In his maiden address to an organ of the United Nations on August 16, 1965, then Ambassador Arthur J. Goldberg, the newly appointed Permanent Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations, made a statement which marked a watershed in United Nations history. Until that statement, the United States, together with the United Kingdom, had led a majority of the membership of the Organization in a determined effort to uphold the financial authority of the United Nations. That effort particularly was manifested in the policy of seeking to induce Member States which were delinquent in the payment of their assessed financial contributions to the Organization to pay those assessments; and, in the event of their continued refusal to pay, to apply to them the sanction prescribed by the terms of Article 19 of the United Nations Charter, which provides that: “A Member of the United Nations which is in arrears in the payment of its financial contributions to the Organization shall have no vote in the General Assembly if the amount of its arrears equals or exceeds the amount of contributions due from it for the preceding two full years.”

The Soviet Union, some Eastern European Members, and France maintained that they were not legally bound to pay assessments upon them for peacekeeping operations, i.e., the United Nations Emergency Force in Sinai (UNEF) and the United Nations Operations in the Congo (ONUC). The question of whether the resolutions of the General Assembly authorizing expenditures for those operations gave rise to an obligation of the States so assessed to pay was the essence of an advisory opinion requested of the International Court of Justice.