UNITED NATIONS: The New Boys

The piping voices of the small nations —uncertain, parochial, timidly daring—were sounding last week through the corridors of the U.N. Suddenly, they sounded loud even in their own ears.

Some of the uncommitted were tentative; all were self-centered. “We are the new boys at school.” confided a tall, broad-shouldered delegate from Niger. “We are just watching to see how the others behave.” A fragile Somali in an embroidered cap added, “We are interested in what concerns Africa. We do not care to become involved in the struggles between the great powers.” But they also found a new pride in themselves, an awareness of growing importance.

For the Small. As the week began, the uncommitted scarcely realized how important they had become. Then Nikita Khrushchev strode to the podium to roar Dag Hammarskjold into submission. Hammarskjold, cried Khrushchev, had tried to justify “the bloody crimes perpetrated against the Congolese people by the colonialists and their stooges. It is not proper for a man who has flouted elementary justice to hold such an important post as that of Secretary-General.” Khrushchev demanded that Hammarskjold “muster up enough courage to resign.”

Hammarskjold sat, his head bowed, listening to the blast. Replying, he leaned forward in his seat, spoke over his folded hands. “It is very easy to resign,” he said. “It is not so easy to stay on. It is very easy to bow to the wish of a big power. It is another matter to resist.”

He reminded the hushed Assembly that if he resigned, Khrushchev would insist on replacing him with a three-headed Secretariat. This, said Hammarskjold, “would make it impossible to maintain an effective executive. By resigning, I would, therefore, at the present difficult and dangerous juncture, throw the organization to the winds. I have no right to do so because I have responsibility to all those member states for which the organization is of decisive importance—a responsibility that overrides all other considerations.”

The assembled delegates burst into applause. When it subsided, Hammarskjold continued in his careful English: “It is not the Soviet Union or, indeed, any other big powers which need the United Nations for their protection; it is all the others. I shall remain in my post during the term of my office as a servant of the organization in the interests of all those other nations, as long as they wish me to do so.” All across the big semicircle, delegates, white, black and brown, rose in a standing ovation. In their midst, Nikita Khrushchev derisively pounded his thick fists on his desk.

New Nations. In effect, Hammarskjold had defined the U.N. and its small-power majority as a kind of third force between the colossi of East and West. With this new sense of their own influence, the uncommitted and the small spoke up to offer their views on issues of all sizes and shapes. Typical was Ireland’s External Affairs Minister Frank Aiken, who urged that Central Africa, “through negotiations between Africans, should become an area of law” and that the states concerned agree “not to change existing boundaries or settle disputes by force.” He acclaimed the U.N. as “a body in which the small nations have an influence such as they never before possessed in history, an influence quite out of proportion to their material power and resources, an influence, moreover, which will disappear if this organization should fail.”

Facts of Life. But in one of their first attempts to translate these grandiose visions into reality, the small countries tripped over the facts of life. They swung happily behind a five-power resolution, sponsored by Yugoslavia, India, Indonesia, Egypt and Ghana, that asked Khrushchev and Eisenhower to hold a new summit* and renew their “recently interrupted” contacts.

Khrushchev played along. He sent the busy five a letter applauding their sentiments and promising to meet any U.S. President as soon as the U.S. apologizes for the U-2 and RB-47 flights. Eisenhower rejected a meeting with Khrushchev unless there were first exploratory, lower-level discussions that offered “some prospect of fruitful results.”

Eisenhower’s stand seemed perfectly justified to most Americans but inexplicably unreasonable to many U.N. delegates. The U.S. position was delicate: should the resolution pass unmodified, the U.S. would be faced for the first time with disregarding a General Assembly decision.

The U.S. delegation maneuvered intricately against the resolution, and succeeded in getting Argentina to ask that references to Eisenhower and Khrushchev be replaced by a simple proposal for renewed contacts between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Angrily, Nehru withdrew the mutilated resolution. The Communists sat back contentedly and, as one Red delegate put it, “watched with amusement the frantic efforts of the U.S. to defeat the neutralists.”

More impressively, the small countries made their weight felt on the perennial question of the admission of Red China to the U.N. In past years, this issue has seen both the U.S. and the Soviet Union grimly forcing their cohorts to stand up and be counted. Last week the neutrals, with their new-found independence, spoke up for a more detached view. Many of the smaller nations had no sympathy with Communism, but felt that it was foolish to act as if Red China did not exist. Ceylon’s Sir Claude Corea pointed to Secretary of State Herter’s recent statement that it was “wholly possible” for Red China to be brought into the disarmament discussions and asked: “If they are not considered good enough to take their place in the U.N., would they be good enough to sit around the disarmament table?”

The 15 new African members represented the difference between victory and defeat. But a good many abstained on the ground that they did not yet understand the complexities surrounding the China issue. The vote was 42 to 34, with 22 abstentions.* Five years ago the U.S. had won, 42 to 12. This time, two such Western-oriented nations as Ireland and Denmark voted “against” the U.S.

In the new day of their independence, the uncommitted and the weak were serving notice that they acknowledge no masters. With something of the same sense of excitement and responsibility that invests any common citizen who finds himself on a jury in a historic trial, the uncommitted last week were recognizing that collectively they had become a force that could shape forces greater than themselves.

* The neutralists do not practice the summitry they preach: Egypt’s Nasser adamantly refuses to talk peace with Israel’s Ben-Gurion; India’s Nehru will not negotiate the question of Kashmir with Pakistan; Ghana’s Nkrumah does not confer with political opponents at home—he jails them; asked last week if he would meet with Netherlands officials about Dutch-held New Guinea, which is also claimed by Indonesia, President Sukarno cried: “No! No!”

* Nixon, campaigning, frequently calls attention to the recent 70-to-0 U.N. vote upholding Hammarskjold in the Congo, and says, “That’s pretty good in football and pretty good in the U.N.” A 42-to-34 score is obviously a closer game.