THE UN.: PROSPECTS BEYOND PARALYSIS

It may take a year or two, or maybe even three-o, But some day all the world will be a happy family-o As we make the United Nations a reality-o . . .

"THIS pseudo folk song of 1945 was typical of the euphoria A that greeted the founding of the United Nations two decades ago. There were skeptics, of course, but they were shouted down by the kind of evangelism that caused the New York Post to describe the founding convention in San Francisco as "the most important human gathering since the Last Supper." South Africa's Jan Smuts, a veteran of the ill-fated League of Nations, was equally hopeful. After scribbling a rough draft of the U.N. Charter's preamble on a cigarette packet, he told reporters: "This time we will pull it off. We have learned our lesson now." But there were many bitter lessons ahead as the U.N. met reality-o.

Today, while the biggest war since Korea blazes in Southeast Asia, the U.N. stands mute and immobile. Red China, which the U.S. so far has managed to blackball from the U.N. as an international outlaw, once clamored to get in; now it sneers at the U.N. and threatens to set up a rival organization. Peking's ally, Indonesia, walked out trailing invective. Charles de Gaulle drops acid denunciations of what he calls "the Disunited Nations," and in a sense he is right. The General Assembly is now in adjournment until fall, having found itself unable to accomplish anything since last December except some housekeeping chores.

The crisis may not be quite "a watershed in human affairs," as Adlai Stevenson calls it, but the whole U.N. experiment has come close to collapse. There are uncomfortable parallels with the disintegration of the League in the 1930s: failure to stop aggression (then it was the Italian attack on Abyssinia), withdrawal by members (then Japan and Nazi Germany). Is the U.N. also falling apart? Should the U.S., the U.N.'s most ardent and generous backer, continue to support it? And just what is there left to support?

Question of Sovereignty

On the surface the U.N.'s paralysis is financial and legal.

The dispute centers on the Charter's Article 19, which states that a member more than two years in arrears with its financial contributions loses its vote in the General Assembly. But Russia and France, along with a number of smaller nations, have consistently refused to pay their share of the Assembly's assessments for peace-keeping operations--primarily in the Congo and the Middle East--that run counter to their own policies. The U.S. threatened to invoke Article 19 to deprive the delinquents of their vote, but the majority feared that in such a showdown, Russia would walk out and wreck the organization; thus the small nations insisted on preventing a showdown--which meant no open voting. In the end, the U.S. backed away from its tough stand and allowed the Assembly to adjourn without forcing the issue.

The amounts involved are so small--the Russian debt is $21.7 million, less than the price of a submarine--that obviously money is merely being used to make another point. The point concerns national sovereignty. The Russians and French argue that the U.N. has no power to make any member do anything it does not want to do, such as pay for peacekeeping. And they have a case: the U.N. was conceived as a loose association of sovereign states. But at the same time it also carried the ill-defined hint of being an embryonic world government and the hope that the members would sacrifice their sovereign interests for the sake of international cooperation. That hope, however noble, was premature. Among other realities, it ignored two developments: the cold war and the death of colonialism.

The framers of the U.N. Charter imagined that the peace would be maintained by the Big Powers--the U.S., Russia, France, Britain, Nationalist China. They were expected to supply armed forces as requested by the Security Council, where each had a veto. Command of the combined forces would be channeled through a military staff committee, composed of officers from the Big Five. But as Russian vetoes followed one another in the Council like wolves across the steppe, it became quickly plain that this method of peace-keeping would not work. In fact, the military staff committee still exists, but its U.S. representative, Lieut. Colonel Victor de Guinzbourg, is noted mostly for his compilation of a volume entitled Wit and Wisdom of the U.N. (Sample wisdom from Japan: "A wise man is impartial, not neutral; a fool is neutral, but not impartial"; from East Africa: "Nine is very near to ten.")

The council's only major peace-keeping operation was made possible by a famous error in Russian tactics. The Reds had staged one of their walkouts before the Korean War erupted in 1950, and in the absence of the Russian delegate the Security Council was able to order the "police action" against the North Korean aggressors, with the U.S. assigned the role of principal policeman. Realizing that the Russians would not make such a mistake again, the U.S. and six allies in the General Assembly pushed through the "Uniting for Peace" resolution, which assumed for the Assembly the right to use "armed force when necessary" in case the Security Council was veto-bound.

