Hopes for the success of the United Nations were running very high in the closing days of the first session of the General Assembly. Few of us, if any, left this hall last December in the belief, that six months later the United Nations as an instrument of peace and world security would appear to be failing, much as the League of Nations did. None of us imagined that we should come back to work here haunted by the fear of another war.
We gathered here in October 1946 under dense clouds of indifference and pessimism: pessimism arising from the disappointment of the Paris Conference where the great Powers had unsuccessfully tried to reach an agreement regarding the peace settlements with the totalitarian aggressors, and indifference, to a surprising degree, from this great metropolis.
There was no heartening enthusiasm to greet the representatives upon their arrival. On the contrary, Westchester and other adjoining counties made only too manifest their unwillingness to have the headquarters of our Organization located in their midst. But, fortunately, within a few weeks that outlook changed for the better. San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Boston very generously invited the United Nations to have its seat established within their boundaries, offering substantial contributions as an inducement to have their invitations accepted, in competition with the City of New York. By the time the Rockefeller family made known its readiness to make a gift of the site where the United Nations would be splendidly housed, we all felt assured that the Organization would enjoy here unsurpassed facilities for the fulfilment of its tasks.
In the meantime, the debates on the most controversial questions of our agenda had encouragingly spread the impression that through discussion and compromise we were achieving a very satisfactory measure of international co-operation. Optimism was well-nigh universal when Mr. Spaak, in his farewell speech, summarized, with pride which we all shared, the accomplishments of the General Assembly.
The Assembly did very useful work indeed. Some of its most important resolutions gave the world no small promise of a better future. Members will probably recall that the Security Council was invited to formulate for consideration at a special session of the General Assembly, according to their priority, the practical measures essential to provide for the general regulation and control of armaments and to ensure that such regulation and control, including the census of troops and weapons, would be generally observed by all participants and not unilaterally by some of them.
Thus far, however, no such measures have been agreed upon by all the permanent members of the Security Council on conventional armaments or on atomic energy control, or on the elimination from national armaments of all major weapons adaptable to mass destruction, or on the armed forces to be made available to the Security Council for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security, or on the evacuation of foreign troops stationed on the territories of Member States without their consent.
Months and months of constant and fruitless effort have elapsed without any prospect of a reasonably early agreement between the Soviet Union on the one hand, and China, France, the United Kingdom and the United States of America on the other.
The Security Council has held one hundred and thirteen meetings during the past eight months; but hard as all of its members have tried to come to positive conclusions, the Council has lamentably few results to show.
It has not been found possible to make a satisfactory start on the implementation of the General Assembly resolutions of 14 December 1946 owing to the everpresent conflict of opinion among the great Powers has expressed by their representatives, regarding the question of priority in the consideration of the various aspects of disarmament. In the opinion of the United Kingdom, international arrangements for collective security should be completed before any practical measures to regulate or reduce armaments and armed forces are actually adopted. The Soviet Union maintains that the general regulation and reduction of armaments is a prerequisite of collective security. The United States has consistently held to the view that only after peace is concluded and security is well organized will the reduction of armaments be politically feasible. The United States insists that strict international Control of atomic energy must be established before the prohibition or elimination of atomic weapons can be put into effect. Secretary of State Marshall, in no uncertain terms, reaffirmed this position of his Government in his address to the Assembly.
But it is not alone the work of the Security Council which has fallen short of our expectations. Very important resolutions of the General Assembly have gone by default, if I may be allowed so to express myself. Just as the will of the majority of the Security Council has too often been frustrated through the operation of the rule of unanimity among its permanent members, the will of the majority of the General Assembly has likewise been frustrated through the non-compliance of some States with its recommendations.
