Foreign Relations: Chill Winds on the East River

U.S. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg’s speech before the 22nd United Nations General Assembly last week proved something of a disappointment to those who for no particular reason expected it to outline a dramatic U.S. initiative on Viet Nam. There were no new proposals for Hanoi to mull, no offers of bold concessions by Washington. The speech was notable nonetheless for its carefully conciliatory tone, its two score references to peace, negotiations and the like, and its effort to present a thorough and thoroughly honest summary of the U.S. position.

Goldberg made it clear that Washington is willing to enter negotiations with Hanoi at any time without any conditions. Despite insistent reports from foreign officials that Hanoi is ready to talk as soon as the U.S. quits bombing the North, Goldberg noted that the Johnson Administration has repeatedly “sought such a message directly from Hanoi without success.” What the U.S. wants, he said, is some assurance that a bombing pause would in fact lead to negotiations, and would not be used to hurt South Viet Nam’s military position. In a rhetorical question whose wording proved practically incomprehensible even to diplomats, he asked: “Does North Viet Nam conceive that the cessation of bombing would or should lead to any other results than meaningful negotiations under circumstances which would not disadvantage either side?”*

Soap Bubble. With considerably more clarity, Goldberg posed another question to “those governments which support Hanoi’s cause”—principally the Soviet Union. “If the U.S. were to take the first step and order a prior cessation of the bombing,” he asked, “what would they then do or refrain from doing, and how would they then use their influence and power?” The Russians, however, quickly made it clear that they had no intention of either reducing their aid to the North or trying to persuade Hanoi to come to terms.

Replying to Goldberg next day, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko dismissed the U.S. suggestion as a “soap bubble,” announced a step-up in aid to Hanoi, branded Washington a “barbarous” aggressor, and demanded nothing less than an American pullout from Viet Nam as the price for peace. Gromyko’s intransigent tone made it obvious even to Secretary-General U Thant that the U.N. is not likely to be the arena in which the Viet Nam impasse will finally be broken.

Microstates. If Gromyko’s polemics recalled the cold war at its chilly worst, another event on the East River indicated that some things have changed. For the first time in the U.N.’s history, a Communist was elected President of the General Assembly: Corneliu Manescu, 51, the silver-haired, athletic Foreign Minister of Rumania. Manescu was acceptable to the West because he is a symbol of Rumania’s diplomatic drive toward a large degree of independence from the Soviet Union. Despite Moscow’s displeasure, he signed the treaty establishing relations with West Germany, has widened Rumania’s cultural and economic contacts with Western Europe, and has helped keep his country’s communications channels with Red China relatively free of static. The East bloc accepted him because, for all his prickly independence, he remains a staunch Marxist who believes that the Communist countries must play a more important role in current international diplomacy.

Another change noted as the U.N.’s 122 members met was in the General Assembly’s composition. In the past seven years, 39 new nations have joined up. Most are poor, small and politically immature; a 1966 entry, the Maldive Islands, has fewer than 100,000 citizens, compared with neighboring India’s 495 million. About two-thirds of them are African, whose main interest has been in railing against colonialism. They have diluted the strength of the General Assembly, distorted its real political interests, and made it more difficult for it to reach decisions.

In what was for him an unusually realistic statement, Secretary-General U Thant worriedly declared that “the line must be drawn somewhere” on member ship. In future, he suggested, newly independent “microstates” should be offered associate membership without a vote. But that would hardly solve the U.N.’s problem, for a slew of microstates are already members with full voting rights. There is scant likelihood that any of them would voluntarily agree to a system of weighted voting more in keeping with the realities of power.

*When this sentence was put into French and cabled to Paris by Agence France-Presse, Paris wired back: “Please give us a clearer translation.” Replied New York: “If the French is unclear, it is because the English is unclear.”