Greymouth Evening Star. SATURDAY, JULY 12, 1947. Weakness Of UNO

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 July 1947, Page 4

Greymouth Evening Star. SATURDAY, JULY 12, 1947. Weakness Of UNO

PRESIDENT Truman in a recent, speech volunteered the view that the United Nations would gradually become a stronger force for peace and would ultimately justify the high hopes for it» success expressed at the signing of the Charter in San Francisco. Those hopes did not, however, long survive after UNO began functioning. The tendency is to discount Mr Truman’s statement as temperate optimism but it has to be remembered that he has better information than most people on which to base his views. He is confident, for example, that the danger of war is not great, despite the bellicose words in which current diplomacy is being conducted. He foresees that big Power relations are going to be uncertain and uneasy for a considerable period, but he also predicts that the United Nations will have sufficient time >to grow while the big Powers are finding out the need to rely on UNO more and more. Time may prove Mr Truman right, and then again it may not. One of the best ways to keep the United Nations weak is to cover up how weak it really is. Contrariwise, one of the best ways to strengthen it is to give full recognition to its weaknesses and to how much needs to be done to give it substance and vitality. At present the international organisation's in danger of talking itself out of existence. There is talk, and more talk, with the ever-present threat of veto hanging, perilously overhead. Russia’s indiscriminate use of that power has cut down the effectiveness of UNO to very small proportions indeed. Several events recently have brought sharply into focus the long-standing but often concealed weaknesses of the UNO Charter. These events have not weakened the Charter; they have only exposed its weaknesses, which, though evident all along to keen students of international affairs, have now become evident'to everybody. This is all to the good, because there is no hope that the United Nations will be made stronger unless there is an insistent popular demand that it be made so. One development which reveals clearly what UNO is up against is the report of its Military Staff Committee, whose duty it was to prepare the international police force called for by the Charter itself. Though the Committee has been at work for some 18 months, it has been unable to reach an agreement which would place any power at the disposal of the Secuiitj Council. What is more, such tentative agreement as has been reached limits the UNO forces to a size capable of dealing only with disputes among the small countries. The United Nations would have a police force known in advance to be capable of punishing only lesser offences against the peace. The Least Dangers

This means that the United Nations would have a police force capable of functioning’ against the least dangers and incapable of functioning against the real dangers to world peace. But the decision of the Military Staff Committee is logical and in harmony with the Charter. It exposes the weakness of the Charter. It was remarked by a European statesman when UNO was founded that it had been given a. mandate to deal only with the noncauses of war. The Military Staff Committee’s report is an example of what he meant.

As each of the Big Five has the power to veto the use of force against itself, it would have been futile for the Military Staff Committee to try to create a police force of a size and strength which could not be used. Thus, in agreeing tentatively upon a police force large enough only to repress countries incapable of starting war, the UNO military chiefs have frankly recognised that it is the Charter itself which makes the Security Council weak and keeps it weak. But experience of the functioning of UNO has revealed an unanticipated problem. Even the smaller countries may be shielded by a member of the Big Five exercising the right of veto so as to prevent the taking of action against them. This was proved when Russia vetoed the move by the Security Council to rebuke Albania over the mine-laying incident. It is obvious that vital changes must be made in the Charter before the United Nations can become a really effective instrument in the maintenance of peace.