“SHOT-GUN WEDDING”

Wanganui Chronicle, 30 October 1946, Page 5

“SHOT-GUN WEDDING”

N.Z. DELEGATE’S DESCRIPTION OF THE VETO POWER IN THE CHARTER

NEW YORK, Oct. 28 In the speech in which he added New Zealand’s protest at the use and effect of the veto in the Security Council to the protests of numerous other small nations, Sir Carl Berendsen was more bitterly critical of that power than any other delegate to the United Nations General Assembly -who has attacked it yet.

Describing the marriage of the veto to the charter as a “shotgun wedding,’’ he declared: “The veto power, as it at present operates, is not consonant with any law of logic or morality. This infant organisation has been brought into the world with its hands manacled and its feet fettered.’’

Sir Carl Berendsen said New Zealand acknowledged that the great Powers who played a predominant part in winning the war must play a predominant part in winning the peace, but it believed means must be devised to give to the vote and the voice of each member of the United Nations such weight and authority as was proportionate to the size and status of that member. HUMILIATING SPECTACLE He questioned whether anybody in the world was satisfied with the transactions of the Security Council since its inception. The proceedings ot that body had offered a humiliating spectacle, not only because of its failure to reach agreement on the substance of difficult international questions, but even more pointedly, in the prolonged wrangles concerning procedure. The Security Council was impeded by the veto in taking decisions on matters of substance, which was all the more reason why in the field ot procedure, where it was free of that incubus, it should act with decision, and it was all the more reason why Powers which were granted the extraordinary veto privilege should see to it that privilege was utilised with the fullest sense of high responsibility. They owed it to all mankind. “Let the Security Council—hampered by the inescapable voting restrictions of the veto —see to it that all care is taken lest by the frustration ot its efforts to transact its vital functions and by constant evidence its futility, it should bring itself to stultification and public disrepute and thus fail to win the confidence of the world, which is essential to its success," he said. Sir Carl Berendsen appealed tor a more effective system ror preventing aggression—not deUgned purely to maintain the status quo, but ro prevent the application ot individual national force. New Zeaeland sought an effective system of collective security under which all would contract that aggression against one was aggression against all and would be met and defeated as such. WORDS NOT ENOUGH New Zealand approved of the creation of the United Nations as a round table for the public discussion ot international differences, but she believed that the peace of the world could not be permanently preserved by words alone. The United Nations charter clearly and properly contemplated provision for the use of force to quell aggression. Any attemqj to rely upon words alone to preserve world peace against a determined aggressor must lead inevitably to a compromise with evil, to gross injustices to innocent and helpless people, and to a policy of despicable appeasement. The United Nations’ charter failed, first, because it provided no inescapable pledge that an aggression against one would be regarded as aggression against all and repelled accordingly, and secondly, because of the voting procedure for the Security Council. SMALL POWERS’ POSITION. The reason for the veto provision was simple but unconvincing. The intention was to give the great Powers a predominant place in the United Nations, but the provisions went too far. As a result each of the great Powers reserved to itself the right, for any reason, however capricious, to decide whether it would participate in any proposed resistance to aggression. Furthermore, each great Power even reserved to itself the right to say whether the United Nations as a whole could be allowed to function at all.

This privileged position should be compared with the positions of the small Powers, who agreed to be bound by the Security Council decisions in all cases requiring action on their part. They agreed to apply force when asked to do so by the Security Council, acting at an unknown time, in unknown circumstances, through unknown men and to a substantial extent on unknown principles. The small

Powers were required to act on a decision in which they not only had no veto but also no vote, and incredible as it sounded, no voice, except for those few small nations which for the time elected the Security Council. In an effort to achieve collective security the United Nations had evolved a system that was neither collective nor security.

“We have established an organisisation admirably adapted to crush aggression by a small Power, admirably adapted to take action in circumstances where an organisation such as this would be entirely unnecessary, but an organisation largely precluded by reason of the veto from acting in those cases in which mankind is endangered,” Sir Carl Berendsen said.

“The nations of the world, particularly the great Powers, must as soon as possible consider whether an organisation so limited as the United Nations could achieve its object. "Who ever heard of a fire department with each of its five members not only reserving to himself the right to say whether he would go to a fire but whether the whole department would attend a fire at all, or leave it to rage unrestricted? MUST BE SACRIFICE. The great Powers, as well as the small Powers, must be prepared to venture some capital in this great movement to insure against war. They must be prepared to sacrifice some of their freedom to run their affairs to suit themselves, to accept a third-party judgment, and to be guided by public conscience and not by their own unrestricted decisions.” The great Powers had attempted, under the charter, to have their cake and to eat it too. "If any of the five great Powers should either initiate or support aggression, then the world unquestionably was in serious and deadly trouble.” Sir Carl Berendsen said that if at San Francisco the veto question had been left to the free vote of delegates it unquestionably would have been defeated. If the question had been put to the vote of the man and woman in the street in any part of the world today then the veto would be blown away in a gale of indignant repudiation. The veto was accepted as a stopgap, but it could not possibly last indefinitely. In essence the veto was the application of the principle that might was right, a negation of the principle of equitable democracy and an assertion of the indefensible principle that the great Powers were the repositories of all the wisdom, determination and devotion that the cause of peace demanded.