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The Soviet Union, the United States and International Security

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Joseph E. Johnson
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Extract

It is now three years since the United Nations General Assembly first convened in London, and over five years since the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and China announced at the first Moscow Conference their recognition of “the necessity of establishing at the earliest practicable date a general international organization … for the maintenance of international peace and security.”

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , February 1949 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1949

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References

1 Yearbook of the United Nations 1946–47 (Lake Success, 1947), p. 3Google Scholar.

2 A notable instance was the reversal of Soviet policy toward the League of Nations after the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933. SeeBeloff, Max, The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia, 1929–1941, I (London, 1947)Google Scholar, ch. xi.

3 Soviet attitudes are certainly also conditioned by memories of the intervention of western powers in Russia after the October Revolution, although Soviet officials seldom, if ever, allude to this experience during United Nations debates.

4 Quoted in New York Times, November 25, 1948.

5 See, for example, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York, 1948), II, p. 1645Google Scholar; Sherwood, , Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York, 1948), p. 360Google Scholar.

6 The word “seemingly” is employed because of the introduction by the Soviet representative in the Security Council's Committee of Experts in the spring of 1946, of proposed rules of procedure which, if adopted, would have in effect given each permanent member of the Council the right to veto any attempt to declare it (or any other state) a party to a dispute. See New York Times, May 5, 1946.

7 Koo, Wellington Jr, Voting Procedures in International Political Organizations (New York, 1947), p. 165Google Scholar f.

8 The United States and the United Nations. Report by the President to the Congress for the year 1947 (Washington, 1948), p. 105–6Google Scholar.

9 The validity of this generalization is not weakened by the initial United States proposal to the Paris session of the General Assembly to suspend the Atomic Energy Commission. That proposal was made not because the vital necessity was no longer recognized, but because it was believed that further discussions in the present state of impasse would be futile.

10 A noteworthy exception to this general tendency was the argument, advanced in a speech by Ambassador Austin in the Security Council in February 1948, in debate on the Palestine case, that the Security Council cannot constitutionally enforce a recommendation of the General Assembly. Even in this instance, however, the United States was careful to point out how the same end could be attained by constitutional means, if the Council wished. Department of State Bulletin, XVIII, p. 294–7Google Scholar.