The Hammarskjold Decade

Thus began a U.N. era that lasted roughly a decade and was characterized by 1) more or less secure Western ascendancy over the Assembly and 2) the forceful personality of Dag Hammarskjoeld, who took initiatives that few of the U.N.'s founders had visualized as part of the office of Secretary-General. His U.N., of course, was useless if the vital interests of a major power were at stake: when Russia brutally suppressed the Hungarian uprising, the Assembly could only pass resolutions of censure. But the Hammarskjold decade saw two operations in which the U.N., for better or for worse, did act, and set remarkable precedents for international cooperation in keeping the peace.

sbSUEZ. When Britain, France and Israel tried to seize the Suez Canal in 1956, the Security Council was paralyzed by British and French vetoes, and under the Uniting for Peace formula, the Assembly moved to send troops to patrol the Gaza Strip. The U.N. force thrust an impassive shoulder between Egyptian and Israeli combatants. Its continued presence may not have resolved Arab-Israeli differences (what could?), but today, the Gaza Strip is quiet.

sbCONGO. When the Belgian colony precipitately won independence in 1960, the new nation collapsed in mutiny and civil war. The U.N. decided to intervene, and initially there was no Big Power opposition. Some 20,000 U.N. troops from 21 countries fought to subdue Moise Tshombe's secession in Katanga and, indirectly, to prevent a Communist takeover in the rest of the Congo. Many still feel that U.N. troops should never have performed a fighting role and that it was wrong to put down Tshombe, who has since emerged as the only figure capable of giving the country even a semblance of government. But whatever was wrong with the sometimes tragic, sometimes messy operation, it still managed to keep a brush-fire war from spreading into a wider conflict. The Congo operatien ended last June, largely because of Russian and French refusal to help pay for it.

The New Assembly

Meanwhile the Assembly was being transformed into an entirely new kind of political body. When the U.N. was founded, it reflected an older world; only four African nations were represented. Now, with the relentless recessional of the colonial powers, new African nations began sprouting almost faster than they could be counted. The present roster of 114 members includes 36 Africans. From Tanzania and Zambia, from Malawi and Upper Volta, from places no one had heard of before, came men with gaudy robes, beaded headdresses, and Oxford or Sorbonne accents--most of them young and eager, all of them defensive, few of them experienced in even the lowest levels of diplomacy.

All manner of emotional, racial, tribal and religious elements were introduced into what once was a relatively tidy equation. The new math of the U.N. involved sets and subsets incomprehensible to minds raised in the school of Big Power politics. At the same time, the cold war had also changed. Said Dean Rusk: "The cobweb syndrome, the illusion that one nation or a bloc of nations could, by coercion, weave the world into a single pattern, is fading into limbo."

The new members' one big, unifying issue is opposition to colonialism, and since that issue is fast liquidating itself, it has become necessary to invent "neocolonialism" to keep it going. At the same time they plainly feel, as became clear at last year's meeting of UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), that the "neocolonial" powers owe them a living through aid and better trade terms.

The situation is not helped by Secretary-General U Thant, a far less forceful personality than his predecessor and a vague advocate of neutralism. Though the new nations call themselves nonaligned, they often seem plainly aligned against the West. Communist aggression and subversion tend to become "national liberation movements." When the U.S. and Belgium last year dropped paratroopers into Stanleyville to rescue hostages held by Communist-backed Congolese rebels, African leaders denounced that operation as the foulest aggression since Hitler's days.

Despite such outbursts from the extremists, the Afro-Asians often show a sense of responsibility. Although the press speaks of an "Afro-Asian bloc," no such bloc actually exists. The Asians and Africans do not consistently vote together. Since 1960, Africans have voted with the U.S. about 30% of the time, with Russia on 25% of the roll calls. By contrast, the Asians sided with Washington on only about 20% of the votes, with Moscow more than 30% of the time. Yet on nearly one roll call in three, the Africans and Asians voted differently from both Russia and the U.S. With these "swirling majorities," votes in the Assembly are increasingly hard to predict, let alone control.

Above all, most of the new member countries are so small, and so obviously far from being viable nations, that the responsibility of the Assembly as a whole is in question. Theoretically, at least, a two-thirds majority could now be formed by countries representing only 10% of the world's population.

The Counterrevolution

To rebalance the General Assembly, there have been various suggestions for "weighted voting." Instead of operating on the basis of "one state, one vote," by which India's 400 million weigh no more than Chad's 3,000,000, Assembly votes would be apportioned by population, gross national product, contributions to the U.N. Modified versions of this plan have worked well in technical, U.N.-allied agencies, but there is virtually no chance that the system will ever be accepted in the politically hypersensitive General Assembly.

