A visitor from another, more advanced, planet would find many extraordinary paradoxes on earth, but surely the most extraordinary would be the fantastic destructive potential of nuclear weapons which contrasts starkly with the primitive and near-impotent institutions of global peacekeeping. He might marvel that a breed capable of producing the wealth for a $185 billion armory of lethal devices, let alone the technology for killing several hundred million humans in a single exchange of nuclear weapons, had not also produced a workable international order capable of regulating such apocalyptic man-made power.

The South West Africa Cases presented the International Court of Justice (ICJ) with a choice not only between the parties to the suit but also between rival claims about the nature of international law itself. Perhaps every case presents the Court with a choice of some degree between jurisprudential foundations, but in the South West Africa Cases the choice is striking.

Recognizing the determination of the United Nations to create conditions of stability and well-being which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations,

TheParties to this Charter undertake in the fields of trade and employment to co-operate with one another and with the United Nations

For the Purpose of

Realizing the aims set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, particularly the attainment of the higher standards of living, full employment and conditions of economic and social progress and development, envisaged in Article 55 of that Charter.

In George Orwell's Animal Farm all that finally remains of the animals' plans for a brave new world, a farm without Farmer Jones, a farm to be run by and for the animals themselves, is the slogan “Four feet good; two feet bad.” As one reads the reports from Lake Success and Flushing Meadows one is tempted to say of the brave new world projected five years ago at San Francisco, the world of sovereign equality and greatpower unanimity, that all that is left is the slogan “United Nations good; power politics bad.” But here the analogy ends; for there is no agreement in the United Nations as to who is being good by supporting the spirit and the language of the Charter and who is being bad by playing power politics.

The United Nations action against aggression in Korea was aided by a series of fortuitous circumstances which included the absence of the Soviet delegate from the Security Council in June 1950, the existence of a United Nations commission in Korea which was able to provide a timely and unimpeachable report of the facts, and the availability to United Nations forces of a base in Japan from which military operations could be, conveniently undertaken. For the purpose of assuring so far as possible that united resistance to further acts of aggression would not have to depend so largely on coincidence, the General Assembly, on November 3, 1950, gave its overwhelming approval to the “Uniting for Peace” resolution.

It is a truism that the text of the Charter gives a quite misleading picture of the United Nations as it is today. In no respect is this more true than in the working of the Organization in the maintenance of international peace and security. Those provisions of the Charter which were claimed by its authors to provide the new Organization with teeth that the League of Nations did not have either have never been used or have in practice been of little importance. New emphases and new methods have been developed through the liberal interpretation of Charter provisions. These have not always been equally acceptable to all Members, however. The process of adaptation and development continues, with great present uncertainty as to what the future has in store.

According to the press, a one-day meeting of the Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Pact in Moscow on February 4, 1960, was attended by premiers and foreign ministers of the eight pact members (Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Romania) and by observers from Communist China, Mongolia, North Vietnam, and North Korea. In a 4,000-word declaration issued after the meeting, the pact members expressed the hope that forthcoming East-West summit talks would be “a turning point in the relations” between the two groups of countries and proposed that the summit agenda include such topics as general and controlled disarmament, a German peace treaty, creation of a free city of West Berlin, a ban on nuclear weapons tests, and amelioration of relations between East and West. The committee also repeated the communist proposal for a non-aggression pact between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact countries and called on NATO members to respond to the Soviet Union's armed forces cut of 1, 200, 000 men by reducing their forces as well. It criticized NATO for maintaining “inflated armies” and for arming West Germany with atomic weapons, adding that the West German government was being given a free hand in the production of these weapons.

In 1961, therefore, we shall do what we have to do. We shall help to build up Europe, which, by confederating its nations, can and must—for the sake of mankind—become the greatest potential economic, military, and cultural power that has ever existed. We shall help this assembled Europe and its daughter America to reorganize their alliance to better defend the free world and to act together in all parts of the earth.