Not all the Governments of the United Nations recalled their ambassadors and ministers plenipotentiary accredited to the Franco Government of Spain, as they were asked to do. The General Assembly very solemnly recorded its opinion that the treatment of Indians in the Union of South Africa should be in conformity with the international obligations under the agreements concluded between the two Governments and the relevant provisions of the Charter. But in a document answering India’s complaint that the Government of the Union of South Africa has done nothing to carry out last year’s Assembly resolution, the Union of South Africa contends that the elimination of all racial distinctions in the Union would cause immediate chaos and disaster by upsetting conditions necessary for the beneficial development of all groups in the country.
Moreover, it is fresh in our memories that on 19 November 1946 the Assembly unanimously adopted a declaration that it is in the higher interests of humanity to bring about an immediate cessation of religious and so-called racial persecution and discrimination, and invited the Governments and responsible authorities to conform to both the letter and the spirit of the Charter and to take the most prompt and energetic steps to that end. But no steps of any nature whatsoever have been taken to that end. Religious and racial discrimination is rampant not only in the Near and the Far East, but also in the very heart of Western civilization. We should not have any Jewish problem if there were no such discrimination. We should not have displaced persons’ concentration camps in Europe. It is a sad fact that, two years after the cease-fire order was given in Germany, the four fundamental freedoms remain as distant as, if not further removed than, they were in 1939 from the lot of the common man. If anything, the common man can say that, with the passing of President Roosevelt, the four freedoms lost their most powerful and sincere spokesman. Neither peace nor security is yet in sight in the Old World.
In place of peace, liberty and economic security, as Secretary of State Marshall has been the last in high authority to remind us, we find menace, repression and dire want. Such, to our mind, is, briefly stated, the situation with which the General Assembly will have to deal in its second regular session.
But when we look back on so many disquieting developments, rather than feeling disheartened or exasperated, we are rather glad to remember a remark of former Secretary of State Byrnes in one of his radio addresses to the American people shortly after his return from Paris. “It is always an arduous task,” Mr. Byrnes explained, “to reconcile the opposing points of view of the victorious allies when the time comes to agree on the terms of peace; but it is better that the world should witness the shock of conflicting ideas than an armed conflict.”
The Colombian delegation firmly believes that the key to peace is to be found in the ability of nations to give free expression to their disagreements until a satisfactory solution is arrived at. In the general debate last year, we stated that we do not believe that either the vote of the majority or the veto can, by itself, guarantee the world’s peace. Colombia reluctantly agreed to-have the right of veto granted to the five permanent members of the Security Council, and from the very beginning has logically supported the proposals submitted with a view to solving the divergencies that have arisen in regard to the interpretation and application of Article 27 of the Charter.
We therefore readily concur in the suggested modification of the unanimity requirement with respect to recommendations under Chapter VI of the Charter and such matters as applications for membership in the Organization. But we continue to be strongly in favour also of regulating the vote as the normal means of arriving at the most important decisions. In our judgment, the vote of a majority should be exercised in international affairs as it has been done by the Latin American countries, with the utmost discretion.
Liberalization of the voting procedure in the Security Council, as well as in the General Assembly and other organs of the United Nations has become imperative for the successful development of the Organization. Both the numerical force of the vote undone right of veto should, be wisely regulated and restricted. If they are, we anticipate that our debates will succeed in narrowing, rather than widening as heretofore, the breach between the Soviet Union and the United States. We shall not have a showdown between them at every meeting of the Security Council or of the General Assembly, and the role of the small nations in bringing about an understanding between the East and the West will be seen to become more effective from day to day.
But whatever the voting procedures and practices that we may adopt to ensure the prompt and effective functioning of the Security Council and the General Assembly, we must bear constantly in mind that, veto or no veto, all major decisions in international security and policy call for unanimity among the great Powers. It would perhaps be more exact to say that they require it. And whether we like it or not, we must face, with a good deal of understanding, the fact that these. Powers generally follow the line of action that best conforms to their national interests, rather than to the principles of the Charter or to the prestige of the United Nations.
