Official international organizations are mechanisms which states join because they believe that membership will enable them more effectively to achieve the broad goals of their respective foreign policies. While there is no question that there has been a considerable element of idealism in its creation, the countries which have joined the United Nations have done so because they believe – or hope – that one or another of the instrumentalities provided by United Nations machinery can be used to their advantage. They may wish to improve their standard of living, to provide some increased measure of security either through implementation of the idea of world organization or through other specific policies, or to promote, perhaps, an expansion of their influence. With fifty–nine different Members, it would hardly be surprising to find fifty–nine differing points of view, and it should not be surprising to find these countries playing practical politics to get out of the United Nations precisely what they joined it to achieve, or, since there may be differences, what they desire to achieve after they have once been admitted. Each Member is, in short, using – or trying to use – United Nations machinery to further its own foreign policy.

When the Soviet Union withdrew recently from the World Health Organization, a somewhat startled world learned that even the prevention of disease can be affected by world politics. The most cursory study of international organizations for other purposes discloses that none is immune to world social and political forces. On the contrary, they are in varying degree shaped and influenced by these forces, and in fact serve as vehicles for their expression.

Current discussion about the Atlantic Pact has given a new emphasis and importance to an old controversy. Ever since the creation of the League of Nations men have disputed bitterly about the relationship of lesser groupings of states to an over-all organization. The view of President Wilson and many of his supporters was that the two were directly opposed to each other. It was argued that such limited security organizations were, in effect, alliances, that they would produce counter-alliances, a revival of the “balance of power,” and the destruction of an organization dedicated to the principle of world-wide “collective” security.

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.”

Referring to “domestic jurisdiction” as used in the League Covenant, Professor J. L. Brierly characterized it as “a new catchword,” capable of proving as great a hindrance to the orderly development of international law as “sovereignty” and “state equality” had been in the past, and about which “little seems to be known except its extreme sanctity.” Since these words were written, the Covenant of the League of Nations has been replaced by the Charter of the United Nations as the basic law of the organization of the world community. The concept of a reserved domestic jurisdiction is still with us. In fact, Article 2, paragraph 7, of the Charter gives it a broader definition and a wider range of application than did Article 15, paragraph 8, of the Covenant. What is the meaning of the domestic jurisdiction principle as set forth in the Charter? What effect has it had in practice on the working and development of the United Nations?

My purpose in this article is to trace as briefly as possible the recent history of the movement for European unity, to indicate the policies it advocates and the results so far achieved; it is not to argue either for or against those policies or to speculate on what influence the movement may have in shaping the future of Europe.

By the end of the war in Europe in 1945, it was evident that one of the major problems to be faced during the post-war period would be the rebuilding of the shattered European economy. Certain steps toward rehabilitation had already been taken by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, and several temporary organizations dealing with specific aspects of reconstruction were created in 1945 to attempt an international solution of the problems involved. When the United Nations was inaugurated early in 1946, one of its first actions was to create a group to study both long- and short-range factors in the European economic situation. This Temporary Subcommission on the Reconstruction of Devastated Areas, reporting in the summer of 1946 to the Economic and Social Council, proposed the establishment of a regional commission to concentrate on European recovery.

Words, like thoughts, often change their significance when used as political symbols. For a great many Swedes neutrality has come to be a synonym for peace and independence. Of course neutrality, if it succeeds, always means peace for the country itself. But it is hardly a policy intended to preserve peace among nations. It is more similar to one of those means which man has invented in order to be able to wage war. When neutrality began to appear as a conception in international law it was rooted in the view that war is a legitimate contest and that no distinction should be drawn between an aggressor state and the state attacked. When in modern war a mighty aggressor looks upon the neutrality of small countries not as a useful limitation of the theater of operations but as an obstacle to victory, that power simply forces its will upon the neutral. At the same time the great contest of our time arises from a conflict between authoritarian states and free democracies and tends to be total, involving all spheres of national and individual life. Moreover, international law no longer implies a sovereign right to go to war but moves towards a distinction between an unjust war of aggression and a just war of defense. All this means that the states attacked are not likely to look upon impartial neutrality as a matter of course and a proper standard of conduct.

The postwar increase in the number and scope of intergovernmental organizations has meant that many fields hitherto subject to national regulation, or to bilateral agreements, are now regulated by a multilateral convention. There are other fields, however, which appear to be as yet unready, for international control. The economic regulation of international air transport is a case in point. Although air navigation principles have been internationalized since 1919, and a respectable amount of technical co-operation on safety rules has been achieved, rights to engage in air commerce between the territories of two or more states continue to be determined largely by bilateral agreements

In recent discussions of the value of regional arrangements for the maintenance of international peace and security, it is regrettable that little attention has been given to the experience of the League of Arab States. For although the League as an organized expression of “regional cooperation” has existed for little more than four years, its activities thus far have raised some fundamental questions regarding the proper role of such arrangements within the framework of a United Nations system.

