104. Like all here present, we have heard the news of the death by violence of the Prime Minister, Hassan Ali Mansour, of Iran with shock and with grief. On behalf of my delegation and my Government, I extend our heartfelt sympathy to the people of Iran, His Majesty the Shah and the Government of Iran, and the delegation of Iran to the United Nations, and most especially to our beloved and respected colleague, Mr. Vakil, who has today lost a brother-in-law as well as a distinguished leader of his people.
105. Mr. President, this is my first opportunity to express publicly, on behalf of the delegation of the United States, our congratulations to you on your election as President of the General Assembly, and our admiration — I shall now add — for the manner in which you have conducted that office in most difficult circumstances.
106. I have asked to speak at this date so that I can share with all delegations, in a spirit of openness, with candour and with simplicity, my Government's views on the state of affairs at the United Nations as our annual general debate comes to its conclusion. Certain things which I shall say here today have to do with law, with procedures, with technical and administrative matters. So I want to emphasize in advance that these are but manifestations of much deeper concerns about peace and world order, about the welfare of human society and the prospects of our peoples for rewarding lives.
107. There can be little doubt that we have reached one of those watersheds in human affairs. It is not the first, of course, and surely not the last. But this is clearly a critical point in the long, wearisome, erratic, quarrelsome but relentless journey towards that lighter and brighter community which is the central thread of the human story.
108. Twenty years ago we took a giant stride on that historic journey. We negotiated and signed and ratified the Charter of the United Nations. The first purpose of the United Nations was to create a new system of world order. Those who drafted the Charter were acutely conscious of earlier efforts to find collective security against war and were determined to do better this time.
109. I speak to you as one who participated in the formulation of the Charter of this Organization, both in the Preparatory Commission in London and in the Charter Conference in San Francisco, under circumstances so eloquently recalled by Dr. Lleras Camargo in his memorable address on the International Cooperation Year in this hall last evening. I too recall vividly the fears and hopes of those days as the World War ended in the twilight of an old era and the fresh dawn of a new one — fears and hopes which brought us together determined to ensure that such a world catastrophe would never again occur. At those conferences we laboured long and diligently; we tried to take into account the interests of all States; we attempted to subordinate narrow national interests to the broad common good.
110. This time we would create something better than static conference machinery, something solid enough to withstand the winds of controversy blowing outside and inside its halls. This time we would create workable machinery for keeping the peace and for settling disputes by non-violent means, and we would endow it with a capacity to act. This time we would create working organizations to stimulate economic growth and social welfare and human rights — and put resources back of them. And this time we would create a constitutional framework flexible enough to adapt to an inevitably changing environment and to allow for vigorous growth through invention, experiment and improvisation within that framework.
111. Twenty years ago nobody could see, of course, what the post-war years would bring. But there was a widespread feeling, in those bright, cool days on the rim of the Pacific, that the United Nations was our last chance for a peaceful and secure system of world order, that we could not afford another failure. For the character of war had evolved from a clash of armies for strategic ground to the possibility of the destruction of populations and the indiscriminate destruction of wealth and culture; the weapons of war had evolved from field artillery to block-busting bombs, and then to a single warhead that could wipe out a city; and recourse to war had evolved from what was cruel to what could be suicidal insanity.
112. Twenty, years ago there was a widespread feeling, too, that it already was late in the day to begin loosening the strait jackets of unbridled sovereignty and unyielding secrecy, to begin systematically to build the institutions of a peaceful, prosperous international community in the vulnerable, fragile, interdependent neighbourhood of our planet. For science and technology were making the nations interdependent willy-nilly, and interconnected whether they liked it or not. Science and technology were making international co-operation and organization a modern imperative in spite of ideology and politics, and were paving the way for a practical assault on world poverty, if the world was up to the challenge.