During the current adjournment, a Special Committee on Peace-Keeping Operations is supposedly examining this and other formulas--so far without discernible success. The payments issue as such may well be settled by a bookkeeping device, but for now, the Assembly simply cannot be counted on to initiate any peace-keeping business. The University of Chicago's Hans Morgenthau describes what is happening as a U.N. counterrevolution--a return of the peace-keeping functions from the Assembly to the Security Council.

This return is being pushed both by the Russians and the French, and the U.S. will have to go along. In fact, faced with the possibility of being outvoted in the Assembly, the U.S. does not exactly mind shifting the action back to the Council, where it is protected by the veto--although so far the U.S. has never used it. But with the Assembly reverting more and more to the status of a debating society and with the Security Council, as ever, at the mercy of Russian obstruction, what can still be hoped for from the U.N.?

First, the confrontation of the U.S. and Russia in the Council has at least the virtue of reflecting the real world, in which very little of major importance gets done without at least tacit arrangements between the two big nuclear powers. Second, the U.S. insists that it is not entirely giving up on the Assembly's "residual" peace-keeping powers in cases where the Council is deadlocked, is only abandoning the idea of compulsory peace-keeping assessments. That something can still be accomplished in the Assembly is shown by the U.N. approach to Cyprus, where 30 nations voluntarily contributed men and money, thus bypassing the sticky legal and financial arguments. For the time being at least, this has more or less calmed down the bristling island.

The Assets

For all its desperate weaknesses, the U.N. still has considerable assets. Unspectacular but useful work is being done by its specialized agencies, including the World Health Organization. The U.N. performs an immensely important educative function: the new nations' rant and bluster may get more publicity at the U.N. than it could otherwise, but they not only talk, they also listen. Their delegates learn about the West--and about the world--simply by being at the U.N. For many, it is the only contact with international life, since they could not afford to maintain missions in all the major capitals. Indeed, the glass-and-steel U.N. complex in Manhattan, which often gives visitors the feeling of being caught inside a vast piece of abstract modern sculpture, is an impressive world chancellery; it brings together some 5,000 people, from delegates to karate-trained guards, amid art objects as disparate as a statue of Zeus and a silvery Sputnik.

Most of the new nations gain a sense of importance and security by being members and are passionately committed to the U.N.'s survival. Besides, the notion of an international organization is young; Edgar Faure, France's scholarly ex-Premier, dates the first serious, nonutopian version from 1795, when Immanuel Kant developed a plan for world peace. Seen in that perspective, the U.N.'s peace-keeping attempts, however fumbling, are historic and revolutionary.

Although Americans bear the U.N.'s main financial burden --nearly half the total budget--the U.N. is not disastrously expensive. The U.S. has spent about $2 billion on it, or about $100 million a year, which is less than what the Federal Government spent last year on meteorological research.

Some feel that the U.N. is expensive in another sense--by infringing on U.S. sovereignty. In fact, the U.S. has never allowed itself to be hampered by the U.N. on any major issue. But it has sometimes ritualistically relied on the U.N. instead of acting on its own or standing on principle. The U.S., for instance, helped arrange the shabby deal whereby the U.N. handed West Irian to Sukarno. On this and other occasions, the U.S. felt that it had to roll with the "anticolonial" tide. But lately the U.S. seems to have learned that support of the U.N. can be a supplement to but never a substitute for a sound foreign policy.

Unquestioning support of the U.N., often taken as a proof of virtue, is just as sentimental as unquestioning suspicion of the U.N., often taken as proof of patriotism. When John Kennedy referred to the U.N. as "the last best hope of mankind," he fell victim to one of the oldest, gravest dangers the U.N. faces: overoptimism. Exaggerated expectations can only lead to disappointment and cynicism. As Kennedy himself demonstrated in the Cuban missile crisis the following year, salvation lay not in the U.N.. but in a direct interplay of power and reason between the U.S. and Russia.

But if the U.N. is not, and cannot be, the last best hope of anyone, it does serve mankind in highly important lesser ways. It will continue to be an occasional peacemaker in smaller disputes; a decompression chamber even for large quarrels; a forum for the views, right or wrong, of all nations; and a reminder, as nagging as conscience, of the dream of world order. The U.N., as Dag Hammarskjoekl used to say, only mirrors the world as it really is--its idealism and its baseness, its nobility and its savagery.

In that world, the U.N. can be, as Adlai Stevenson said of the Assembly, an "effective second line of defense for peace." But until the world changes very drastically, in any major crisis it is still America and its allies that will have to constitute the first line of defense.

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