THE VETO CRISIS O PINIONS may differ about the desirability of
a discussion on the veto by the Security Council at this juncture. There was something to be said for leaving the whole question till the meeting of the General Assembly next month, when the whole body of members of the United Nations will be represented, and in the main by delegates of higher status than habitually sit on the Security Council. The discussion in the latter body was bound to be abortive, and it has, in fact, made little contribution to a solution of the present deadlock. But the deadlock must somehow be resolved. If it continues the United Nations itself cannot continue. That is the situation, and it had better be frankly faced. The relative failure of the League of Nations in the political field was often palliated by devotees who dwelt with justified satisfaction on its achievements in the economic, financial and social fields. But the United Nations was to learn and profit by all the League's mistakes and avoid their consequences. It was to be practical where the League was merely ideal. General disarmament was this time to be a reality. The United Nations was to have teeth where the League had none. Every provision was made for that in the Charter. There was to be a Military Staff Committee to organise united resistance to aggression, and Members undertook to hold national air-force contingents immediately ready so that joint action could be taken immediately when needed. Action, in short, was to be the dis- tinctive mark of the United Nations as contrasted with the League. No such thing, in fact, has happened. Time after time when action was imperatively called for every attempt at action has been nullified—and nullified almost invariably by Russia.
That is the hard fact, and it can be neither got round nor explained away. The veto in the Security Council has so far been exercised twenty times, eighteen times out of the twenty by Russia. Example after example could be quoted. The discussion which took place some nine months ago about relations with Spain is as good as any. A resolution on the subject not being sufficiently strong for M. Gromyko's taste he vetoed it, though there was not a single other vote against it. An attempt was made to draft a compromise resolution and a controversy arose regarding it ; the chairman gave a ruling and was supported by nine votes to two, but as one of the two was M. Gromyko (the other, of course, being the Polish delegate) the riding was overruled. A further discussion arose as to whether a certain amendment was procedural (and therefore requiring only the support of any seven members) or substantive (and therefore subject to a veto by any Permanent Member). The chairman ruled that it was procedural, and was again supported by nine members out of eleven. But since M. Gromyko dissented, that ruling too was overruled. In such circumstances the work of the Security Council is, of course, reduced to a farce, as Dr. Evatt, the Australian. Minister for External Affairs, vigorously insisted on the occasion in question. His assertion that the Russian action imperilled the very existence of the Security Council—and, it may be added, of the United Nations itself—was repeated only this week by M. Spaak, who presided with such conspicuous ability over the first General Assembly, when he declared in an article in the New York Herald Tribune that " the United Nations will never be able to do its job if the veto rule is not abolished."
That it never will is manifest to all the world. Why then, it may be asked, is the veto not abolished? The answer unhappily is all too plain. To abolish the veto requires a revision of the Charter, and to revise the Charter requires the assent of all the Permanent Members of the Security Council—of whom Russia is one. The deadlock is therefore total, and no way through is visible, short of dissolving the United Nations and reconstructing it with a different Charter—which might mean without Russia, if she declined to co-operate without a right of veto. And if Russia declined membership some other Eastern European States would no doubt do likewise. Plainly this is an expedient to which recourse should be had only if no other conceivable solution proves possible. But even a truncated organisation may be better than a hamstrung organisation. And the extent to which the United Nations is being hamstrung by Russia today needs to be realised to its full extent. It is not merely that Russia's attitude seems always to be determined by political considerations, not by considerations of equity. It is not that she can be counted on invariably to oppose the Western States—on Albania, on Greece, on Indonesia, on Egypt. We have to recognise that no new State can now join the United Nations except by Russia's favour. In the past fortnight she has vetoed the applications of Eire, of Portugal, and of Transjordan for membership, and there are several other applicants which may look for like treatment in the next few days. It might have been thought that the recommenda- tion of the Security Council to the General Assembly regarding applications for membership was a procedural matter, and there- fore not subject to the veto. But if the chairman so ruled Russia would immediately veto his ruling.
The actual technique in such a case is instructive. Russia declines to enter into diplomatic relations with countries like Eire and Portugal, and then vetoes their admission to the United Nations on the ground that they are not in diplomatic relations with a Permanent Member of the Council—to wit herself. It is the same thing with the European peace treaties ; in each treaty it is laid down that they shall come into force as soon as they have been ratified by the four Allied Great Powers. Of these powers Russia alone has refrained from ratifying. Now Italy, mainly at the instigation of her Communists, has decided not to ratify her treaty till all the Great Powers have ratified, and Russia has immediately completed the deadlock by announcing that she will not ratify till all the ex-enemies have ratified. Settlement and stability are therefore postponed indefinitely, an effective im- petus is given to all tendencies towards chaos and the withdrawal of Russian troops from countries like Austria and Bulgaria is indefinitely adjourned. Meanwhile at Lake Success progress in the matter both of disarmament and of atomic control is held up because, in spite of a specific decision to the contrary, Russia insists that the Atomic Energy Commission shall be subsidiary to the Security Council, where the veto prevails, and not an autono- mous body unfettered by the veto of a single State. It is hardly, if at ill, too much to say that Russia's attitude to the United Nations has throughout been consistently obstructive or destruc- tive. In its constructive work, the European Economic Council, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the International Bank, she has taken little or no part ; in frustrating action by the Security Council in a dozen fields she has been consistently and assiduously active. The question how far such tactics can con- tinue in an organisation whose sole cause for existence is inter- national co-operation can clearly no longer be evaded.
In all this less blame than might appear attaches to the States, particularly the Great Powers, which consented to the inclusion of the veto in the Charter at San Francisco in 1945. The Charter clause, Article 27, providing that all decisions, other than procedural, by the Security Council, shall need the concurrent votes of all the Permanent Members (except that in certain cases a party to a dispute shall have no vote) was the result of a compromise reached between President Roosevelt, Mr. Churchill and M. Stalin at the Yalta Conference in February, 1945. It was based on the assumption, which events had not then disproved, that all States, particularly the Great Powers themselves, would act reasonably and in good faith in the spirit of the Charter and in the interests of genuine international co-operation. On that assumption the veto article would have done little harm—perhaps none at all. An attempt was made to rescue the assumption from extinction when Mr. Bevin, at New York last December, got the matter discussed by the Foreign Ministers' Council, but M. Molotov resolutely opposed any modification of the veto power. That, therefore, ended that. Now the General Assembly is to meet again next month and the Foreign Ministers again in November. The veto question must be discussed by the former and ought to be by the latter. The fundamental question, and its importance can hardly be exaggerated, is whether it is any use at all going on as at pret'ent,when, in the Prime Minister's words, " the veto is used for every trifling thing, reducing to a nullity the usefulness of the Security Council." The answer is not necessarily in the affirmative. The alternative is some effective limitation of resort to the veto—or a new United Nations.
Previous page
