U.N.: Between Illusion & Disillusion

IT almost seemed last week as if Western opinion were divided only between those who felt that the U.N. was about to die and those who believed that it was already dead.

Quite a few were ready to welcome its demise.

When the Security Council blocked any action against India's aggression in Goa, Adlai Stevenson, recalling the League of Nations' failure to oppose aggression, gloomily warned: "We are witnessing the first act in a drama which could end with [the U.N.'s] death." British Foreign Secretary Lord Home, criticizing the U.N. action against Katanga, warned that Britain might withdraw its financial support. In Washington there were demands for congressional investigation of U.S. policies toward the U.N.

But the U.N. is not dying, nor is it behaving very differently from its usual form. Instead of either gloom or wrath, the week's events should have evoked a new, realistic appraisal of what the U.N. really is and what it can accomplish.

Force Remains. The greatest fuss was made by those who had consistently overestimated the U.N.--either by regarding it as the supreme source of law and morality (the liberals), or as a world conspiracy to undermine U.S. and other nations' sovereignty (the right-wingers). The U.N. is, of course, neither.

While it has created, in a very small way, something like an international civil service and the beginnings of a supranational loyalty, it remains no more than the sum of its parts--and expresses, often enough, only the lowest common denominator of its members' policies. It can never be several things that overly enthusiastic supporters have, to its own disadvantage, wanted it to be. It cannot solve major world issues (Berlin, nuclear testing) because of the veto system, which accurately reflects the realities of a divided world. It cannot be a substitute for national policy, and should not be an easy dumping ground for problems.

It is not, as President Kennedy said last fall, "the only true alternative to war." The U.N. can perhaps reduce but cannot replace the use of force for urgent national self-interest. That is why some observers who do not necessarily approve of Nehru's actions in Goa feel, nevertheless, that Stevenson became somewhat too sweeping in his condemnation of the use of force. Since Korea, the U.S. has used force in Lebanon and may have to use it again in Cuba or Viet Nam.

The New Facts. What seemed particularly annoying about the U.N.'s position on Goa was that Afro-Asian nations which, like India itself, have always preached patience and compromise to the U.S., did not even raise a whisper of protest over India's Charter violation. As Paris' Le Monde put it: "One could hope that a few voices would be heard in the neutralist camp to deplore, in however friendly a fashion, the Indian decision. It seems that anticolonialism excuses everything." Obviously unable to line up any support from Afro-Asian nations to censure India, the U.S. dropped the matter with unseemly haste. This situation reflected the new facts of life in the U.N.

For years the U.S. has managed to counteract the Security Council veto, at least in part, through its majorities in the General Assembly. It has been clear for some time that the rush of the new African members into the U.N. would reduce or destroy those majorities. Some of these new members are volatile, hypnotized by the archaic fear of colonialism, and easily susceptible to Communist influence. As in the Goa case, many of them act blindly on a double standard, ready to condemn the West, rarely ready to criticize their own friends or the Communists. Does this mean, as some suggested last week, that the "Afro-Asian bloc" must be written off. and with it, the U.N.? By no means.

The countries involved do not necessarily vote as a bloc, and they exhibit many different degrees of political stability, economic progress and philosophical outlook. Governments in Africa will come and go, the map will change and change again. The U.S. has not always fared well with these countries in the U.N., but there have been some successes. In the matter of Red China's U.N. membership, for instance, 19 black African nations, largely as a result of a frank political deal and skillful U.S. lobbying, did not side with Peking. Only last week the 50 Afro-Asian nations made no move to block a U.S.-backed condemnation of Red China as an aggressor against Tibet. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Harlan Cleveland believes that the "colonialism" issue may soon run out of steam ("A lot of the delegates regard it as a bore"), because there is simply not much colonialism left.

Limited Uses. These are small pegs for optimism, but they do suggest that the "new nations" are very far from lost either to the West or to reason. They have amply proved that they have no special claim to moral superiority simply because they are small or neutral. They are as self-seeking as everyone else--but on occasion readier than the Communists to respond to the promptings of idealism. There is no reason why the U.S. cannot, by appealing to that very self-interest--and sometimes to the idealism--win support for its own policies through slow, patient, hardheaded pressure, persuasion and politicking. The U.S. must also use, more than before, other instruments of order in the world, such as NATO, the Common Market, etc. But, steering between the extremes of illusion and disillusion, it can still make good, limited use of the U.N.--as can all other nations, when need arises.

The U.N. can. in limited crises, serve as a highly convenient channel of force where (as in the Gaza Strip and the Congo) the use of national armies would be unpolitic or unsafe. Nor is its function as an international forum negligible, though much derided. "World opinion" may be an elusive force on whose wooing much effort can be wasted. But the U.N. remains a place where participants in a quarrel can be quickly summoned, where alarum can be raised, attitudes judged, responsibility or irresponsibility exposed, pressure exerted. In short, it is a place where, despite perils and failures, men and groups engage in politics--an enterprise essential to peace and civilization.

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