The United Nations

on the World Today

AT the opening of the Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Palestine two items were on the agenda. The first was a report of the Palestine Commission, appointed under the terms of the November 29 partition resolution, which insisted that partition could not be carried through unless an international force was provided by the Security Council. The second was a proposal brought forward by the United States delegation that Palestine should be placed under a temporary international trusteeship since it was apparent that partition could not be implemented.

In the course of the debate three related facts became plain: (1) there was no adequate majority to reaffirm the partition decision; (2) there was no majority to rescind the partition decision; (3) there was no majority to carry the United States trusteeship proposal even as a temporary measure. Under these circumstances it was inevitable that events in Palestine itself would exert a determining influence on the Assembly’s action.

Two weeks of fruitless debate in the Political Committee showed that the American trusteeship proposal was doomed. A subcommittee was then given the task of mapping out a more modest interim regime to take over certain responsibilities from the mandatory power after May 15 and act as mediator in the Jewish-Arab war.

But neither Arabs nor Jews would accept deferment of independence. Their respective conceptions of “independence,” of course, came into headlong clash. The Arabs claimed the whole of Palestine, the Jews those sections assigned them by the November 29 resolution. The General Assembly was not prepared to back an interim regime by force. The final decision was to appoint a United Nations mediator with no powers of government and supported by no authority beyond the will of the Assembly that peace somehow be obtained.

Meanwhile the Assembly turned over to the Trusteeship Council the problem of protecting Jerusalem. The Security Council had already named a Truce Commission made up of the Belgian, French, and American consuls in Jerusalem. Agreement was reached on a Municipal Commissioner, but no agreement could be reached on a temporary administration or on a truce. The Assembly had scarcely adjourned before fierce fighting broke out in and around Jerusalem.

The United Nations and Israel

The first estimate of General Assembly action on Palestine is one of failure. The underlying cause was the fanatical, irreconcilable conflict between Jews and Arabs which the British could not resolve during their thirty years in Palestine. But the immediate cause of failure was the United Nations’ unwillingness to stand firmly behind its partition decision. And for this failure the United States must bear most responsibility.

Last November the pro-partition stand of the United States had been an important factor in swinging the majority towards the final resolution. When the United States reversed its policy and proposed trusteeship, the full implementation of partition was impossible. And during the whole course of the Assembly debate the hesitation, uncertainty, and shifts of the American delegation contributed to the frustration and the almost total paralysis which finally seized the Assembly.

Nevertheless it must not be forgotten that from one point of view the United Nations had already done its job. It had provided the Jewish state with its constitutional charter and its tentative frontiers. The United Nations had rallied the nations of the world to a solution based on a kind of rough justice to two quarreling peoples.

In the closing moments of the Special Session the Palestine situation obviously moved into a new phase. This new phase opened with the declaration of the Jewish state and the surprise recognition of Israel by the United States. At first a feeling of bewildered resentment swept through the Assembly — resentment against a capricious action by the White House of which even the American delegation at Flushing had not been informed.

The new American line became apparent when, instead of urging appeasement and mediation, Warren Austin pressed for drastic action to stop the Arab-Jewish war. He wanted the Council to order a cease-fire under Chapter VII of the Charter, the chapter under which diplomatic, economic, and ultimately military sanctions could be invoked against an aggressor. And the American delegate frankly branded the Arabs as aggressors.

British-American compromise

The American action produced a new alignment of forces in the Council. It was strongly backed by the Soviet Union and the Soviet Ukraine, which meanwhile had recognized Israel. It was bitterly opposed by the United Kingdom, whose pro-Arab position seemed confirmed by its continued supply of arms to the Arab states and its initial refusal to withdraw British officers from King Abdullah’s Arab Legion. It was viewed dubiously by a number of smaller nations which, after so many shifts of American policy, could not believe that the United States would back up its tough talk by force.

This skepticism explains the failure of the United States to get support for action under Chapter VII, and the resulting adoption of a milder British resolution calling for a truce and urging the acceptance of the good offices of the newly appointed United Nations mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden.