113. It may well be that twenty years ago people expected too much too soon from this Organization. In the workaday world we quickly discover that social and scientific and institutional inventions — even important and dramatic ones — do not swing wide the doors to Utopia, but only add new tools to work with in the solution of man's problems and the abatement of man's ills. In the workaday world we also discover, over and over again, that man himself is a stubborn animal, and in no way more stubborn than in his reluctance to abandon the iron luggage of the past that encumbers his journey towards human community. In the workaday world we discover, too, that to be effective an international organization must be relevant to contemporary world realities, and that there may be conflicting views as to just what those realities are.
114. So we have learned how real are the limitations upon a single enterprise so bold and so comprehensive in its goals as the United Nations. We have learned how heavy are the chains of inherited tradition that inhibit man's journey towards wider community. We have learned that the United Nations will be no less — and can be no better — than its membership makes it in the context of its times.
115. And yet, we have seen that the Charter of this Organization has made it possible to maintain a hopeful rate of dynamic growth; to adapt to changing realities in world affairs; to begin to create workable international peace-keeping machinery; to begin to grapple with the complex problems of disarmament; to stimulate effective international co-operation; and so to move, however erratically, down the road towards that international community which is both the goal of the Charter and the lesson of history. I am proud to say that not only has the United States given of its heart and mind to this endeavour, but that over the years we have contributed more than $2,000 million to the support of the United Nations and its activities.
116. The progress which this institution has fostered has been accomplished despite the unprecedented character of the Organization, despite the intractable nature of many of the problems with which we have dealt, despite the so-called cold war which intruded too often in our deliberations, and despite a series of debilitating external and internal crises, from which the Organization has, in fact, emerged each time more mature and better able to face the next one.
117. In the short space of two decades, the United Nations has responded time after time to breaches of the peace and to threats to the peace. A dozen times, it has repaired or helped repair the rent fabric of peace. And who can say that this has not made the difference between a living earth and an uninhabitable wasteland on this planet?
118. During that time, the United Nations has sponsored or endorsed all the efforts to halt the armaments race and to press on toward general and complete disarmament in a peaceful world. Its efforts were not fruitless. Agreement was reached on a direct communications link between Washington and Moscow — a step lessening the risk of war through accident or miscalculation. A treaty was signed-long urged by the General Assembly — the Treaty banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water. The two States presently capable of stationing nuclear weapons in outer space expressed in the United Nations their intent to refrain from doing so, and we adopted a resolution [1884 (XVIII)] hero calling upon all other States to do likewise. In short, the efforts of the last twenty years have at last begun to arrest the vicious spiral of uncontrolled nuclear armament.
119. In the short span of twenty years, the United Nations also has created a versatile range of international agencies which are surveying resources, distributing food, improving agriculture, purifying water, caring for children, controlling disease, training technicians — carrying on research, planning, programming, investing, teaching, administering thousands of projects in hundreds of places, so that, to quote the Charter, "we the peoples of the United Nations" may enjoy "social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom". These activities are now being financed at the impressive level of some $350 million a year.
120. In its brief life the United Nations has also taken major strides toward creating an open community of science — for the peaceful use of atomic energy, for the application of technology to industry, agriculture, transport and communications and health, for a world-wide weather reporting system, for shared research in many fields, and for co-operative regulation of the growing list of tasks — life frequency allocation and aerial navigation — which cannot even be discussed except on the assumption of international co-operation and organization.
121. We have proved in practice that these things can be done within the framework of the Charter of the United Nations whenever enough of the Members want them done and are willing to provide the means to get them done. In the process we have left well behind us the out-dated question of whether there should be a community of international institutions to serve our common interests. The question now is how extensive and effective these organizations should become — how versatile, how dynamic, how efficient — and based on what assumptions about the sharing of support and responsibility.
122. And yet, in spite of this history, we have reached a fork in the road ahead of this Organization, and thus in our search for world order and our journey toward a wider community.
123. Is this to over-draw the picture, to overdramatize the situation in which we find ourselves? Not, I think, if we recollect the historic character of warfare. 1 assume that we are all convinced that the revolutionary advance in destructive capability — and the danger that little wars anywhere can lead to bigger wars everywhere — has made war an obsolete means-for the settlement of disputes among nations. Yet World War II, I remind you, occurred after it already was clear to intelligent men that war had become an irrational instrument of national policy, that another way must be found to settle international accounts and to effect needed change.
