A unanimous United Nations - 28 September 1990

It's been a long time since I turned over the pages of the morning newspaper and came on story after story any of which, at another time, would have been the obvious, even the compulsory, topic to talk about.

So many tremendous things happening, which before the upheaval in Eastern Europe a year ago would have had us all agog.

But we've become inured to totally unexpected change and because, mainly, of Saddam Hussein, most papers' commentators raised barely an eyebrow over Mr Gorbachev's plea, which was accepted, to assume the old dictatorial powers that it was one purpose of glasnost and perestroika to dissolve.

Next Wednesday Germany, for the first time in 45 years, will be united and for the first time in 73 years, the Soviet Union abandoned one of Communism's fundamental beliefs and passed a law, by the staggering majority of 341 to 1, to grant freedom of conscience, which means to forbid the government to interfere with the practice of religion or to restrict the financing of it, the study of it at home or in the schools.

From now on, all religions will have equal standing in the courts with every other Soviet citizen, however properly devoted, as all good Communists were required to be, to Lenin's dictate, religion is the opiate of the people.

And we notice, in passing, that India is in turmoil and so is South Africa. These, and many other large happenings, will come before the annual general assembly of the United Nations, not to mention the American concern with the countries below the Rio Grande, the economic collapse of Argentina, Fidel Castro's lonely stand in the United Nations and elsewhere as the last stubborn classical Communist.

But, overriding everything this week, so far as Washington and the Bush administration are concerned, was the speech at the United Nations of the Soviet foreign minister, Mr Shevardnadze, denouncing Saddam Hussein in the most downright way and threatening him with a war if he did not pull out of Kuwait.

Now we've had downright speeches from the Russians for over 40 years, but when passion was involved it was certain to be directed against the United States and its western allies. It's almost comical to recall now the many years through which the Soviet delegate, any Soviet delegate, began a speech by deploring the imperialist ruling classes of the west.

I think of one old American statesman, who in his very old age, couldn't rightly say whether it had been 30 or 40 years during which he sat down and automatically turned off his hearing aid whenever a Russian, a North Korean or a Chinese got up to speak. He tired early on of hearing himself routinely, day after day, described as an imperialist, fascist beast.

He must be goggling in his grave over that first unanimous vote in the security council, to resist aggression collectively and he must be marvelling at Mr Shevardnadze's speech, warmly, angrily, doggedly on our side.

The speech surprised and delighted Mr Bush and his advisers because, only two weeks ago, Mr Gorbachev, after his Helsinki meeting with Mr Bush, declared very firmly that, in the crisis of the Persian Gulf, he was absolutely against any use of force.

But this week Mr Shevardnadze was practically warning Iraq that if the economic sanctions don't work, the Soviet Union will not only approve the use of force, but might itself become a fighting partner.

His telling words were, "We should remind those who regard aggression as an acceptable form of behaviour, that the United Nations has the power to suppress acts of aggression. There is ample evidence that this right can be exercised. It will be if the illegal occupation of Kuwait continues."

Well that's telling ''em in direct, gutsy language that the Soviets very rarely use, inside or outside of the United Nations.

But now a lady friend of mine says, what's so special about this sort of talk or, for that matter, about the security council's unanimous vote? Isn't that what the United Nations is all about, to resist aggression?

Yes indeed. First you have to answer that the first and last unanimous vote in the council to suppress an act of aggression happened 40 years ago, to resist the North Korean invasion of South Korea. And why did it happen? Because the Soviet Union did not, at that time, have jet planes.

How's that again? On a Saturday in June 1950, President Truman was back home in Independence, Missouri, attending to some family business. That evening he was sitting in his library when a telephone call came in from Washington, from the secretary of state, Mr Dean Acheson. "Mr President, " he said, "I have very serious news. The North Koreans have invaded South Korea."

Acheson suggested an immediate summons to the security council of the United Nations. It met at 11 on the Sunday morning and in the early evening, by which time Mr Truman was landing in Washington, the security council had voted by nine to nothing, to order the North Koreans to withdraw. There was a missing council member – it was the Soviet Union.

They were, at that time, boycotting the council because the United Nations refused to admit Communist China to membership. The Soviet Union was, remember, one of the so-called permanent members of the council, the big five – the USSR, the United States, United Kingdom, France and China (pre-Communist China, Taiwan, as we now say).

Any one of the five could, under the charter, veto a resolution of the security council and, for the first few years, every time a vote to act collectively against aggression somewhere, the Soviets registered vetoes as regularly as a tolling bell.

They would certainly have tolled it again if they'd been in New York, but their chief delegate couldn't get there before the council vote. The Soviets then, and for some time, used turboprop planes and the one carrying their man and his veto did not land until the council had cast its unanimous vote, which was enough for President Truman to declare, in effect, a United Nations war and send troops off to Korea, alongside the forces of other members. So the Soviets' failure to register a veto against the decision to resist the North Korean armies was a fluke.

As for the lady's more substantive and substantial question, resisting aggression is what the United Nations is all about, isn't it? That can only be answered by yes, in the beginning it was laid down as the chief reason for the existence of the United Nations.

But it has never worked, never in concert of the big powers, including both the United States and the Soviet Union, and not only because of the Soviets' early and steady habit of opposing the west and their allies, through the veto.

There is one article of the United Nations charter that, right at the beginning, gave us the promise that at last, after six centuries of trying to set up an international body to prevent war, to resist aggression (it was a French lawyer in the 13th century who first had the idea) at last we had devised the means of doing what the League of Nations had failed at – a means of achieving collective security.

You don't hear that article of the charter talked about today and I don't believe it's been cited for years in United Nations debates. That article, I still kindle the old glow when I read it, says, Article 43 – All member nations of the United Nations shall undertake to make available to the security council, on its call and in accordance with the special agreement of agreements, armed forces, assistance and facilities, including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.

In other words, though the United Nations was not going to have a standing army, navy and air force, it was going to have them on immediate call of the security council. Now this article had been drafted the year before in British, American and Russian discussions in Washington and they'd already gone into how many divisions this nation could promise, fighter squadrons from that nation, destroyers, cruisers from another, artillery, tanks and so on.

All the machinery of war was to be pledged in stated quotas from each member nation so that, by the time of San Francisco, it was expected that within months, the security council would have heard from all the member nations, the type and the amount of military force they would be prepared to dispatch, at a moment's notice. What could be more wonderful?

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