THE ATTACK ON THE UNITED NATIONS

...Hammar-skjold...

...This is, in some measure, an academic issue...

...Loudest of all are the Communists—and least entitled to respect...

...But are they true...

...Complete African—and even Asian— extremism compared with the moderation of Western views...

...Utter inability to follow moderate paths on the colonial issue...

...No one supposes that, in spite of equality of voting rights, the head of the United States Steel Corporation has no more influence on American society than an unskilled laborer in one ol his plants...

...I can testify to the fact that this favorable outcome was not secured by Western pressure and support alone...

...And the courage of the United Nations and its backers in rescuing the Congo, through all the chaos and all the fog of fanatic propaganda, will stand—let us all hope!—for years to come as a warning against those who would prepare the tinder box for other Congos...

...Let me take first the issue of colonialism...

...What is more remarkable and admirable is the fact that so many Asians appear to be ready to do so as well...

...And that experience, of course, varies widely...

...A much more immediate and dramatic justification of the United Nations' concern with colonialism lies in the fact, proven a thousand times in history, that the ending of empires becomes all too easily the beginning of wars...

...I would go further and say that in concerning itself with the colonial issue, the United Nations is not being diverted from its proper function and purpose of safeguarding the peace and providing the machinery of conciliation...

...The first is that the United Nations has fallen into an unhealthy and obsessive concern with colonialism, that its Afro-Asian majority can see no further in international life than the liquidation of the last remnants o£ the old European empires...

...We don't feel it...

...Disputes are being exacerbated and blown up by ill-considered meddling, meddling which always ends up in bias against the West...

...Why should such a sentiment be acceptable and understandable, and a similar feeling among Africans for their brothers in Angola, say, be called "irresponsible" and obsessed...

...Again, the fifty-one founder members undertook to give due account to the political aspirations of their dependent peoples and to help them to secure "free political institutions...

...What in fact we find is something wholly different...

...There are three discernible elements in the attempt—all genuinely revolutionary...

...Consistent support—out of pique and anger—for Soviet resolutions...

...It is simply and directly human...

...However much like-minded groups of states may concert closer understandings, they must still live in the world with all their neighbors, friendly or hostile, aligned or neutral, and struggle for that minimum of order, conciliation, and peaceful change which this jostling world ineluctably requires...

...If we had no United Nations, it would be necessary to invent one— and it would not differ very greatly from what we have now...

...On the contrary, it was inevitable from the beginning that the issue of colonialism, both in the intention of the Charter and in the actual hazards of world politics, would for a time occupy the center of the stage of the United Nations...

...In the same way Nepal, shall we say, does not pretend to cany the same weight in world society as, for instance, its neighbor, India...

...Take the crucial issue which has confronted the United Nations for a year, and on which Mr...

...Distinguished critics have accused them of such obsessive behavior, but I cannot see how the voting record bears out the accusation...

...Critics so often speak and interpret events as though there were some ideal alternative from which we have slipped or which we can attain simply by letting the United Nations fade away...

...I do not, therefore, find that the criticism of obsessive and biased policies in the United Nations can be substantiated...

...This is precisely the kind of crystallization of conflict every continent must seek to avoid...

...It is here, as I see it, that the peacemaking functions of the United Nations are most vital and most urgently in need of being systematized and ex' panded...

...We do not blame a man for being obsessed with a toothache...

...It is a point I hardly need to elaborate...

...As a result of this obsession, they are said to miss other, more dangerous threats of Communist infiltration and subversion and end up in a posture which is dangerously one-sided—treating the Western democracies with biased hostility and letting the Communists get away with the benefit of every doubt...

...And these fifteen years of independence have moderated passions and turned many Asian eyes to other issues—especially economic development and security against the menace of atomic destruction...

...There are no such alternatives...

...At worst, they are the products of malice and pique...

...So colonialism still is in many parts of Africa...

...If occasionally some anti-colonialist resolution strikes a chord in their minds, we in the West should not be too surprised...

...Among the Asian nations are some whose concern about European colonialism, however deep and active, is somewhat more patient and less fierce than it once was...

...What we have is man's first sketch of the world society he has to create...

...Asia was dominated for well over a century by Western overlords whose rule, whatever its virtues in many cases, might have been expected to leave deeper scars of resentment than has in fact proved to be the case...

...In the form in which it was passed, the United States and such members of the British Commonwealth as Canada and Australia voted for it, which surely suggests that it represented a moderate, unobsessed view of the issue...

...They have been uttered by responsible people on both sides of the Atlantic, and if they are true, then we have to admit that the value of the United Nations as an instrument of world peace is gravely compromised...

...In fact, can anyone doubt that its tone represents what every modern member of world society accepts and supports...

...There is general evidence here not of obsession but of a careful weighing of words and votes...

...They seem to me to be born, at best, of serious misconceptions about the world in which the powers and the United Nations alike have to live...

...If we are to advance to higher standards or greater security, we must work on patiently from the spot we have already reached and not jettison our few working examples of genuine international action in favor of something more ideal—which we shall not get—or more innocuous, which will not meet our needs...