124. The reason is not hard to find: the level of destruction does not obliterate the inherently double character of warfare. In our minds we tend to associate war — and correctly so — with the ancient lust for conquest and dominion; we tend, rightly, to identify war as the instrument of conquerors and tyrants.
125. Yet in every war there is a defender who, however reluctantly, takes up arms in self-defence and calls upon others for aid. And this is the other face of war: war has been the instrument by which lawlessness and rebellion have been suppressed, by which nations have preserved their independence, by which freedom has been defended. War is an instrument of aggression — and also the means by which the aggressors have been turned back and the would-be masters have been struck down.
126. As long ago as 490 B.C. Miltiades and his heroic spearmen saved Greek civilization on the Plain of Marathon. Nearly 2,500 years later, the gallant flyers of the Royal Air Force fought in the skies over Britain until the invading air armadas were turned back, while the indomitable legions of the Soviet Army fought on and on at Stalingrad until at last they broke the back of the Nazi threat to the Russian homeland.
127. All through the years we have been taught again and again that most men value some things more than life itself. And no one has reminded us more eloquently and resolutely that it is better to die on your feet than live on your knees than the noble spirit that left us the other day in London — Sir Winston Churchill.
128. As long as there are patriots, aggression will be met with resistance —whatever the cost. And the cost rises ever higher with the revolution in weaponry. At Marathon 200 Athenians lost their lives. At Stalingrad 300,000 invaders lost their lives.
129. There, precisely, is the difficulty we are in. Now, in our day, the end result of aggression and defence is Armageddon — for man has stolen the Promethean fire. Yet resistance to aggression is no less inevitable in the second half of the twentieth century than it was 2,500 years ago.
130. The powers of the atom unleashed by science are too startling, too intoxicating, and at the same time too useful as human tools for any of us to wish to abandon the astonishing new technology. But if we will not abandon it, we must master it. Unless the United Nations or some other organization develops reliable machinery for dealing with conflicts and violence by peaceful means, Armageddon will continue to haunt the human race; for the nations will — as they must — rely on national armaments until they can confidently rely on international institutions to keep the peace.
131. This, it seems to me, makes the present juncture in our affairs historic and critical. This, it seems to me, is why the Assembly should be able to perform its proper functions in the event of an emergency, and why the issue before us must be resolved.
132. What then is the issue before us? It is, in essence, whether or not we intend to preserve the effective capacity of this Organization to keep the peace. It is whether to continue the difficult but practical and hopeful process of realizing in action the potential of the Charter for growth through collective responsibility, or to turn toward a, weaker concept and a different system.
133. This choice has not burst upon us without warning. Some three and a half years ago, the late Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, in what turned out to be his last report to the General Assembly, foreshadowed this choice quite clearly. There were, he said: ”... different concepts of the United Nations, the character of the Organization, its authority and its structure. "On the one side, it has in various ways become clear that certain Members conceive of the Organization as a static conference machinery for resolving conflicts of interests and ideologies with a view to peaceful coexistence, within the Charter, to be served by a Secretariat which is to be regarded not as fully internationalized but as representing within its ranks those very interests and ideologies. "Other Members have made it clear that they conceive of the Organization primarily as a dynamic instrument of Governments through which they, jointly and for the same purpose, should seek such reconciliation but through which they should also try to develop forms of executive action, undertaken on behalf of all Members, and aiming at forestalling conflicts and resolving them, once they have arisen, by appropriate diplomatic or political means, in a spirit of objectivity and in implementation of the principles and purposes of the Charter."
134. If that language of Mr. Hammarskjold’s seems mild and diplomatic, the warning was nevertheless clear. If it was relevant then, it is no less relevant now. If we needed an Organization with capacity for executive action then, how much more do we need it now.
135. There have been many challenges to the ability of the United Nations to act, from the abuse of the right of the veto to the effort to impose a "troika." to replace the Secretary-General. Now we are faced with a challenge to the Assembly's right even to engage in peace-keeping functions or to determine how they are to be financed and to adopt assessments to support them.
