New Forces in the United Nations

Abstract

I T seems worthwhile discussing the new forces that are coming into play at the United Nations, if only because the United Nations is something of the very greatest importance to all of us. Without an understanding of those forces we shall not get a policy for this country, or for the Commonwealth, that really makes sense. And, above all, I want to emphasize that the United Nations does matter. It is still less than fifteen years old, and is just beginning to come to a sort of adolescence. We are beginning to be able to see now, at last, what sort of an institution it is going to be. It can be compared with the League of Nations, or with something like the Concert of Europe many years ago. What struck me first of all was the great influence that its situation in New York City has had on the United Nations. One of the good effects has been to make the United States, in some ways at least, the most loyal of all the members of the United Nations. Another effect is that the United Nations today reflects many American ideas: for instance, the American idea of Americanism as a revolutionary force--the forerunner of the United States of Europe or the United States of Africa-in fact a general federating influence. Secondly, much of the American spirit of egalitarianism emerges in United Nations deliberations. And, perhaps even more important, the United Nations has picked up from America, and from the nature of its constituents, a very strong anti-colonialist flavour. Lastly, and perhaps most important of all, the whole diplomacy of the United Nations is diplomacy with an American accent; it is open diplomacy in the old Wilsonian sense. Nobody who has been a journalist at the United Nations would care to say that there is not a great deal of private and indeed secret manoeuvring, but the whole shape of the United Nations is intended to be open. The debates are open debates, the delegates' lounge and bar is open to the press in a way that, for instance, is inconceivable in our House of Commons. There is a curious feeling that the delegates and the press are somehow working for the same ends-that is the encouraging thing about the United Nations. Of course, any country that happens to be faring badly at the moment-and in the I959 Session of the General Assembly it was largely France-feels that the whole United Nations Establishment involves some sort of plot against it; but in general there is a rather pleasant feeling that the permanent delegates to the United Nations are trying to make the United Nations matter in world affairs, and the permanent correspondents are trying to make it matter to