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The Concept of Community and the Future of the United Nations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Richard W. Van Wagenen
Richard W. Van Wagenen
Affiliation:
A member of the Board of Editors of International Organization, is Dean of the Graduate School and Professor of International Organization, The American University. He served as Director of the Center for Research on World Political Institutions, Princeton University, from 1950 to 1957 and as Special Assistant for Training, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, from 1962 to 1964.
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Extract

It may be unthinkable, even unimaginable, that the United Nations could itself become a true “community” in the near future. It is not unthinkable that the UN may be pushing the present disarray a little closer to that goal. The popular press abounds with loose references to the “world community,” but men who have thought deeply and hardheadedly about this prospect have also hinted in that direction, using various terms for the same thing. To quote only two, Lincoln P. Bloomfield calmly mentions “the universal society of which the United Nations is the forerunner” and Richard N. Gardner believes that a “genuine world community is waiting to be born. …”

Type
IV. Looking to the Future
Information
International Organization , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , Summer 1965 , pp. 812 - 827
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1965

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References

1 The United Nations and U.S. Foreign Policy: A New Look at the National Interest (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1960), p. 233Google Scholar. He wisely warned that

there is no evidence that purely “functional” interrelationships will lead by any natural or automatic process to political integration, or even that integration as such will eventually be the dominant trend.

(Ibid., p. 230.)

2 Gardner, Richard N., In Pursuit of World Order (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964), p. 262Google Scholar.

3 See U Thant's address to the Pacem in Terris Convocation, February 20, 1965 (“The UNITED NATIONS in a Changing World,” UN Monthly Chronicle, 03 1965 [Vol. 2, No. 3], pp. 41–46)Google Scholar.

4 Address at Princeton University, March 23, 1964, published in Cordier, Andrew W. and Foote, Wilder (ed.), The Quest for Peace: The Dag Hammarskjöld Memorial Lectures (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), p. 57Google Scholar. For a differing estimate by another respected statesman, see Hoover, Herbert in Moore, Raymond A. Jr (ed.), The United Nations Reconsidered (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1963), pp. 80–82Google Scholar. For a strong proposal for action on clearly functionalist lines but outside the UN, see the thoughtful speech, “Approaches to International Community,” to have been delivered on 03 6, 1965, at Pennsylvania State University by Fulbright, Senator J. W.Google Scholar.

5 Such as that of Jacob, Philip and Teunc, Henry in the opening chapter of Jacob, Philip E. and Toscano, James V. (ed.), The Integration of Political Communities (Philadelphia, Penna: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1964)Google Scholar.

6 Van Wagenen, Richard W., Research in the International Organization Field: Some Notes on a Possible Focus (Princeton, NJ: Center for Research on World Political Institutions, 1952)Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., pp. 10–11.

8 Ibid.

9 The word is used to mean both the process and the condition.

10 Claude, Inis L. Jr, Power and International Relations (New York: Random House, 1962), p. 284Google Scholar.

11 Angell, Robert C., in The Nature of Conflict (Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1957), p. 205Google Scholar.

12 Hoffmann, Stanley, “Discord in Community: The North Atlantic Area as a Partial International System,” International Organization, Summer 1963 (Vol. 17, No. 3), pp. 526–527CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Ibid., p. 525. There is room for disagreement that as a tool of analysis “the word community does more harm than good. …”

14 Haas, Ernst B., Beyond the Nation-State: Functionalism and International Organization (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1964), p. 29Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., p. 39.

16 Ibid., pp. 111, 131–133.

17 Especially The Uniting of Europe (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1958)Google Scholar and Consensus Formation in the Council of Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

18 Political Community at the International Level: Problems of Definition and Measurement (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1954)Google Scholar.

19 See p. 815 above.

20 Deutsch, Karl W. and others, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1957)Google Scholar.

21 Since the amalgamated security-community is beyond even the most visionary notions about the future of the UN, only those parts of the study found relevant to pluralistic security-communities will be applied here.

22 Hoffmann, , International Organization, Vol. 17, No. 3, p. 527Google Scholar.

23 Van Wagenen, p. 43.

24 Deutsch and others, p. 123.

25 Ibid., p. 129.

26 Outside the formal agenda the General Assembly has become the world's greatest switchboard for bilateral diplomacy. … In New York last fall, in a period of n days, I conferred with the foreign ministers or heads of government of 54 nations.