136. The decision to invest the General Assembly with the power over the United Nations finances, its power of assessment, was made in 1945 when the Charter was adopted. Ever since then, an overwhelming proportion of the Members have been paying their assessments on the assumption and understanding that this was, in fact, the law—and that the law would be applied impartially to one and all.
137. Almost from the outset these assessments have included peace-keeping activities. Starting in 1947, the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in Palestine, the United Nations military observer in Kashmir, the United Nations Observation Group in Lebanon and other similar missions, were financed by mandatory assessments under Article 17. For ten years no Member of the United Nations thought to refuse — as some are now doing — to pay these assessments, or to condemn them as illegal — as they now do.
138. When the assessments for the United Nations Emergency Force in the Middle East and the Congo operation were passed year after year by large majorities in the General Assembly, the Members clearly understood them also as mandatory obligations.
139. This was the understanding of States when they made voluntary contributions above and beyond their regular scale of assessments to reduce the burden on Members less able to pay.
140. This was the understanding on which the Members approved the United Nations bond issue, and it was the understanding on which the Secretary-General sold — and over sixty Member States bought — some $170 million of these bonds.
141. As the Secretary-General so aptly put it last Monday, the question is whether the United Nations will, in the days ahead, be in a position "to keep faith with those who have kept faith with it" [1315th meeting, para. 14].
142. When the argument was pressed — in spite of unfailing United Nations practice — that peace-keeping assessments were not mandatory because peacekeeping costs could not be expenses of the Organization within the meaning of Article 17, that question was taken to the International Court of Justice for an opinion. We all know that the Court confirmed the principle which the Assembly had always followed: peace-keeping costs when assessed by the Assembly— and specifically those for the Congo and the United Nations Emergency Force — are expenses of the Organization within the meaning of Article 17. We also know that the General Assembly, by a resolution adopted at the seventeenth session [resolution 1854 (XVII)], accepted that opinion by an overwhelming vote — thus confirming that the law was also the policy of this Assembly as well.
143. The Assembly's most important prerogative may well be its power of assessment. It is the heart of collective financial responsibility, and as the Secretary-General also said last week: "... a policy of improvisation, of ad hoc solutions, of reliance on the generosity of a few rather than the collective responsibility of all ... cannot much longer endure if the United Nations itself is to endure as a dynamic and effective instrument of international action." (1315th meeting, para. 15.)
144. It is your power of assessment which is being challenged. It is the power of each Member of the General Assembly — and particularly those smaller nations whose primary reliance for peace and security and welfare must be the United Nations. And, make no mistake about it, it is your power to keep or to abandon.
145. We can live with certain dilemmas and paradoxes; we can paper over certain ambiguities and anomalies; we can ignore certain contradictions of policy and principle in the interests of pursuing the common interest of majorities in this Assembly. And we can, of course, change our procedures and devise new procedures, within the framework of the basic law, for handling our affairs in the future. Or we can indeed change the law. But we cannot have a double standard for applying the present law, under which we have been operating in good faith for the past two decades.
146. We cannot have two rules for paying assessments for the expenses of the Organization: one rule for most of the Members and another rule for a few. If this Assembly should ignore the Charter with respect to some of its Members, it would be in no position to enforce the Charter impartially as to others, with all the consequences which will follow with respect to the mandatory or voluntary character of assessments.
147. This is not to say the procedures under which the Assembly exercises its authority should not conform to changed conditions and to political realities. Indeed, it is all-important that they do.
148. That is why my Government has suggested that a special finance committee, perhaps with a membership similar to the Committee of Twenty-One, be established by the Assembly to recommend to the General Assembly in the future the ways and means under which it should finance any major peace-keeping operations — and that this committee should consider a number of alternative and flexible financing schemes whenever it is called upon for such recommendations.
