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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 May 2009
Official international organizations are mechanisms which states join because they believe that membership will enable them more effectively to achieve the broad goals of their respective foreign policies. While there is no question that there has been a considerable element of idealism in its creation, the countries which have joined the United Nations have done so because they believe – or hope – that one or another of the instrumentalities provided by United Nations machinery can be used to their advantage. They may wish to improve their standard of living, to provide some increased measure of security either through implementation of the idea of world organization or through other specific policies, or to promote, perhaps, an expansion of their influence. With fifty–nine different Members, it would hardly be surprising to find fifty–nine differing points of view, and it should not be surprising to find these countries playing practical politics to get out of the United Nations precisely what they joined it to achieve, or, since there may be differences, what they desire to achieve after they have once been admitted. Each Member is, in short, using – or trying to use – United Nations machinery to further its own foreign policy.
1 In this connection, it is interesting to consult Hasluck, Paul, Workshop for Security (Melbourne, 1948)Google Scholar which has a valuable discussion on the work of the Security Council and on Australian policy.
2 This particular Australian policy is not restricted to the period of 1945 to 1947. The joint appeal of Herbert Evatt, as President of the Assembly, and Trygve Lie as Secretary-General to the governments of France, United Kingdom, United States and Soviet Union in the fall of 1948 on the Berlin blockade is a more recent example. In contrast to the Australian position, Fans el-Khouri (Syria) frequently took the position during 1948 that Council discussion was ineffectual in the absence of big power agreement.
3 Document S/P.V.115.
4 United States policy on non-self-governing areas in the Security Council and in the Trusteeship Council has not always been identical. The sessions of the latter organ in February and March 1949 saw the United States voting more frequently with the administering authorities than it had in 1946, 1947 or 1948. The impact of the “cold war”, in other words, may well be modifying American policy in trusteeship questions. If such a shift is occurring, it represents just the type of politics discussed in this article.
5 The New York Times reported on January 31, 1949, 1) that the ministers of the Brussels Pact countries had agreed to support the Dutch position; and 2) that Ernest Bevin had stated that the United Kingdom, under heavy economic debt to the United States, had been subjected to “strong pressure” to go along with the United States draft resolution on Indonesia which was subsequently approved on January 28, 1949.
