Avoiding the Scourge of War - 14 March 2003

Even after 57 years of what I like to think of as gently explanatory talks about America - its people, its ways, its life and government - I still hear from perfectly intelligent people asking questions I thought I answered when I was a stripling, way back in 1946.

As an old English lawyer friend of mine asked me earnestly: "How do they handle this in America?"

The simple, rude answer was, quite possibly in 50 different ways.

But I bridled my rude instincts and said: "Well, it depends where the case is coming up."

As you know every state has its own constitution, banking laws, educational system, criminal code. So the procedure might be quite different in Massachusetts, Ohio, California.

In the case you're talking about, a young man steals a bag of golf clubs. In one state he might get a lecture and a fine - but since it was his third petty theft, in California he could get 20 years or a life sentence in conformity with their recent law - three strikes and they throw the book at you.

"Indeed," was my friend's eloquent comment.

So recently I had a very engaging, honest letter asking: "What is Washington like? This city that breeds, according to taste, such noble or loathsome policies - and exactly what is DC, as in 'Washington DC'?

A good question and one I suspect many listeners have hesitated to ask because they're not quite sure what it means.

Well it means District of Columbia. Yes, but what does that mean?

Well, it's a nice story, nice in the literal sense of being a delicate subtle game of politics.

When the revolutionary war - the War of Independence - was over, New York city was the first capital of the new republic but pretty soon the men from the farming states resented the strong influence of the businessmen and commercial interests in making new laws.

Philadelphia, where the Constitution had been debated and written and produced, seemed a happy suggestion but some Southern states objected, on the correct complaint that Philadelphia - indeed the whole of the state of Pennsylvania - was full of Quakers and they were already full of the urge to abolish slavery.

After much long and bitter dissension a compromise was reached. It was agreed that the suspect Philadelphia should nonetheless be the government capital for 10 years and no more.

In the meantime to create a home for it Congress decided it should not settle in any state because there'd always be powerful objections one way or another. So Maryland, what was to be known as a border state between north and south, Maryland and its southern neighbour Virginia, agreed to cede together 10 square miles of land lying along both sides of the Potomac River.

In 1800, at the end of Philadelphia's 10-year reign, the government moved to the created district, which Congress defined as the District of Columbia.

Here it planted a new capital city in what Thomas Jefferson disgustedly called "the Indian swamp in the wilderness."

The city was at first a primitive collection of huts and buildings half finished. But it was the nation's capital and proudly named itself after the founding father - Washington DC.

Barely above the river level it had a vile climate - rheumy, dank winters and infernal summers - and was for many decades subject to malaria and yellow fever.

So Congressmen, treating it as more of a convention city than anything, did brisk business through winter and spring and rushed home as often as possible.

But in the beginning George Washington had hired a French architect and engineer who'd been captured during the War of Independence, and he'd drawn up a master plan recalling Versailles - a majestic city, very wide avenues punctuated by grand circles, which were not only graceful but useful for the placement of cannon against an invader.

Laughable as that plan might have looked on paper during the first half century it became a reality during the great age of iron, coke, steel after the Civil War and the original was transformed into the beautiful city it is today.

Also, while Washington's climate is technically temperate to semi-tropical, the result is an incomparable wealth and range of trees. I shouldn't be surprised if it grew at one end the noble Douglas Fir and at the other something as exotic as the California tree with a bark like the skin of a peach - the manzanita and madrone.

A hundred years ago the British ambassador - a learned Scot, James Bryce - wrote: "I know of no great city in Europe that has in its very environs such beautiful scenery as in Rock Creek Park with the broad river in the centre and its rich wooded slopes descending boldly to it."

One of the most attractive and leafy parts of Washington is called Georgetown and is the site of an elegant Georgian mansion called Dumbarton House.

It was here that Dolly Madison, the president's wife, fled for safety and stayed while the British were burning the White House in the war of 1812. Remember?

But this elegant mansion called Dumbarton House is not the birthplace of the United Nations but the place where it was conceived.

I mentioned a week or more ago that my latest bed book was one I read when it first came out in 1972, only four years after its author died. it's called The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan.

And in view of, as I speak, the breakdown of any unity in the United Nations on the critical matter of Iraq I wanted to go back and find the record of one day in the life of Cadogan which I recall wincing at when I first read about it and which, as things turned out, went to the very heart of the proposed international organisation that President Roosevelt had dubbed "The United Nations".

Not until the late summer of 1944, when the Allies - the British, Americans, Canadians and Poles - had invaded Normandy and were plainly on their way to a victory in Europe - Allied advance units were only 12 miles from Paris - was a meeting called in Washington to design the framework of the United Nations.

It met during the last steamy days of August and went well into September and the main participants were the American secretary of state, the Soviet ambassador to the US and for Great Britain and her dominions the Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign Office, Sir Alexander Cadogan - a pro if ever there was one in foreign policy and the one man who'd been in on the life and death of the League of Nations.

The preliminary agenda assembled as many issues - from the Philippines to Iceland, from China to Trieste - as a Christmas bargain basement.

But two issues outweighed everything else.

First, the big resounding theme was the voting procedure in the Security Council - the ruling body of this institution, the one set up to prevent or put down acts of aggression anywhere.

While the British and the Americans agreed on most ideas the Russian ambassador was simply an onlooker for he was terrified of moving a hair's breadth away from his boss - Stalin in Moscow.

Time and again the very fragile foundations of this UN started to crumble.

Stalin didn't want France or China brought in as great powers - permanent members of the council. He gave in.

He also wanted the big five, as it became, to be able to veto even the discussion of any topic brought up before it.

Finally he agreed - dictated would be better - that no action, military action, could ever be taken by the United Nations unless all five permanent members voted together.

He publicly agreed with Roosevelt that the United States and the Soviet Union would live happily and vote happily together in all vital matters.

Cadogan saw that this pretence was hopeless but essential to any world organisation at that time. He wrote in his diary: "It is a will-o'-the-wisp."

The second issue was hardly discussed. it became Article 43 of the charter at San Francisco, which says all members of the UN shall make available to the Security Council on call armed forces, assistance and facilities and specify what sorts and how many arms, weapons, supplies from each nation, and this information shall be "negotiated" as soon as possible.

When this idea was brought up at Dumbarton Oaks the America secretary of state reminded Cadogan that only the Congress could declare war and the president had no power to offer anything.

The Canadians said "Yes but you'd have to consult the provincial governments."

Stalin said - later discovered to be a huge joke - "I tell you what, let's have an international air force."

Cadogan found on questioning other nations that they all were getting cold feet about yielding a quota of armed forces.

It was a hot potato and it was dropped, picked up at San Francisco and slipped into the charter as something of an embarrassment.

In actual fact nobody ever came through with a list, a quota, the offer of a tank, a machine gun, a revolver.

Like the previous League, the United Nations had, has had, no international force which could overwhelm any combination of aggressors.

It could simply go on chanting the opening sentence of the Charter: "To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war."

That, for 57 years, has been the theory, the grand wish, but in fact in life since then there have been 250 wars not put down.

This early history and the huge and continuing ineffectiveness of the UN as an enforcing power it was conceived to be is at the root of America's attitude to Saddam Hussein.

It's the bitter knowledge that the UN, considered as an effective world force in putting down tyrants, aggressors, threats to peace - well, Cadogan came to believe that the United Nations was not stifled in its cradle at San Francisco, it was aborted in Dumbarton House.

THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING OF THE ORIGINAL BBC BROADCAST (© BBC) AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.

Letter from America audio recordings of broadcasts ©BBC. Letter from America scripts © Cooke Americas, RLLP. All rights reserved.