149. We are not dogmatic about this proposal and we are prepared to examine patiently variations and alternatives with other Members — we have been for months and months. Certainly it should not be beyond the ingenuity of such a committee, on a case-by-case basis, to devise ways of assuring financing arrangements for the future which are generally acceptable, particularly to the permanent members of the Security Council.
150. But in favouring procedural changes we do not challenge the basic law of the Charter: we seek improved working procedures. We do not seek to undo the past, but to smooth the future.
151. We support the primacy of the Security Council in the maintenance of peace and security and would support an increase in its role; but we seek to maintain the residual right of this Assembly to deal with such questions in the event the Security Council fails to do so.
152. We support the right, under the Charter, of the General Assembly to assess the membership for the expenses of this Organization, so long as it enforces this power equitably and impartially; we will also support steps to assure that the views of all are taken fully into account.
153. We believe, as I have said, that the Assembly should continue, within the scope of its powers, to be * able to deal, free of a veto, with problems of peace and security should the need arise. We are prepared to seek ways of accommodating the principle of sovereign equality and the fact of an unequal distribution of responsibility.
154. The question here is whether the United Nations will demonstrate again, as it has in the past, a capacity for flexibility and adaptation, which has permitted it to grow and to prosper in the past and whether we continue to adhere to the prevailing principle of collective financial responsibility for world peace.
155. It will, of course, be up to the Member Governments to decide whether this Organization is going to continue to work under the Charter as it has been accepted by most of us, interpreted by the Court, and endorsed by this Assembly.
156. My Government is quite clear about its own choice, lest that be a secret to any of you. We want to continue to do our full share in designing and supporting—morally, politically and materially—any sound expansion of the peace-keeping machinery of this Organization. We feel that there are possibilities for a more diversified family of weapons of peace in the United Nations arsenal — from conciliation procedures, to small teams available for investigation of com-' plaints and for border inspection, to logistical plans for peace-keeping missions.
157. My Government also intends to continue the search for meaningful and verifiable steps to limit and, hopefully — hopefully, I repeat — to halt the arms race. For a peaceful world delivered of the burden of armaments, we will pursue with the urgency it merits the objective of stopping the spread of lethal weapons and of halting the multiplication of nuclear arms. This most urgent objective is in the common interest of all mankind. For if we fail to achieve it soon, all the progress attained thus far would be brought to naught and the goal of general and complete disarmament would become more distant than ever.
158. My Government is prepared to support a further enlargement of the capacity of the international agencies to wage the war against poverty. We would, for example, like to see the combined Special Fund and Technical Assistance Programme raise its budgetary goal well beyond the present $150 million once the two programmes have been merged satisfactorily. We would like to see a further expansion of capital for the International Development Association. We would like to see a further expansion in the use of food for development. We would like to see some major experiments in bringing to focus the whole family of United Nations agencies.
158. We would like to see, among other things, the Centre for Industrial Development intensify its work and become an effective laboratory for spreading the technology of the industrial revolution to the far corners of the planet. We feel that there are good opportunities for building up the institutions and programmes dealing with the transfer and adaptation of science and technology, and for developing the wise use of the world's most precious resources.
160. And, too, we wish to see the final chapter written in the drama of decolonization, and written peacefully. We, too, wish to explore the desirability of creating some new United Nations machinery in that most neglected area of the Charter called human rights. We, too, want to press on in such fields as weather forecasting, nuclear energy, resource conservation, and the conversion of sea water.
161. My Government is as anxious as any delegation represented in this Assembly to get on with these priority tasks, to press ahead towards the peaceful solution of disputes, towards co-operative development, towards building the law and institutions of a world community in which man can some day turn his full talents to the quality of society and the dignify of the individual.
162. This is what we have believed in and worked for at the United Nations for two decades now. This is v/hat most of the Members have believed in and worked for as long as they have been Members.
163. What, then, is the alternative? What if the Assembly should falter in the exercise of its own authority? What if the Assembly should repudiate its own history, reject the opinion of the International Court, reverse its own decision with respect to that opinion, and shut its eyes to the plain meaning of the Charter, and thereby the treaty which gives it being?
