Selective Universality

When Daniel Patrick Moynihan was named the new American Ambassador to the U.N. three months ago, some diplomats braced themselves for the arrival of a real ogre. It was Moynihan, after all, who, having just wound up a two-year tour as U.S. Ambassador to India, wrote a controversial article urging the U.S. to quit kowtowing to the Third World. Instead of apologizing for America's "imperfect democracy," he said, the U.S. should take a tough stand toward the new nations, especially their tendency to band together with the Communist countries in anti-Western positions.

Once Moynihan moved into his office on the East River, he disarmed his U.N. colleagues with the same affability and Irish charm that have impressed four U.S. Presidents. His policy, he stressed, was to foster "genuine dialogue" rather than confrontation. Once he even praised a delegate for his "excellent presentation" of a bitterly abusive anti-U.S. speech.

Last week, however, Moynihan found himself playing the ogre once again. In two separate Security Council votes, on General Assembly membership for North and South Viet Nam, each time there were 13 ayes, one abstention and a lonely nay: Moynihan's. The reason for his vetoes was the Security Council's refusal even to consider the bid for membership of still another country--South Korea.

Two Vetoes. The U.S., Moynihan explained, was ready to vote for the admission of both Viet Nams and of South Korea. But the Communists and such left-leaning but nonaligned members of the council as Iraq and Tanzania blocked South Korea's application from even being included on the agenda. U.S. policymakers were outraged, and the upshot was Moynihan's two vetoes. Never before had the U.S. used the veto to block a membership application.* The U.S., said Moynihan, "will have nothing to do with selective universality, a principle which in practice admits only new members acceptable to totalitarian states."

The two Viet Nams and their sponsors quickly protested that the U.S. was using the Korea issue as a pretext. Insofar as the U.S. was reluctant to give two U.N. votes to Hanoi, which for all practical purposes runs both Viet Nams, there was some truth to the charge. Even so, the refusal of the Communist and nonaligned countries to consider South Korea's application was nothing less than an egregious violation of the U.N.'s principle of universality.

*Previously the U.S. had cast just seven vetoes, including two in protection of Israel and one rejecting the loss of U.S. sovereignty over the Panama Canal. The Soviet Union, by contrast, has cast 110 vetoes.

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