So far, the world has witnessed a continuing misunderstanding between the United States and the Soviet Union, and is anxious to ascertain the possibilities of active co-operation instead of systematic opposition between the two Government and their agents in every international meeting. If the membership of the Security Council cannot be enlarged, giving more adequate representation to the medium and the smaller countries, the Colombian delegation would welcome the creation of a standing committee of the General Assembly, such as has been recommended by Secretary of State Marshall, in order to discharge its responsibilities under Articles 11 and 14 of the Charter in the broad field of political security and friendly relations among nations.
We think that this Assembly should devise ways and means of letting the majority of the United Nations have a more determining voice in world affairs. Once that is done, we shall have to decide whether we want to work in accordance with the principles and purposes of our Organization, without regard to differences in national policies or conflicting ideologies.
We are committed to co-operate in the-establishment of a new world order, but the old remains less firmly entrenched in our mental habits than in the provisions of the Charter which enable all Member States, and more particularly the strongest, to invoke domestic jurisdiction in order to protect their colonial sovereignty rights, as they conceive them, against the threat of collective action, or to maintain racial or religious discriminations which we all should seek to see abolished.
While we are reconsidering our structure, it is timely to note that the prestige of the United Nations has been steadfastly deciding because leading European and American States have bypassed the Organization or disregarded the recommendations of its principal organs whenever their intervention has threatened to interfere with or prejudice their national policies or wishes. Not only the abuse of the veto, but the lack of binding strength which has made itself evident in the recommendations of the General Assembly and the Security Council, have helped to defeat the will of the majority, as dearly expressed in the Spanish question, the Greek case, and the Indian dispute with South Africa, the last two of which have already been placed on our agenda, and in the Indonesian affair, which gave the world such an unexpected example of solidarity among the colonial Powers.
According to our understanding, Member States are no longer free to enact legislation in contradiction to the principles and purposes of our Organization. The question arises whether they should bring their laws and administrative regulations into conformity with such purposes and principles, and if so, when and how they should do it, or whether they are at liberty to keep them on their statute books for an indefinite time without alteration. This is, unless we are very much mistaken, the heart of our problem. Are we really willing to comply with all the provisions of the Charter? Can any State overlook, obstruct or contravene any of its provisions, having freely accepted them, including Article 103, under, which “In the event of a conflict between the obligations of the Members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail”? Do we want to promote the change to a new world order or to preserve the status quo?
We all want change, of course, and some of us even look for it with eagerness. We know it is an essential condition of progress, and when we stop to reflect on the volume and speed of major developments in our time, we cannot fail to realize that both the speed and the volume are so unprecedented that our sense of proportion and perspective has naturally become confused and uncertain.
We demand and expect swift action in time of peace as we were accustomed to see it taken during the war period. We have a blurred vision of the changing world around us. We seem to think that the work of rehabilitation can be carried out nearly as fast as the work of destruction or that it can be as thoroughly completed in a few years. To be concrete, we are inclined to believe that France, for instance, can return to normal living conditions almost as quickly as it was overrun by the German armies; or that Belgium and Holland will soon recover from the effects of the invasion; or that Great Britain can regain its former economic strength as rapidly as it spent its energy and resources in four Continents meeting the challenge of the totalitarian aggressors.
Conversely, we are apt to underestimate the impact of the war on the international position of the United States and the Soviet Union, and
therefore, to start from mistaken standpoints when we attempt to examine their relative importance or their influence in world affairs. We do so much wishful thinking that we can seldom place full confidence in the soundness of our conclusions. More often than not, we find that we have unwittingly taken a very subjective view of Soviet Union policies, actions or intentions or that we have too readily fallen under an unwarranted fear of communistic domination. On the other hand, from day to day we find it increasingly difficult to grasp the extent and significance of the new responsibilities attaching to the United States as the leading democratic nation and central axis of the world’s economy.
Having made the above mental reservations, I should like to add, on behalf of the Colombian delegation, that we are labouring here under the impression that the economic consequences of the Second World War have outrun the political imagination of most of our contemporary statesmen, just as the economic development of this great country, from the outbreak of the First World War until the election of President Roosevelt in 1932, outgrew the training and understanding of the most experienced bankers, the best- informed professors and writers on economic and fiscal science, the most alert minds in public life.