164. I have no prophetic vision to bring to the answer to this question — for this would be a step in the dark, down an unfamiliar path. I can only say with certainty that the United Nations would be a different institution than most of the Members joined and a lesser institution than it would otherwise be.
165. I do not have to draw a picture of the uncertainties, the delays, the frustrations and no doubt the failures that would ensue were Members able to decide with impunity which activities they, unilaterally, considered to be legal or illegal and which, unilaterally, they chose to support or not to support from year to year. And so our world would become not a safer but a more dangerous place for us all, and the hopes for a strengthened and expanded and more useful United Nations would have been dimmed.
166. I must say in all earnestness that my delegation would be dismayed if at this stage in history the Members of the Assembly should elect to diminish the authority of this Organization and thereby subtract from the prospects for world order and world peace. If the General Assembly should now detour on the long journey towards an enforceable world order, I fear we will set back the growth of collective responsibility for the maintenance of peace.
167. Wise men drew a lesson from World War I and established the League of Nations. President Woodrow Wilson took the lead in that great experiment, and my countrymen, in hindsight, deeply regret that the United States did not take up its share of the burden in that historic enterprise. But the lesson of World War II was not wasted on this country, as our active leadership in establishing the United Nations and its Charter attests.
168. Who can say whether we shall have another chance to draw a lesson from another global conflict and start again? But this we know full well: we, the human race, are fellow travelers on a tiny space ship spinning through infinite space. We can wreck our ship. We can blow the human experiment into nothingness. And by every analogy of practical life, a quarrelsome ship's company and many hands on the steering gear is a good recipe for disaster.
169. In such a world there can be only one overriding aim — the creation of a decent human order on which we can build a reasonable peace — not simply the precarious peace of balances and alliances, not simply the horrifying peace of mutual terror, but the peace that springs from agreed forms of authority, from accepted systems of justice and arbitration, from an impartial police force.
170. That is why our commitment to an effective working, tenacious United Nations is so deep, and why, in the most literal sense, the United Nations carries with it so much of the hope and future of mankind.
171. This is our position not because we, among the Members, are uniquely dependent upon the United Nations for the security and safety of our citizens.
172. This is our position not because we, among the Members, especially look to the United Nations for guidance and help for our economic development.
173. This is our position not because we found it advantageous to our narrow national interests to treat assessments as mandatory; we found it a prior worth paying in recognition that others also shared the principle that all Members bear some measure of responsibility for maintaining the peace.
174. This is our position, rather, because we believe that in the nuclear age the only true national security for all Members lies in a reliable and workable system of dealing with international disputes by non-violent means — because we believe that we shall continue to face crises and problems which, by definition, can only be dealt with internationally — because we believe that workable, effective international institutions are a plain necessity of our day and age — because we believe that in every secure community shared privileges demand shared responsibility—and because we believe it unwise and unsafe and unnecessary to take a side road at this stage of the journey on which we set out together two decades ago.
175. Beneath all the complexities of the issue that now threatens the future capacity of this Organization, there are some very simple, very basic, very plain points to remember.
176. My nation, most nations represented here, have paid their assessments and have kept their accounts in good standing.
177. My Government, most Governments represented here, have accepted the principle of collective financial responsibility and have striven to uphold the prerogatives of this Assembly.
178. My Government, most of the Governments represented here, want to resolve this crisis without violence to the Charter and to get on with our international business.
179. That is why we have all stood available to discuss this issue at all times.
180. What we have sought is not defeat for any Member of this Organization. What we have sought is the success of the United Nations as a living, growing, effective international organization.
181. But the Assembly is now nearing a fork of the road, and I have attempted to put the issue frankly because the Assembly may soon again have to decide which branch of the road it will take.
182. And the very least that we can do is to be absolutely clear just what we are doing when we exercise that option.
183. Finally, I, for one, cannot escape the deep sense that the peoples of the world are looking over our shoulder — waiting to see whether we can overcome our present problem and take up with fresh vigour and with renewed resolution the great unfinished business of peace, which President Johnson has called "the assignment of the century".