U.N.O. IN CRISIS
AMONTH ago, in the week when the Seventh Assembly of the United Nations opened, it was stated here that the occasion might be critical for the future of the Organisation. Since those words were written the imminence of crisis has become unmistakable. There can be no justifi- cation for undue pessimism, but there can be equally little for blindness to patent facts. First of all came the American election, which made it purposeless for Mr. Eden and M. Schuman to go to New York (though M. Vyshinsky thought otherwise, and seized certain opportunities in advance) till the issue was decided. Then came the electoral decision, which left the American delegation at the Assembly unrepresentative and powerless to undertake commitments. Then M. Vyshinsky's portentous and uncompromising speech. Then the insistence of a, number of States that the domestic affairs of France and South Africa should be discussed by the Assembly in spite of the terms of the Charter, a claim com- bated by Mr. Eden in the Assembly on Tuesday and by Lord Llewellin in the Political Committee on Wednesday. Then the untimely and unheralded resignation of the Secretary-General, M. Trygve Lie. Such was the situation which faced Mr. Eden 0 when he rose to address the Assembly on Tuesday. To say that he succeeded in retrieving it would be to credit him with achieving the impossible. All that a British Foreign Secretary could do in such a case he did do, but no one man can right what is wrong with the United Nations. It needs the com- bined wisdom and endeavour and goodwill of four or five men at least, one of them necessarily M. , Vyshinsky, and evidence that that will be forthcoming is non-existent. Russia, as things stand, has the power to paralyse the United Nations, and there is every sign that she means to exercise it to the utmost.
Does that mean that the United Nations as an effective force in the world is doomed ? Mr. Eden on Tuesday courageously refused to admit that. But it may have to be admitted in the end. The American nation could not exist half-slave and half- free. World-unity cannot exist while one-half the world stands for war, even if it be only cold war, and the other half for peace. The Charter of the United Nations was drafted on the assumption, to all appearance completely justifiable at the time, that the Great Powers of the world would co-operate, in honesty and mutual trust, not only for the preservation of peace but for the economic and cultural advancement of the world. Whether any safeguards against deliberate sabotage could have been embodied in the Charter is questionable. At any rate they were not embodied, and the sabotage has been taking place. Russia has vetoed the admission to the United Nations of a number of indisputably peace-loving nations because the admission of certain States which can by no stretch of language be termed peace-loving has been resisted in other quarters. Here a deadlock is not unavoidable; there is more to be said for admitting all than for excluding all, and Russia might be willing to agree to this. If she were it would be wise for the Western Powers to seize a rare and legitimate opportunity of concurring with Moscow. The problem of China's place not only in the Assembly but in the Security Council Chamber, is, to all appearance, insoluble. That a representative of Chiang Kai-shek, who holds not a foot of Chinese soil, should be occupying at New York the seat of a Great Power is an anomaly which would be near farce if it were not so near tragedy. Everything Russia has to say on that point is justi- fied. But the Charter contains no provision for the removal of a permanent member of the Security Council, and even if it did it would be out of the question for the empty seat to be filled by a Communist China whose armies are fighting United Nations troops in Korea.
To add crisis to crisis, the Secretary-General, Mr. Trygve, Lie, suddenly, and apparently without consulting anyone or even informing anyone except (at the last moment) the Chair- man of the Security Council, who happens ironically enough to be at the moment the Chinese member, and the President of the Assembly, suddenly throws his resig- nation before the• bewildered delegates. The whole affair is something of a mystery. Mr. Trygve Lie has explained that he knew that the Russians, though they actually proposed his election in 1946, had since turned violently against him—which is unfortunately true—arid that the mechanism of the United Nations might run more smoothly if he were out of the way. It might, if that were all. But Mr. Lie knows well that the appointment of a successor by agreement between the Western Powers ifid Russia is almost beyond hope. The position is not, indeed, entirely clear. Under Article 97 of the Charter "The Secretary-General shall be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.'.! Under Article 27 decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of any seven members (out of eleven); on all other matters all the Permanent Members must be among the seven, which means that any one of them holds a power of veto. Is the election of a Secretary-General a procedural. matter ? That seems highly doubtful, though in the end a' ruling by the International Court of Justice might have to be sought. There is nothing to be commended in Mr. Trygve Lie's. quite unnecessarily dramatic method of making his decisions known. Whether the full reason for the decision has been disclosed is still uncertain. According to the well-informed New York correspondent of the Manchester Guardian "there is a personal reason, and it is well guarded." That is as may be; the situation created is as it is.
It is bitterly ironical that the solution of practically all these difficulties hangs on the fate of a hundred thousand or so prisoners in Korea. If that were settled the last visible obstacle to the conclusion of an armistice would be removed, and, an armistice once concluded, there is no reason why a definite peace should not follow. If it did the objection to according the Peking Government the place that would then be due to it on the Security Council would disappear. That contention rests admittedly on three assumptions—first that Russia wants peace in Korea; second that America would assent to the sub- stitution of the real China for a fictitious China on the Security Council; third that some way of enforcing the substitution could be devised. The immediate obstacle to agreement in Korea was reduced by Mr. Eden to its lowest point. He formulated four conditions regarding the prisoners. About' the first three there could be no disagreement, even by Russia. The fourth, that the side holding prisoners has no right to use actual force to repatriate them against their will, could be contested by no Government on earth except the Russian. Mr. Eden seemed to see a glimmer of hope in M. Vyshinsky's proposal that a committee should be appointed to promote a settlement in Korea, with the task, among others, of giving "all possible assistance to the repatriation of all prisoners of war by both sides." It is hardly a beacon light, but it might just conceivably serve. As to that it will be necessary to await the outcome of the talks M. Vyshinsky will no doubt have with Mr. Eden and the American and French Foreign Ministers.
There are, of course, numbers of other points of difference between Russia and the Western Powers all 'over the world. There is the Austrian Treaty, which Russia declines to con- clude, or even to discuss, with the result that the unhappy Austria has been saddled with the occupation troops of four countries (she certainly would not want the Russians to remain alone) for seven years now, and there is no obvious reason why that should not continue for another seven. There is the cisastrous division of Germany. There is tireless persistence the cold war. Mr. Eden was profoundly right in saying that the Communists must know as well as anyone that the fates of east and west are linked together. But the Russians may be as obdurately resolute as ever Samson was to pull down the house on themselves as well as others, though that seems rather less likely than it did.. Meanwhile there is reason to be pro- foundly thankful for the existence of N.A.T.O. The nations comprising it must bend the whole of their strength to building it up. As for the United Nations in its present form, its fate is on the knees of Moscow—hardly a• cushioned resting-place.
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