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Foreign Affairs an American Quarterly Review 7 CAN THE UNITED NATIONS BE REVIVED? By Richard N. Gardner Reprinted From FOREIGN A.FFA.I 1'_S e JULY 1970 FOREIGN AFFAIRS AN AMERICAN QUARTERLY REVIEW JULY• 1970 INDOCHINA Legacy of the Cold War m Indochina . Townsend Hoopes 601 From the Vietnam War to an Indochina War. .Jean Lacouture 617 Vietnamization: Can It Work?. Robert H. Johnson 629 Britain, Europe and the Alliance . Michael Stewart 648 Can the United Nations Be Revived? . Richard N. Gardner 660 The Spoils of the Mexican Revolution .John Womack, Jr. 677 Entangling Alliances . .David Fromkin 688 China: Period of Suspense . L. La Dany 701 The New Africa. Guy Hunter 712 Canada's Arctic in the Age of Ecology . Trevor Lloyd 726 Covering the Foreign News. Harry Schwartz 741 Ironies of India's Green Revolution . Wolf Ladejinsky 758 Tha\\i in Portugal . Douglas L. Wheeler 769 Recent Books on lnternationa1 Relations . John G. Stoessinger 782 Source Material . Donald Was son 801 HAMILTON FISH ARMSTRONG Editor JAMES CHACE Managing Editor Editorial Advisory Board MCGEORGE BUNDY GEORGE F. KENNAN JOHN J. McCLOY ALFRED M. GRUENTHER HENRY A. KISSINGER PHILIP E. MOSELY CARL KAYSEN WILLIAM L. LANGER ISIDOR I. RABI Reprints of FOREIGN AFFAIRS articles are available at the following prices: 1 to .24 - 50 ¢; 25 to 99 - 45 ¢; 100 to 299 - 40 ¢; 300 to 499 - 35 ¢; 500 to 999 - 30 ¢; 1000 to 2499 - 25 ¢; 2500 to 4999 - 20 ¢; 5000 and over - 15 ¢. For further information write FOREIGN AFFAIRS Reprint Department, 58 East Sixty-Eighth Street, New York, N.Y. 10021. Vol. 48, No. 4. Copyright 1970, Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. Printed in the U.S.A. CAN THE UNITED NATIONS BE REVIVED? By Richard N. Gardner WENTY-·FIVE years after the League of Nations was born a successor organization was being formed at San T Francisco. This fate, at least, has been spared the United Nations. The United Nations is not dead. But it certainly is ill. It is suffering, even supporters admit, from "a crisis of confi­ dence,'' a "decline in credibility,'' and "creeping irrelevance." However we define it, the fact is that the world organization is being increasingly bypassed by its members as they confront the central problems of the time. To be sure, a negative diagnosis of the patient's condition re­ quires some qualification. One can argue that the important thing to say about the United Nations is not that it has fulfilled so few of its ambitious mandates, but that it has accomplished so much in the face of all the difficulties inherent in the international situation. The achievements of the organization are real and are worth recalling even though we may tire of hearing them re­ cited at U.N. Day celebrations. The United Nations has helped prevent or contain violence in Cyprus, the Middle East, the Congo, Kashmir and other trouble spots through peacekeeping and peacemaking missions. It has launched an unprecedented effort to raise living standards in the less developed countries through its network of Specialized Agencies and special pro­ grams. It has speeded the process of decolonization and eased the transition to independence for over a billion people. It has done an impressive amount of lawmaking, not only in the field of human rights, but in such areas as outer space and the oceans. Before we yield to the temptation to write the United Nations off as wholly ineffective, we might ask ourselves what the world would have been like during the last 25 years without it. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the United Nations, however, is an opportunity not just to celebrate past achievements, but to launch a continuing process of renewal and reform. If this pro­ cess is to begin, we must pull no punches in analyzing the cur­ rent state of the world organization. The United Nations today probably enjoys less confidence on the part of its members and the public at large than at any previous time in its history. The CAN THE U.N. BE REVIVED? 661 obvious reason is its demonstrated inability to deal with the cen­ tral problems of war and peace in the world. It is hard to explain to people in most countries why the organization cannot do some­ thing to bring peace to Vietnam. It is hard to explain to Arab and Israeli opinion why it cannot assure a just settlement in the Middle East. It is hard to explain to African opinion why it does not implement its innumerable resolutions calling for an end to colonialism and racial discrimination in Rhodesia, South West Africa, South Africa and the Portuguese territories. It is hard to explain to American opinion why the United Nations does nothing to prevent the Soviet Union from suppressing liberty in Czechoslovakia or stop communist support for "wars of national liberation." It may even be hard to explain to opinion in