And this is the more surprising to us when we look back into the origins and after-effects of the New Deal policies; for, unless we misread and misunderstand the course of progress in the United States, it appears to us that the Truman administration is evolving a peace-time lend-lease system which sooner or later will include in its operations not only the European countries which have already been invited to discuss plans for their economic reconstruction with United States aid under the so-called Marshall Plan, but also all the nations formerly allied or associated with the United States in the war effort.
This, in our opinion, is a logical development; one that we should welcome and that before long, we feel sure, will be found to have begun to take shape rather fortuitously last March, when the United States moved to take over United Kingdom obligations in Greece and emerged as the dominant voice in the Mediterranean.
It is still being debated whether the Marshall Plan is an extension of or a substitute for the Truman Doctrine. Some people claim that it is only a restatement of policy, emphasizing the constructive features more than the negative, ideological aims. “Our policy”, Secretary Marshall said, “is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purposes should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist. Such assistance,” Mr. Marshall added, “… must not be on a piecemeal basis as various crises develop.”
We prefer to think that in an early future the Marshall Plan will be recognized as the second and unforeseen stage of a great historical process whose economic and political objectives will command wider and wider acceptance as they are made to appear more and more consistent with the above declaration.
The Lend-Lease Act was primarily designed to provide Great Britain and its allies with war materials and foodstuffs which they could not continue to buy here under the cash-and-carry plan in the amount required to resist the German onslaught successfully. As active hostilities extended over the whole world, country after country applied to Washington and received liberal assistance; but it can be safely stated that not even after Pearl Harbour did any one anticipate that advances to allied and associated nations would ever approach the stupendous sum of fifty thousand million dollars, or that these advances would entail a monetary loss to the United States of forty thousand million. Yet, while they were being made, hardly anybody complained or objected. By common consent, help to win the war was freely given. It was universally understood and accepted that peoples fighting on the side of the democratic Powers should be furnished with arms and ammunition on easy terms.
Now we have been asked to appoint a commission, the main task of which will be to see that the Greek guerrillas do not receive outside aid. Such a commission is intended to take the place of the commission of investigation and conciliation which the majority of the Security Council was unable to set up over the will of one of its permanent members. We shall presently hear a repetition of the charges and countercharges which have become familiar to our ears, regarding border incidents, civil war and misgovernment in Greece. In all likelihood, the unilateral action taken by the United States will be debated again, and we shall be glad to be reassured of its unflinching determination to support and enhance the prestige of the United Nations.
But, most probably, before the new commission is appointed and it begins.to discharge its duties, preliminary credits, granted under the Marshall Plan, will be flowing to sixteen different European nations.
President Truman, in his message to Congress on the eastern Mediterranean situation, stated that the United States contributed 341 thousand million dollars towards winning the Second World War, and this he called an investment in world freedom and world peace. Rearing to the specific object of his message, President Truman very significantly added: “The assistance that I am recommending for Greece and Turkey amounts to little more than one-tenth of one per cent of this investment. It is only common sense that we should safeguard this investment and make sure that it was not in vain.”
Greece and Turkey were given, in accordance with this recommendation, 400 million dollars. Shortly afterwards, on 5 June, Secretary of State Marshall, in view of the increasing demand for addition loans for western European countries, declared at Harvard University that United States assistance, to be effective, must not be on a piecemeal basis and should be offered to a general plan for European recovery, initiated by the Europeans themselves.
Experts have been at work ever since, calculating the sums required for the economic rehabilitation of Europe, not including the countries inside the Soviet Union sphere of influence; and they have placed the aggregate amount in the neighbourhood of twenty thousand million dollars. Some estimates raise it above this figure; others try to reduce the assistance expected from the United States.
