The United Nations

RACIALISM and poverty are the big issues as the twenty-first General Assembly of the UN approaches. With 117 members, 36 of them independent African states, the political emphasis is now on the problems of new countries, rather than on the ideological quarrels of the major powers. Great power confrontations, which provided the hectic dramas of earlier years, have given place to the preoccupations of small powers trying to achieve self-determination.

This shift in emphasis means that political situations will be less clear-cut and predictable. The past does not provide a basis for judging howto deal with the postcolonial era and the appearance of minuscule independent states, or with the relationship of regional groupings to the UN. What does appear on the horizon is a more clinical view of political arrangements. The problems of the so-called third world are so urgent as to make the old quarrels seem old-fashioned.

The latest, possibly the last, open big-power confrontation at the UN was that over control of peacekeeping operations. When the U.S.S.R. and France insisted that only the Security Council could control these operations and levy assessments for them, a major crisis arose in 1964. Accumulated unpaid assessments for the emergency forces in the Middle East and in the Congo had put the UN seriously in debt. The United States and the United Kingdom held that states in arrears were subject to loss of voting rights in the Assembly. The two powers in default maintained that they could not pay for operations not exclusively under control of the Security Council, where they had veto power.

The dispute rocked the UN, frightened the smaller powers, and hobbled the entire nineteenth Assembly. While the arguments went on, the U.S.S.R. indicated informally that it would make some contribution on a voluntary basis, and France did make a contribution to the expenses of forces in the Middle East. Eventually, neutrals devised a rescue fund to receive such tokens of goodwill, and the Assembly set up a Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations. A year ago Ambassador Goldberg announced that the United States was abandoning its legalistic interpretation of the issue but would reserve its own position on whatever future expenses it did not approve.

No one today expects to see another improvised fire brigade on the Middle East model. Its undoubted value in sterilizing the Gaza and Sinai frontiers for ten years has been demonstrated, but that was a unique effort in response to a unique situation. The other current peacekeeping force is in Cyprus. It comprises 5591 military men and 175 civilian police from ten countries and has operated since 1964 on funds donated by thirty-eight countries. Even so, more and more frequently the question arises whether the success of such interpositions has had the effect of postponing actual peacemaking efforts.

At work on this entire question is the Special Committee, chairmaned at the moment by Mexico. Canada has urged that measures toward settlement be invariably associated with any further policing, and that the Security Council propose specific means of financing in each case. Sweden has proposed more responsibility and higher assessments for the five permanent members of the Security Council, but would make it possible for countries politically opposed to an operation to opt out. Sweden would have the Council authorize peacekeeping but have it recommend the means of financing to the Assembly.

The poverty gap

The entire dispute has highlighted the role of the Assembly, which has been enhanced at the expense of the Security Council. Newer UN members, if they work together in groups, do make their influence felt. Now it is they who must be consulted and persuaded. First on the list is their need for economic viability. Political independence is hollow without a mastery of modern skills or access to capital and markets. These have-nots believe that their progress is blocked by trade relations inherited from their colonial past. They are aware that investment from the West in 1965 totaled $8 billion and was still well under one percent of GNP for the investing countries.

Moreover, the load of public debt for poor countries is on the order of $28 billion. Latin Americans must pay out about 14 percent of their export earnings for interest each year. The figure for Africa and Asia is between 7 and 8 percent.

Secretary-General U Thant has warned the Western world of the potentially disastrous political consequences of its “prosperous provincialism” in economic matters. In another speech to an American labor audience he suggested that if we can conquer the atom and outer space, it is absurd not to conquer urban misery and increase food production. He is pressing now for a five-year survey of natural resources in undeveloped countries.

The results of UN multilateral assistance are measurable and encouraging. But the great, dangerous gap between poor countries and the rich remains. The Special Fund, under Paul Hoffman’s guidance, has for a total cost of $33.6 million engendered investment of $1.185 billion in poor countries. The Expanded Program of Technical Assistance (EPTA), now merged administratively with the Special Fund, has, since its inception in 1950, spent over $500 million on such vital efforts as manpower training (ILO, UNESCO), agricultural development (FAO), and health education (WHO). Its whole emphasis is on the transference of skills and knowledge to local technicians. The budgets of both the Special Fund and EPTA are raised by contributions from member states.

Committee labyrinth

Altogether, fifteen autonomous intergovernmental agencies operate within the UN framework in the economic and social field. Any catalogue of them soon becomes out of date. The latest addition, United Nations Organization for Industrial Development (UNOID), was created at the last General Assembly session; it now joins the company of the Center for Industrial Development (CID), the Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and the two-year-old Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Old hands at the UN naturally regard this proliferation of committees and boards with skepticism. The late Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld deplored the “labyrinth” of organizational structures. Each year an effort is made to streamline meetings and reduce verbiage.

There are congressional murmurs in Washington when UN contributions are due. Lately there have been indications that Moscow also questions the high cost of organizational life at the UN. Items like the $200,000 trip to Africa for the Committee on Decolonialization this summer, complete with UN television coverage, have caused the sort of criticism that similar congressional tours stir in Washington. Yet realists at the UN also must weigh the emotional and political values to the participants in some of these peripatetic sessions.