(United States Secretary of State Dean Rusk, in Cordier and Foote, p. 74, referring to the fall of 1963.)

27 “In many eyes, the personal relationships established at the UN have as much, if not greater, importance than the formal decisions which are reached.” (Hadwen, John G. and Kaufmann, Johan, How United Nations Decisions Are Made [2nd rev. ed.; Dobbs Ferry, N.Y: Oceana Publications, 1962], p. 58.)Google Scholar

28 “Suggestions for Winning the Real War with Communism,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 12 1959 (Vol. 3, No. 4), p. 321Google Scholar.

29 Alger, Chadwick F., “United Nations Participation as a Learning Process,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Fall 1963 (Vol. 27, No. 3), p. 425CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Hadwen and Kaufmann, p. 52. The crowded elevator described by the authors to make this point could be enlarged symbolically to include UN Headquarters as a whole.

31 Deutsch and others, p. 144.

32 “We must recognize that there is a United Nations angle, presently or prospectively, to every major subject of foreign policy.” (United States Assistant Secretary of State Harlan Cleveland, in Wilcox, Francis O. and Haviland, H. Field Jr ed., The United States and the United Nations [Baltimore, Md: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1961], p. 147.)Google Scholar

33 Deutsch and others, pp. 133, 137, 139, 156.

34 Ibid., p. 158.

35 Ibid., pp. 141, 157.

36 Ibid., p. 155.

37 Ibid., pp. 148, 149, 151.

38 Alger, , Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 3, especially pp. 422, 425Google Scholar.

39 Haas, , Beyond the Nation-State, p. 445Google Scholar.

40 Two recent publications of the UN illustrate this emphasis upon transnational approaches: Possibilities of Integrated Industrial Development in Central America (UN Document E/CN.12/683/Rev.1); and The Economic Development of Latin America in the Post-War Period (UN Document E/CN.12/659/Rev.1). On the grand scale, the Mekong River program involves 25 countries within and outside the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) region plus twelve UN organs or units.

41 Alger, Chadwick F., “Hypotheses on Relationships Between the Organization of International Society and International Order,” Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, 57th annual meeting, Washington, D.C., 04 25–27, 1963, p. 42Google Scholar.

42 Ibid., p. 45.

43 “Decision Making and Integration in the European Community,” International Organization, Winter 1965 (Vol. 19, No. 1), especially pp. 71–73Google Scholar; see also his interesting observations on penetration into national administrative structures (ibid., pp. 73–74).

44 See Charles Winchmore, “The Secretariat: Retrospect and Prospect,” earlier in this volume.

45 He stated his belief that the Secretary-General could “resolve controversial questions on a truly international basis without obtaining the formal decision of the organs …,” since the

principles of the Charter are … supplemented by the body of legal doctrine and precepts that have been accepted by States generally, and particularly as manifested in the resolutions of UN organs.

(The International Civil Servant in Law and in Fact [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961], pp. 24–25.)Google Scholar

46 Mangone, Gerard J., The United Nations Resident Representative: A Case of Administrative Institution-Building (unpublished paper, 1964), pp. 27, 79Google Scholar.

47 Ibid., p. 97.

48 Legitimacy provides a presumption of “repetition or expansion of peaceful change procedures …,” whereas mere authority does not. (Haas, , Beyond the Nation-State, p. 133Google Scholar.)

49 For example, one would suppose that the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) is a good case of at least some authority without legitimacy at present, asking again an old question: “What is the consensus-forming effect, not simply the immediate agreement-reaching effect, of the United Nations' mixed commissions in Palestine?” (Van Wagenen, p. 44.)Google Scholar

50 Haas, , Beyond the Nation-State, p. 133Google Scholar.

51 Alger, , Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 3, p. 426Google Scholar.

52 Perhaps in Central America, parts of the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, or some of the Arab states, for example.

53 As with the reporting of public affairs at any level, the monotony of the unexciting brings about the monopoly of the exciting.

54 See especially, Corbett, Percy E., The Individual and World Society (Princeton, N.J: Center for Research on World Political Institutions, 1953), pp. 47–59Google Scholar; and Gardner, Chapter 10.

55 Benét, Stephen Vincent, John Brown's Body (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1941)Google Scholar, Invocation.