commu­ nist countries-and elsewhere too-why the United Nations is silent in the face of unilateral U.S. actions in the Dominican Re­ public and Southeast Asia. The decline of the United Nations is particularly notable in the United States, the country which took the leading role in its formation and provided far and away its greatest single source of support. Relations between Washington and the world orga­ nization turned sour during the Article I 9 crisis and became increasingly abrasive during the late Johnson years over Viet­ nam and the U.N. role in the Arab-Israeli crisis. The Secretary­ General's abrupt withdrawal of UNEF and the pro-Arab bias of certain U.N. resolutions alienated opinion in the administra­ tion, Congress and the public at large. The present American attitude toward the organization, however, is less irritation than indifference. The Nixon administration pays little attention to it In the conduct of foreign policy, and American leadership in the world body has declined to an all-time low. Despite the noble efforts of a revitalized United Nations Association and other nongovernmental organizations, the American people seem less interested in the United Nations than ever before-as may be verified by the empty galleries at U.N. meetings and the decline in coverage even by papers like The New York Times. II Can anything be done to revive the United Nations from this low estate? It is easy enough to assemble a shopping list of re­ form proposals, but such an exercise is sterile unless it is related at the outset to the political context in which the organization FOREIGN AFFAIRS has to operate and to the fundamental causes of its illness. More­ over, proposals are worth making only if they are likely to yield significant benefits and have some reasonable prospect of a p­ proval from those members whose support is constitutionally and politically indispensable. In a fundamental sense, the United Nations' problems are not so very different from those that afflict the political institutions of its members. There is a crisis of authority-a trend toward lawlessness and violence-between as well as within nations. It is said of international as well as domestic institutions that they are insufficiently responsive to the times, that they have failed to promote change by peaceful means, and that their fail­ ure to act upon real grievances and real needs leaves no recourse but self-help. For many young people around the world, the United Nations is an ossified "establishment" just like many institutions of domestic government. The analogy between the U.N.'s afflictions and those of na­ tional political institutions may help us come to grips with the central problem. If the institutions of domestic government do not work, we are quick to recognize that the fault lies with the people who have the responsibility to make them work. The re­ sponsibility in the United Nations lies with r 26 governments. As one U.N. ambassador likes to say: "There is nothing funda­ mentally wrong with the United Nations-except perhaps its members." Virtually all members pay lip service to the United Nations while at the same time pursuing their short-term na­ tional interests, often at its expense. Virtually all members take a largely instrumental approach to the organization, citing Char­ ter principles when they seem to yield a short-term advantage, ig­ noring them when they do not. This has always been true of the Soviet Union. What is profoundly disquieting, however, is that it is becoming increasingly true of other countries, including the United States. For example, the United States only asked itself how the United Nations could help it to do what it wanted to do in Vietnam-it never seriously asked itself how it should con­ form its Vietnam policy to its U.N. commitments. With few exceptions, U .N. members ask what the United Nations can do for them, not what they can do for the United Nations-or for the building of a civilized system of collective security and world order. It is this attitude which explains the demoralization at U.N. CAN THE U.N. BE REVIVED? 663 headquarters today. Rules of procedure and past decisions of the organization are frequently ignored by members because they are temporarily inconvenient. References to Charter prin­ ci pies or other sources of international law are regarded with in­ creasing cynicism. There has been a marked decline in third­ party attitudes and a marked increase in the tendency to vote, not on the merits of a question, but with regard to bloc affiliations and the protection of other interests. If a clear and unambiguous case of aggression came before the Security Council or General Assembly today, there would be little confidence that a majority of the members would treat it as such and come to the aid of the victim.
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