Assuming that the Congress of the United States is found to be willing to implement the Marshall Plan to this amount — and we should not be in the least surprised if it does — is it not pertinent to ask whether the benefits of the Plan, or more properly speaking, the benefits of United States help? cannot be as generously extended to other continents?
The Colombian delegation ventures to expect that when the matter is discussed in Washington, and perhaps before that, it will be clearly seen that the economic rehabilitation of the European manufacturing nations cannot be carried very far if the immense mass of consumers in the Austral Hemisphere, Africa, Asia, and the Americas remain in dire want and their purchasing power is not concurrently and considerably stimulated.
We are in the short line of those who believe that a bold and generous implementation of the Marshall Plan is essential to world recovery. Crises of lesser importance, but which, like the European, threaten the political and economic stability of many countries, are developing in different sections of the globe. The demands for development are quite often as pressing as the demands for reconstruction. The New World is as much in need of credit facilities, machinery, transport equipment and technical help as the Old. Granted that recovery in Europe must have precedence over rehabilitation or new growth in other continents, the fact remains that both are part and parcel of the world scheme of economic and political readjustments of the post-war era.
It is the privilege of those who have the means to give, and no country in history has been known to possess resources and accumulated wealth of comparable proportions to the United States. None has as generously demonstrated its readiness to share its fortune and advantages with other people. An investment of thirty or thirty-five thousand million dollars in world prosperity and peace would signal the transition to a new world Order under the leadership of the United States and give the United States an epoch-making opportunity to help mankind out of its present tribulations. We sincerely believe that the opportunity is worth the price.
The Congress of the United States, the American people, will most probably hesitate to grant the necessary authority for the implementation of the Marshall Plan, enlarged as we have made free to express. Collaboration in normal times moves more slowly than when the guns are roaring, and it is usually more restricted. It is easier to lend-lease ships, tanks and ammunition than foodstuffs, clothes or industrial and agricultural machinery. But it can be seen that a peace-time lend-lease can be put into effect at considerably less cost than the original lend-lease system for war purposes, not to mention that the results would be more revolutionary and far-reaching.
But we doubt very much whether the political implications of a proposal of this nature will not appeal very strongly to the intelligence and the feelings of the American people, who are coming so rapidly and forcibly to realize how much their attitude and the policies of their Government have to do with the future welfare of the world. The outstanding fact of our day is the astonishing growth of American influence in all human affairs.
We are very deeply impressed by the imposing proportions of United States economic power. The United States is producing sixty per cent of the entire output of the world. Moreover, the remaining forty per cent depends in no small measure upon the United States for credit, marketing and transportation, for raw products, mechanical equipment and technical skill. The dollar shortage in every corner of the earth arises from the almost universal inability to meet payments for United States goods and services. Importations have been reduced everywhere in order to relieve that shortage, and the scarcity of goods is driving prices up. Inflation is seriously undermining existing political and economic conditions.
When we see so many indications of an approaching depression abroad, we cannot help turning our eyes to the United States, not in a necessitous attitude nor trying to draw upon the good will of the American people, but with an encouraging belief in the wonderful changes that would be brought about in all the present International tensions, were the United States to give definite hope of aid to other continents in the investigation and solution of their problems.
In other words, if the United States decided to assert its leadership now, as it did during the war years, accepting the unparalleled responsibilities of such a great world undertaking, we believe that we should then have the most fruitful cooperation between great and small nations in building a new world order, and that we have the best guide to action by the General Assembly in President Truman’s words at the opening of our session last year. President Truman said on that occasion:
“The war has left many parts of the world in turmoil. Differences have arisen among the Allies, it will not help us to pretend that this is not the case. But it is not necessary to exaggerate those differences. For my part, I believe there is no difference of interest that need stand in the way of settling these problems and settling them in accordance with the principles of the United Nations Charter. Above all, we must not permit differences in economic and social systems to stand in the way of peace, either now or in the future. To permit the United Nations to be broken into irreconcilable parts by different political philosophies would bring disaster to the world.”