Even the forthright Arab rejection of this truce proposal failed to swing the Council around to the tougher line now pressed most firmly by the Soviet Union. Instead, a now resolution calling for a four weeks’ truce and a total embargo on all arms and fighting personnel into Palestine or the Arab states was adopted. The resolution was a much overhauled version of a British proposal which in its original text had strong pro-Arab overtones; amendments by the United States. France, and Canada did something to restore the balance.

The acceptance of this proposal by both sides provided a cooling-off period of a month during which some settlement might be worked out. Three facts were becoming clear: British-American unity on a Middle Eastern policy had been restored; the Arab states, never fully united, were showing signs of weariness in the Palestine war; and the state of Israel, both diplomatically at Lake Success and militarily in Palestine, had made good its claim to recognition.

Atomic control: the end of a search

May 17, 1948, was a black day in United Nations history. For on that day the Atomic Energy Commission, appointed to work out an effective system of international control for atomic energy, decided to suspend operations.

From one point of view the Commission may be said to have wasted two years of work. It met for the first time on June 14, 1946, and by the end of the first week it had before it two documents: (1) an American plan for full international control of atomic energy presented by the then head of the United States delegation, Bernard M. Baruch; (2) a Russian resolution insisting that, before any consideration be given to an international control scheme, a convention be signed prohibiting atomic weapons and ordering the destruction of those already in existence. During two years the conflict between the two positions has not been resolved; the majority backed the American plan, the Russians and their allies opposed it.

The U.S. its bombs

The essence of the majority plan is the operation, management, and inspection by an Atomic Development Authority of all installations engaged in the production of atomic energy or nuclear fuel. No veto would operate that might save a nation judged guilty of a violation from penalties imposed by the authority. In this sense, the ADA would be more powerful than the Security Council.

Against this position the representative of the Soviet Union advanced two main objections: —

1. No control scheme should even be contemplated until the convention to outlaw atomic weapons and destroy existing bombs was signed and implemented. It was hypocrisy, said the Soviet delegate, to talk control and keep on making bombs.

2. The proposed control system was a breach of the United Nations Charter — since the Atomic Development Authority would not be subject to the veto clause of the Security Council — and a violation of national sovereignty. “The Soviet Union,” said Mr. Gromyko on March 29, 1948, “has no intention of placing the fate of its national economy under the protection of United States financiers, industrialists and their subordinates, who are attempting to tie the hands and feet of other nations, primarily the Soviet Union, and to achieve this aim with the help of the majority which is obedient to them.”

The Soviet delegate proposed instead a loose system of periodic inspection with special investigations when clandestine operations were suspected.

The Working Committee of the Commission found, after examination, that the Soviet Union proposals did not provide an adequate basis for the effective international control of atomic energy and the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons.

In a sense, the debates in the Commission were shadowboxing. For Russia to have accepted the majority plan would have meant the abandonment of its policy of close secrecy in all matters of Soviet industrial operations. For the Americans to have agreed to the destruction of existing bomb stocks and the cessation of the manufacture of atomic weapons without a system of international control would have meant the abandonment of Europe to superior Soviet forces.

With political tension at its height neither side would consent to a measure which might sap its strength or expose its weakness. The search for security against atomic weapons had come to a dead end.

Freedom of information

At Geneva a highly successful conference was held on Freedom of Information and of the Press. Fiftyseven member nations were represented. The Conference prepared three draft conventions having to do with the gathering and international transmission of news, the combating of false, distorted, or malicious reporting, and the free exchange of information. In addition it prepared several articles for inclusion in the Declaration and the Convenant on Human Rights and passed forty-three resolutions in the field of freedom of information.

At Lake Success the Commission on Human Rights held its third session. In the field of human rights the ideological clash between East and West is sharpest: the clash between political liberalism — which may conceal economic exploitation — and state socialism — which may provide economic security at the expense of individual liberty.

What the conferences on Freedom of the Press and Human Rights have managed to bring out is that there does exist a middle ground between capitalist individualism and Soviet statism. The reasons for not going to war over ideas may still be found.