanga, under Moise Tshombe, was in open secession...

...There may be various ways of meeting this constitutional problem, but it must, in the end, be met...

...Hammarskjold knew—and the Russians knew—that the second-best Soviet choice, Antoine Gizenga, was a poor second-best...

...The Security Council would have the power of enforcement, as it now has under the Charter...

...It is a com plex illness whose causes include the rapid and uneven development of technology, especially the new engines of production, warfare, transportation, and communication...

...Both logic and the realities of world politics demand that China and the two Germanys be represented before fundamental changes can be made...

...It has, however, won the approval of the Asians, ol the Africans, and— despite the unfortunate Cuban invasion legacy—ol many Latin Americans, with some interesting results...

...United States diplomats were forced to work hard for their voting victories...

...Patrice Lumumba, the Alrican hero with whom the Russians astutely had managed to achieve some measure ol identilication, was dead...

...But the words "will not submit to a United Nations world system unless . . . " carry with them a kind of tentative capitulation to reality which one can only hope may persist...

...Because the need was great, and he dared much, Hammar-skjold attempted to fill the gap with his great mind and slight but resilient body, which could function on as little as two hours sleep a night, days on end...

...In 1959 he moved to keep Laos neutral, going there in person without General Assembly or Security Council authorization...

...He coupled this demand with the proposal that the post of Secretary General be abolished, and that a three-man "troika" be substituted for it, consisting of representatives of Communism, the West, and of the neutralists...

...France, and Israel invaded Egypt...

...Acceptance of a world order by the Russians, however, would mean giving up the old messianic dream oi world Communism...

...In 1961, Hammarskjold attempted to bring the Congo liasco to some reasonable conclusion, looking forward to the fall meeting ol the General Assembly—and bevond that, to history...

...It is clear to every member of the United Nations diplomatic corps—including the Americans and the Russians— that the old Clausewitz thesis that war is a continuation of politics by other means has been reduced to senseless gibberish by the force of nuclear power...

...Adlai E. Stevenson, the chief American delegate, has compiled a formidable list of occasions on which the Asians and Africans have joined overwhelmingly in support of U.S...

...It is not a simple world-sickness that threatens the health and even the life of our planet...

...For one thing, it has given Hammarskjold's successor, U Thant of Burma, the kind of support Hammarskjold had not enjoyed for some time...

...Or that it is a Communist plot, or a boondoggle for spending our tax money foolishly...

...a center for multilateral diplomacy, certainly...