The U.N. and National Security

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IN 1945, when the United Nations was founded, its raison d'être was to provide greater security for its member nations. As the basic conflict of interests between Soviet Communism and the free nations unfolded, the cold war rapidly came to suffuse the entire organization like a sort of nerve gas, paralyzing but not killing. In a relatively short time, it was seen to be incapable of resolving or even seriously affecting the dominant world conflict. The United States and its principal allies were forced to conclude that except as it provided a forum for counter-propaganda the United Nations was irrelevant to the over-riding short-term military and security problem posed by aggressive and expansionist Soviet Communism.

The Korean War threw a new light on the capabilities of the U.N. as a political mechanism for organizing and demonstrating world-wide resistance to limited Communist aggression. But the disproportionately large contribution which the United States had to make to that fight strengthened the doubt whether the U.N. could play a central rôle in the short-run protection of American national security. It continued to exercise a powerful attraction for the American people, since it exemplified their great will for peace. But as the custodian of the peace it seemed to be in a fiduciary relationship not to us but to an unborn generation of men who might have a capacity for managing their affairs rather more harmoniously.

Reasons for the American public to favor continued participation in the U.N. were, besides the moral attraction of the Charter ideal, the possibility of using the organization selectively in the settlement of disputes within the free world, and its "secondary" activities involving dependent areas, technical assistance and the humanitarian achievements of the Specialized Agencies. Those functions turned out to be important enough to sustain American membership. But no amount of enthusiasm for the potentialities of the organization under different circumstances could overcome the conviction that at best it must be considered to be "on ice" so far as concerned the profound and immediate security problem that preoccupied us...