...Let us give it the imaginative and creative support which will allow its authority to grow and its peacemaking capacities to be more fully realized...

...In this century we are making audacious and heroic efforts to bring the system of imperialism itself to an end...

...There will be dangers for years ahead, both from those who try to stand unmoved against the winds of change and those who are willing in the name of progress to whip the winds of change up to hurricane force...

...These are serious charges...

...The West, unaided, could have produced nothing but deadlock...

...Khrushchev may not accept the anal-,ogy, but Communist power in Eastern Europe, far from representing the vanguard of a new and revolutionary world, is the tail end—we hope—of man's oldest international system, which is imperial control...

...The experiment of living together as a single human family—and we can aim at no less—is more likely to grow from precedent to precedent, by experience and daily work and set-backs and partial successes, than to spring, Utopian and fully-formed, from the unimaginable collective agreement of world minds...

...In pressing them to carry through this commitment, the United Nations cannot be said to exceed its terms of reference...

...The long, patient effort of the United Nations to foster unity and stability in the Congo, under leadership which cannot be accused of partisanship with either world bloc, may yet represent the United Nations' most significant triumph and the clearest pointer to where its influence and its spirit can most effectively extend...

...If, in the dissolution of empires, we are left with nothing but the choice between competing systems of power, then it is hard to see how the world can avoid staggering on from one Balkan-type crisis to the next, each time lurching closer to the hideous rim of Armageddon...

...They, after all, were at the receiving end of the colonial experiment...

...Certainly we cannot take Asia's moderation too much for granted...

...The second principle is that great powers recognize this new right of the weak not to be engulfed...

...If this is anti-Western irresponsibility, then we must revise the dictionary...

...We can rise above his discomfort...

...If every European retreat from direct control threatens to bring in as direct a control by the Communists, or to abandon local populations to the outdated paternalism of white settlers—in either of these events we are in for strife...

...When one system of power collapses—whether from external pressure or internal decay— other systems, aspiring to enjoy its earlier influence and control, move in to fill the vacuum...

...But for him it is a dark, angry fact...

...The third line of attack is most relevant to the peace-making functions of the United Nations...

...Lured from the United Nations' true path by their anti-colonialist obsession, the new nations, so goes the argument, are destroying the United Nations' fundamental value as a mediator and conciliator...

...On Angola a moderate resolution, sponsored by forty-four countries of Africa and Asia, was adopted by ninety-nine votes to two—and a more drastic resolution offered by the Soviet bloc on the same subject was overwhelmingly defeated...

...But will he go on building at all if we are forever tearing up the foundations...

...The first is to apply to nations and peoples the principles we are trying to apply—with comparable ups and downs—to individual citizens: the principle of their equality before the law and of equal weight given to their ultimate political decision...

...Yet its equal vote in the United Nations is a first step towards a covenanted political recognition, by international society, of its right to separate statehood and its right not to be handed over to the political control of more powerful neighbors...

...One cannot, therefore, dismiss as "irresponsible extremism" the resolution which did pass, condemning South Africa's racial policies and commanding the support of the entire Assembly, save for Portugal...

...On the ticklish problems of independence for Ruanda-Urundi, Soviet attempts to get all Belgian troops out by July 1, and thus to court another Congolese explosion, were soundly defeated...

...There is an element of liction in the equality...

...And it is my hope that the United States, which has "a giant's strength," will always abstain from "using it like a giant" to coerce or overawe the weak...

...Examples are strewn, like wrecks, on the seabed of the human record...

...The shift of interest is far from complete—nor will it be complete as long as colonies remain...

...But before we lump all the "anti-colonialists" together, let us try to be more precise...

...Consistent hostility to the West...

...The issue is there, darkening men's minds with fears and suspicions, whether the United Nations takes any notice of it or not...

...The passions unleashed in African minds—particularly young African minds—by bloodshed and exploitation, by discrimination and delay, by the violation of human rights—cannot but color African thinking about general international events...

...One man, one vote...

...Like the coexistence of rich and poor, of influential and weak, inside domestic society, international laws and constitutions only partially safeguard the freedom of small nations...

...And it is an essential part of the struggle to end imperialism—for it substitutes constellations of independent communities, great and small, for the old imperialist penumbra or "spheres of influence" within which most small peoples have hitherto had to live...

...It is written into our conquest of space, our instant communication, our common neighborhood of potential atomic death...

...We have still to work out stable alternatives to the old jostling for power between the decaying Turkish and Hapsburg empires and the expanding German and Russian imperialisms...

...But it stands among the Charter's first principles...

...On Cuba's charges against the United States, not one African or Asian country—in fact not one country outside the Soviet bloc itself— voted to sustain them or even to take official notice of them...

...I refer, of course, to Russia's determination to end all independent executive action by the United Nations and to substitute instead a secretariat hamstrung by the veto from top to bottom...

...The right of small nations to independence in a new post-imperial age is as astonishing as the right of commoners to protection and due process of law in a post-feudal age...

...So would such conditions color our thinking if our own neighbors were the sufferers...

...When Eastern Europe enjoys self-determination, we will listen to them, and not before...