This essay is addressed to the issue of the extent to which and the ways in which the United Nations may serve the interest of the United States in the maintenance of world peace during the decade that lies ahead. It rests upon two assumptions, both of which require careful qualification: first, the assumption that the United States has, and recognizes that it has, a fundamental interest in international peace; second, the assumption that the United Nations is in principle an organization dedicated to the promotion of international peace.

See Food and Agriculture Organization, p. 122.

Since the preparation in August 1947 of the first part of this report, three significant developments affecting the scope and character of United Nations–specialized agency relations have taken place. First, the “family” of specialized agencies, in being and in prospect, has substantially increased in size and variety. Second, the regional machinery of the Economic and Social Council has been expanded by the establishment of economic commissions for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) and for Latin America (ECLA), with the probability that a similar commission for the Middle East will be authorized before the end of 1948. Together with the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), set up in the spring of 1947, these subsidiary instrumentalities of the Council will be concerned with a wide range of reconstruction and developmental activities which bear directly upon various functions of FAO, ILO, Bank, Fund, and ITO and which, in addition, introduce a further element of complexity in the task of coordinating international economic programs. The third development, important from the procedural standpoint, was the action taken by the General Assembly at its second regular session in November 1947, and by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) at its sixth session in March 1948, in spelling out methods for treating the budgets and reports of the specialized agencies.

On July 2, 1964, the Chairman of the Executive Board, Pierre-Paul Schweitzer, transmitted to the Board of Governors the nineteenth annual report of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Executive Directors for the fiscal year ended April 30, 1964.

The first extraordinary session of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Assembly was convened at headquarters in Montreal from June 19 to 21, 1961, at the request of twelve of the contracting states, to consider increasing the size of the ICAO Council. The delegate of the United Kingdom proposed a change in article 50(a) of the ICAO convention to provide for 27 members of the ICAO Council instead of 21, and delegates of Venezuela, Cameroun, and South Africa immediately supported the increase. Among arguments advanced for expanding the Council were the following: 1) a Council of 21 no longer adequately represented the membership of the organization, which had reached 86; 2) adequate geographic representation was of paramount importance since international routes covered most of the world; 3) the increase would facilitate the participation in the Council's work of the more than twenty states that had achieved independence in the past few years; 4) the practice of holding an Assembly session only every three years placed greater responsibilities on the Council; and 5) all the specialized agencies except ICAO and the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization had increased the size of their executive bodies. Although there was some debate as to whether the increase ought to be to 25 or 27 members, the United Kingdom motion for the latter number prevailed, along with a proposal sponsored by the Italian and Venezuelan delegations stating that it was highly desirable for the amendment to the convention to come into force before the next Assembly session. Consequently, all contracting states to the convention were urged to ratify the amendment as soon as possible.

PAFMECA was formed at a conference held in Mwanza, Tanganyika, from September 16 to 18, 1958, for the purpose of coordinating regional activities toward the achievement of independence for territories in East and Central Africa. The conference, which was attended by representatives of political parties from Kenya, Nyasaland, Tanganyika, Uganda, and Zanzibar, considered the following issues: 1) the position of those present toward (a) the non-African minorities in Kenya, Tanganyika, and Uganda, and (b) the Central African Federation (Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia, and Southern Rhodesia); 2) methods for achieving coordinated action among the nationalist movements in East and Central Africa and for pooling resources in a concerted drive against imperialism; and 3) the development of a fundamental philosophic creed for the emergent African nations.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has been established as a specialized agency under the United Nations. An agreement, negotiated between the Preparatory Commission and the United Nations in June, 1946, was later approved by the General Conference of UNESCO, and by the General Assembly of the United Nations, provided that UNESCO, should maintain direct working relations with the Economic and Social Council's commissions and committees, with the Secretariat of the United Nations, and with other specialized agencies.

In June 1948 the International Monetary Fund reported that its activities during the preceding nine months had been focused on offering temporary financial assistance to its members for monetary stabilization operations and on consultation on exchange problems. The Fund had prepared several special studies for member nations and had sent missions of technical advice and expert assistance to a number of countries.