While analysis of any institution of such recent origin as the Interim Committee of the General Assembly can be only tentative in nature and must be subject to reservation at many points, it is possible at this time to identify certain trends in the development of the Interim Committee and its work. The broad questions to which an answer will be sought in the course of this inquiry are these: Why did a 1945 Netherlands' proposal for a standing committee on peace and security of the General Assembly meet with little response in the Preparatory Commission, while two years later a similar proposal by the United States was accepted by an overwhelming majority? For what purposes was the Interim Committee established, and, how successfully has it accomplished these purposes? Has the Interim Committee been organized in the best possible fashion for performance of its assigned functions? What, at this time, seems to be the future role of the Interim Committee in the United Nations system?

The Economic Commission for Europe is an organ of the United Nations which deserves to be better known. In a period when public attention has been focused on the Marshall Plan, and on the recurrent crises between the Soviet Union and the west, it has been given, understandably, little public attention in the United States or in Europe. The ECE is an all-European forum where certain major decisions concerning the European economy are regularly made. Among the participants in the ECE are all of the nations snaring in the Marshall Plan, as well as the United States. The chief United States representative to the ECE is Averill Harriman, whose deputy, Paul Porter, is stationed permanently in Geneva.

The Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) was set up under, and has as its charter, the Convention for European Economic Cooperation signed in April 1948. To understand the way in which the Organization works, it is worth looking at one or two of the provisions of the convention. This agreement consists of two parts: the first a statement of the principles of individual action and cooperation on which the contracting parties are agreed; the second, the charter of OEEC.

The General Assembly of the United Nations fell heir to one of the most vexing and obdurate problems of the postwar diplomatic scene when in September 1948 the big four powers referred to it the problem of the disposition of the Italian colonies. For over three years, the Big Four had wrestled ineffectually with this problem. Despite the deliberations of special deputies of the Council of Foreign Ministers for nearly a year, the efforts of a Four Power Commission of Investigation which visited the colonies, and the advice of nineteen other interested governments, the future of the colonies remained undetermined on September 15, 1948, one year after the coming into force of the treaty of peace with Italy. On that date, the authority of the Big Four to decide the future of the colonies expired according to Annex XI of the Italian peace treaty, which provided that in the event of failure of France, Britain, the USSR and the United States to agree to a solution, the matter was to be referred to the United Nations General Assembly.

Two new experiments in international cooperation, seldom publicized and very little known even to the specialist in international affairs, have been taking place in recent years in the Caribbean area and in the South Pacific. In each instance, colonial nations have established international organizations, advisory in character, to foster economic and social advance. Without political functions, these two organizations — the Caribbean Commission and the South Pacific Commission — have embarked on the task of raising standards of living and advancing the general welfare of the non-self-governing peoples of the area. The first of these, the Caribbean Commission, was the progenitor of the regional system and has served in large measure as a model for the later South Pacific Commission; the story of its development, with the participation first of two and later of four colonial governments, is therefore particularly interesting to follow.

The fourth regular session of the General Assembly opened at Flushing Meadows, New York, on September 20, 1949. The Assembly was to consider an agenda of 68 items, including the annual reports of the three United Nations Councils, the Secretary-General, and subsidiary bodies; and special reports from commissions operating in Korea, Palestine and the Balkans. Other topics for discussion were the disposition of the Italian Colonies, Indonesia, the situation in China, atomic energy, creation of a United Nations Field Service, economic development of under-developed areas, freedom of information, Southwest Africa, information from non-self-governing territories, and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania.

The second part of the third session of the General Assembly met at Lake Success from April 5 to May 18, 1949. Herbert V. Evatt of Australia continued to serve as president and Charles Malik (Lebanon) as chairman of the social, humanitarian and cultural committee. Fernand van Langenhove (Belgium) was elected chairman of the political and security committee to replace Paul-Henri Spaak (Belgium) who resigned, and George Ignatieff (Canada) was elected chairman of the administrative and budgetary committee to replace Dana Wilgress (Canada) who resigned.

During the last two years, the major organs of the United Nations have shown an increasing tendency to attempt the solution of international problems through the employment of special bodies and committees, rather than trying directly to resolve the myriad problems of each dispute. The General Assembly has established special groups on the Balkans, Korea and Palestine and has turned a number of questions over to its Interim Committee, while both the Trusteeship Council and the Economic and Social Council have often worked through ad hoc bodies. The Security Council has also delegated its powers under the Charter on a number of occasions. While retaining general supervision, and requiring that final results be subject to its approval, the Security Council in the case of Indonesia, Palestine and Greece, for example, has created sub-groups possessing a wide latitude of action operating under rather general instructions. Since this procedure enables a subordinate group to concentrate on the problem in hand – and since the creation of such a group may well be undertaken as a means of circumventing the Council's unanimity principle in voting – a study of the subsidiary commissions is of some interest. The United Nations Commission on India and Pakistan is a good case in point.

The third regular session of the General Assembly met at the Palais de Chaillotin Paris from September 21 to December 12, 1948, to consider an agenda of 7 items.

By a vote of 31 to 20, Herbert V. Evatt (Australia) was elected president of the Assembly on the second ballot over Dr. Juan Bramuglia (Argentina); and the following were elected chairmen of the main committees: political and security committee, Paul-Henri Spaak (Belgium); economic and financial committee, Hernan Santa Cruz (Chile); social, humanitarian and cultural committee, Charles Malik (Lebanon); trusteeship committee, Nasrollah Entezam (Iran); administrative and budgetary committee, Dana Wilgress (Canada); and legal committee, Ricardo Alfaro (Panama).