International: Of Blood & Ink

For the past five years, the Russian veto has blocked any Security Council action not to Russia’s liking. The Council’s decisive action on Korea was possible only because the Russians had walked out of U.N. (TIME, Jan. 23 et seq.). Last week the U.S. gave its support to an old suggestion: shift some of the responsibility for the world’s peace from the veto-bound Council to the veto-free Assembly. At the same time, the U.S. made a concrete proposal for the beginnings of a standing U.N. armed force.

Right Direction? The U.S. plan, drafted by a group of U.S. officials including Ambassador at Large Philip C. Jessup, U.S. Representative to U.N. Warren Austin, Republican State Department Adviser John Foster Dulles and Assistant Secretary of State John Hickerson, calls for:

1) An emergency session of the Assembly, on 24 hours’ notice, in case the Security Council is prevented by a Big Power veto from taking action against an aggressor.

2) A U.N. Security Patrol to “provide immediate and independent . . . reporting from any area in which international conflict threatens.”

3) Special units within each of the member nations’ armed forces “to be specially trained and equipped and continuously maintained in readiness for prompt service on behalf of the United Nations.”

Said Acheson, as he submitted the plan to the General Assembly: “Before us lies opportunity for action which can save the hope of peace . . . Before us also lies opportunity for drift, for irresolution, for effort feebly made . . . The choice is ours . . . There is no longer any question: Will the United Nations survive? . . . This question has been answered … by United Nations action against aggression in Korea. Blood is thicker than ink . . .”

John Foster Dulles called the U.S. plan “the most important program” since U.N.’s founding. He added: “We are starting to move in the right direction. We’re still not moving fast enough.”

One of These Days? Acheson’s speech had its points of wisdom, but it also contained plenty of evidence that he still clings to a policy of drift in Asia, still cherishes hopes of conciliating Russia. In labeling Russia the main “obstacle to peace,” he used remarkably kid-gloved language, e.g.: “The use by Soviet leaders of the international Communist movement . . . has been a great source of trouble in the world.” Acheson also announced that the U.S. would ask the Assembly to decide the vital issue of Formosa, and that all “concerned and interested parties” should be invited to have their say. This obviously included the Chinese Communists, and sounded like the next-worst thing to U.S. recognition of Red China.

The weakest passage in the speech was the expression of a hope—which Dean Acheson has often expressed before—that the Soviet leaders may yet turn into good little boys. Said he: “It is but 33 years since the overthrow of the Czarist regime in Russia. This is a short time in history. Like many other social and political movements before it, the Soviet Revolution may change. In so doing, it may rid itself of the policies which now prevent the Soviet Union from living as a good neighbor with the rest of the world . . .”

Acheson had been (to use his own metaphor) waiting for the dust to settle in China when the Reds surprised him by kicking up a lot more dust in Korea. It now appeared that one of his basic attitudes toward Russia was that the dust of the 1917 Revolution would settle one of these days. He would not believe that that Bolshevik dust was politically radioactive.