The same human assessments are being applied to the economic emancipation act which brought UNCTAD into being. A hardboiled view would be that GATT is already dealing with the possible means of integrating the developing countries into the world trading system. But to the new states GATT is the establishment. Even though many of them are members, it does not speak for them. They believe drat they are at the mercy of the industrialized world, and that only by banding together as they have, in a bloc — the “77” — cair they achieve any bargaining power.

Like revolutionaries everywhere, they are in a hurry. Some expect a magic formula to relieve them of their anxiety, their load of debt, and their hunger. Testing the political ropes as they move from committee to committee, they seem to hope to uncover the secrets of productivity and trade by some miraculous shortcut. Thus the organizational cost of UNCTAD, $5,971,500 in the regular UN budget this year, is easily justified in their eyes.

They realize, however, that passing resolutions will not bring them more trade. They have devised a conciliation procedure during debate and before voting in UNCTAD. By this means they hope to operate as a bloc, but to avoid open confrontations with the industrialized countries.

The question of color

The Rhodesian dispute, in which the African states want force used to unseat Ian Smith’s all-white regime in that British colony, raises the burning issue of racialism. The independent Africans are convinced that if the Smith rebellion had been led by black Africans it would have been forcibly suppressed. Nothing the Western powers can say will help. If oil continues to reach Rhodesia through South Africa and the Portuguese territories without enforcement of sanctions, an explosion may rock Africa.

The racial question is likely to be underscored by impending events. One of the most important is a forthcoming ruling by the International Court of Justice on South Africa’s mandate over Southwest Africa. Two applicants to the Court, Ethiopia and Liberia, have asked it to uphold the continuing validity of the conditions imposed by the League of Nations mandate given South Africa over this adjoining territory. They hold that South Africa has violated these conditions by its policy of apartheid, and that it has failed to cooperate with the UN, the League’s successor as a supervisory power.

If the Court decides against South Africa, the Security Council could then be called upon to decide how to enforce the judgment. At worst this could mean severe sanctions. At best South Africa could accept defeat and relinquish the mandate. In either case the resort to the Court may set a valuable precedent.

Inevitably, forthcoming sessions of the Security Council and the Assembly will revolve around the racial issue. The Africans now treat the territories administered by the British and by the Portuguese as part of a package, along with South Africa. In thus lumping all of them together as imperialist and racist, African leaders seem to be missing a chance to play Britain off against Portugal. In voting for an “Algerian” solution to the colonial issue, they also risk further rifts within the rather shaky Afro-Asian bloc. This larger entity, already divided on many questions, cannot be expected to support African violence. Nor can the UN in its present state of caution about peacekeeping be expected to resume interposition in Africa.

The prospect of another term of office for Secretary-General U Thant is reassuring. There is literally no other figure who could command the same support on all sides. The job of preventive diplomacy evolved by Dag Hammarskjöld suits U Thant. In his own fashion he has exercised initiatives in peacemaking and in the big issues of development and racialism. He wants the UN to produce a thorough study of the probable effects of a nuclear war. He wants all of Indochina neutralized. He wants the modern world “to reap the harvest of our extraordinary inventiveness,” and to focus on a future beyond ideological quarrels.

The art of the possible

The position of the United States in the UN reflects its position in the world at large. It is economically paramount but can no longer command automatic political support. The issue of China and the UN illustrates the American situation. Last year only a 47-47 Assembly vote denied Peking its claim to represent China. Since that time American policy has started to shift. Washington has begun publicly to accept the fact of the Chinese People’s Republic’s existence as a permanent feature of the Asian scene. It seems possible therefore that the United States will cease trying to block resolutions opening the UN door to Peking. The onus for failure can rest elsewhere.

On other matters the United States is discovering the advantages of letting the UN rescue it from conflicting commitments. The India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir is a conspicuous case. Any unilateral moves by Washington which favored either country would have resulted in great damage to wider objectives. For in Washington’s view, India’s integrity and advancement are a vital counterweight to Peking’s authoritarianism. Yet Pakistan’s alienation and possible defection from neutralist ranks to China’s side in Asia would have shattering repercussions in the Islamic world. In this instance, resort to the UN provided an alternative approach which spared Washington an agonizing choice.

The case of Indonesia, which returned to the UN on its own initiative without any big-power maneuvering, seems to point up the advantages of not assuming roles which others can and will carry. In these cases the United States has found that UN machinery can provide alternatives not open in direct binational dealings.

The new voices and priorities of Africa and Asia reach Washington as insistently as they do Turtle Bay. The Washington reply is to support the UN financially; to extend communication with new groups, as President Johnson tried to do with OAU leaders in Washington in May; to work toward a rule of law, as Ambassador Goldberg pleads, without expecting to reach it by shortcuts. Joseph Sisco, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, whose job is UN affairs, calls himself a “possibilist.” This is the tone of the U.S. approach to the UN today.

In dollar terms, Washington provides under $40 million a year to the regular UN budget of $121,567,420 this year, plus $180 million to the cluster of specialized agencies. The amounts channeled into multilateral aid are a fraction of those which Washington dispenses unilaterally.

For his part, that loquacious “possibilist” Ambassador Goldberg tries to convey Washington’s genuine concern for the small countries, for the principle of collective security, and in the case of Vietnam, for the right of self-determination. But the ambassador’s role in defending the U.S. position is a lonely one. It is obvious that until a cease-fire can be brought about, only the most oblique and quiet diplomatic soundings can be taken through the UN.