...When sanctions were proposed against South Africa, the resolution, largely under Asian influence, failed to pass...

...Khrushchev himself staked his personal prestige—an issue, incidentally, made more inflammable by the tragic death of Mr...

...And when the Soviets went to the Security Council in January to demand a new round of shooting in Katanga, they did not even get the support of the two African states on the Council—Ghana and the United Arab Republic—which are among the most emphatic of the anti-colonialists...

...Let us look at the facts...

...This Communist ploy has been largely defeated, and we have a new and effective Secretary General appointed with no impairment of his powers...

...He can build better than this—so much is obvious...

...But even on the specific issue of colonialism, it is, I think, a gross perversion of the facts to accuse the new states of universal irresponsibility...

...As for the states singled out for strongest criticism—Portugal and the Union of South Africa—they have flouted the strongly-held views not just of the Afro-Asian states, but of nearly the whole of the Community of Nations...

...To my mind, the Congo operation, far from representing a usurpation of power by an arrogant Secretariat, is precisely the type of operation which the United Nations should dare to undertake, and in which we must pray to see it succeed...

...Given this background, it would perhaps not have been surprising if the new African states had allowed their votes to be swayed wholly by the colonial issue...

...Let us go on with what we have...

...When the Charter was elaborated, it stated as a fundamental of international life the equal rights of nations great and small...

...The same moderation appeared on all the leading issues in this most recent resumed session of the General Assembly...

...This is just about all the law and order our anarchic world will swallow today...

...And in the twilight zones of power, between systems collapsing and others emerging, the dangers of war are at their most acute...

...Wre demonstrate a comparable feeling when we argue that peace cannot be secure so long as the Hungarian people are tyrannized and oppressed...

...These dangers were all too vividly illustrated in the recent action against Goa...

...In fact, the whole subcontinent of Asia_ Pakistan, India, Nepal, Ceylon, and Burma—has been almost entirely free of Western control for about fifteen years...

...As for the non-Communists, it is neither fair nor wise to lash out at a supposed "Afro-Asian Bloc," lumping all the new African and Asian states together as irrational critics of a supposed "Western Bloc...

...one nation, one vote...

...Without the United Nations, might not central Africa already offer a total polarization of hostile power...

...The rescue of an independent, responsible U.N...

...Secretariat was accomplished because an overwhelming majority of the United Nations, including virtually all the new Asian and African states, would not go along with an emasculated organization...

...Let us improve it whenever we can...

...The United Nations, obviously, did not invent it...

...Much of the retreat from Western colonialism in the last two decades springs, I believe, from a genuine revulsion against the idea of domination...

...And whatever the motive behind them, they do not stand up to closer examination...

...You may say that it is unfair to the Western powers that the obsession with colonialism should still be so strong after fifteen years of such wholesale decolonization—the millions of subject peoples freed from Western tutelage, the scores of new states brought into being, freely and largely peacefully, in the process...

...The blame should rather be with those nations which have failed and still fail to make any progress towards fulfilling obligations they solemnly undertook...

...The second line of criticism— which follows in some measure from the first—is that the United Nations is neglecting its real function— which is to keep the peace and uphold collective security...

...For Africans to care profoundly about colonialism in Africa is not "unadult...

...The powerful have, in proportion to their power, a duty to play the game...

...The remarkable fact is how quickly and with what realism and dignity t\\t vast majority are prepared to let the past slip without regret or resentment into history...

...We cannot undo the world which science is making over for us...

...Might we not find Katanga, ranged on one side with white southern Africans and some Europeans, and on the other side African nationalism in Leopoldville and Stanleyville, supported by most of black Africa and all of the Soviet bloc...

...Seen in this light, one of the most dangerous crises in our world today— the future of Berlin and Central Europe—in some measure reflects a post-imperial interregnum...

...When the resolution calling for a rapid end to colonialism was passed last November 27, it took the place of a much more violent Soviet resolution which the Soviet delegation had withdrawn because the Afro-Asian bloc would not support it...

...The effects of this system can be very strange...

...Westerners can easily forget their dominion in fifteen short years...

...We shall make no sense in our international relations if we seek to banish obstinate realities simply by reading the new nations lectures on their unadult behavior...

...We can no more live without an attempt at international order than we can run New York's traffic without rules of the road...

...This democratic principle is, of course, always under attack by those—now on one side, now on the other—who prefer the Orwellian gloss that "some nations are more equal than others...

...One might expect it, judging by the attacks...

...But in Africa, we in the West must remind ourselves that colonial control is still a fresh memory or a direct, brutal fact...

...These geographical terms do not define solid blocs at all...

...They refer to a many-sided array of free nations, each with a wide area of freedom to pursue its own interests and express its own historical experience...

...With or without an embryonic instrument of international order, the overwhelming need for order remains...

...I believe that the Western nations on the whole recognize this restraint...

...What do we find...

...Here is a lesson in statesmanship and reconciliation which, for the sake of peace and freedom in Africa and the world, should be taken to heart by all who struggle today—both rulers and ruled alike—from Luanda to the Cape...