CRISIS OR OPPORTUNITY?
LAST week saw the birth of the Security Council of the United Nations ; this week the new-born infant has been offered for nourishment, not the baby foods suitable to its age, but a platter of good tough steaks which even a fully-grown adult might have difficulty in masticating. It is not surprising that many who watched over the birth with so much hope and anxiety should now be worried over the baby's digestion and that some, even so early, should doubt whether it will survive. Fortunately, their worry would seem to be excessive. This baby was born to crises ; its whole life is likely to be a series of crises. It may even be that it will thrive upon crises, and even at this early age grow stronger by facing and surmounting them ; especially if, like the present one, the crises is more apparent than real. When the Russian Ambassador died during the Congress of Vienna, Talleyrand is reported to have asked what his motive was, and we do not seem to have advanced much since those days in understanding the policies that lie behind Russia's apparently incalculable actions.
The three cases which have been brought before the Security Council, by the Soviet Union and by Persia, are alike in two respects only. The first is that each refers to the presence, and the action, of foreign troops in areas of the world where, for varying reasons, governmental power is too weak to assert itself with un- disputed authority. It is important, at least from the Russian point of view, to bear this fact in mind ; for wherever there is a failure of governmental authority, the tendency of Russian policy is to attribute it to the revolt of oppressed social classes who are denied their proper share in their own government. Sometimes this attitude is sincere and justified ; sometimes it is merely a cover for diplomatic manoeuvre ; more often as now it is a mixture of both. Even so, it is as well to admit that there is a basis of fact that underlies Russia's diplomatic offensive. There is a case for saying that the Persian Government represents a rich, corrupt, and inefficient plutocracy that has done little or nothing to advance anyone's interest or well-being except its own. There is a case for saying that the fighting in Indonesia is due to the revolt of native Indonesians against exploitation and imperialism. There is even a case for saying that our troops in Greece have been able to avert civil war only by disarming and suppressing the radical revolutionary movement which was born of the struggle to throw out the German invader. To ignore these facts will not help to solve the difficulties that are being encountered in all three countries.
The second similarity is that, though each of these three countries have provided an occasion for an appeal to the Security Council, none of them in fact is likely to provoke a conflict in the sense envisaged by Articles 34 and 35 of the Charter, under which the appeals have been made. There is not the slightest likelihood that the troubles in any of these countries will provoke an armed conflict between states, unless in some very dim and unforeseen future. The Security Council would be well within its rights if it rejected all of the appeals, as outside its powers of jurisdiction, and left the troubles from which they arise to be settled by the individual powers concerned. Such an attitude would raise some nice diplomatic points ; it would be interesting to see M. Manuilsky protesting the active concern and anxiety which the state of affairs in Indonesia is causing the Ukrainian Republic. It may be indeed that the Security Council may have no choice but to reject one ol the appeals, on the curious grounds that there is no appellant ; for its appeal to the Security Council was the Persian Government's last act, there is now no Persian Government, and it seems likely that when there is one it will be inclined to negotiate a compromise with the Soviet Union.
The Russian appeals to the Security Council, on behalf of Greece and Indonesia, are so obviously a tu quoque, of a somewhat school- boyish kind, to Persia's appeal against the Soviet Union, that if Persia's case goes by default the Russians also may be prevailed upon to withdraw. They may be the more inclined to because the Greek Prime Minister, M. Sophoulis, has already declared that the British troops are in Greece with the consent 'of the Greek Government, and the Indonesian Prime Minister, Mr. Sjrahir, has said that even the Indonesians prefer the British troops in Java to remain until the Japanese have been got rid of. In the face of these declarations, which are as close to being representative of the two peoples' wishes as any that could be made at the present time, it will be difficult for M. Vyshinsky and M. Manuilsky to argue that Great Britain is practising a selfish imperialism that is likely to provoke international conflict.
Nevertheless, it is to be hoped that the Security Council will entertain the Russian appeals, and will enable the British Govern- ment to explain and expound its policies. It would be too much to say that Great Britain welcomes Russia's appeals. The occasion chosen by the Soviet Government, the method of procedure it has adopted, the secrecy and the suddenness with which it has developed this diplomatic offensive against an Ally, have been too destructive of international confidence and goodwill, too calculated to create suspicion of the Soviet Union's good faith, too like a shock assault on UNO itself, to be welcome to a Government for whom the success of UNO has become a cardinal object of policy. But however unfortunate the occasion, the British Government should, and does, accept willingly the opportunity it has been given of explaining its policies and, it is to be hoped, of associating with it in the prosecution of those policies the vast majority of the United Nations. Moreover, it will accept this opportunity the more willingly because there could be no better way in which it can affirm its belief not only in the justice of its own case but in the supreme importance of the organisation before which that case is stated. If it can do this, the appeals to the Security Council will prove not a misfortune but a blessing, however heavily disguised ; and the Security Council will survive its first crisis with increased authority and prestige.
The confidence with which the British Government can face the Council is well founded. It is true that in Greece the Left, which includes many who contributed most to the liberation of their country, has been disarmed and its appeal to force suppressed. It is true also that the Right has attempted to exploit the defeat of its opponents, for its own ends, and that the defeated have been persecuted fiercely and excessively. Nevertheless, the presence of British troops in Greece is called for now precisely in order to avert a coup d'etat by the Right, to ensure that the only armed forces in Greece are under government control, to make possible the enlist- ment and training of a police and gendarmerie that are purged of politics, and to ensure a period of stability in which the Greek Government can carry out the economic reforms which are essential if Greece is to recover her prosperity ; and in carrying out those reforms the Greek Government will receive from Great Britain the economic and financial assistance which she needs.
Most of all, British troops are required in order that the Greek people shall have the opportunity to decide freely their own future ; and the Russian Government itself has been invited, and has refused, to join in international supervision of the elections at which they will decide their future government. The Russians indeed may claim that Great Britain's policy is actuated not by coricern for the welfare of the Greek people but by anxiety over her strategic position in the Mediterranean. There is no con- tradiction between the two, and there is no reason why Great Britain should not openly proclaim that her interest in the strategic position in the Mediterranean is vital to her. In Indonesia equally Great Britain need not fear open discussion of the way in which she is carrying out the unwelcome mission imposed upon her by the supreme command of the United Nations in the Pacific. To the two tasks of liquidating the Japanese occu- pation and liberating the internees and prisoners of war, she has now added a third, that of mediating between the Indonesian nationalists and the Netherlands Government. In none of these tasks is she pursuing any end that can conceivably benefit herself alone, though she also, like every other nation in the world, including the Ukrainian republic, will benefit by the restoration of peace in the Pacific. Great Britain can legitimately claim that in Indonesia, at great cost to herself not only in money and material but in English blood, she is carrying out a mission on behalf of the United Nations. It is perhaps appropriate and opportune, therefore, that the United Nations should judge what success she has achieved ; certainly it can only be an advantage to this country if the United Nations either associate themselves openly with her policy and her efforts, or, alternatively, relieve her of her ungrateful task or change the directive under which she is acting.
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