International: The Tangled Web

The Big Three had practiced to deceive their Allies and the world. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had made a secret bargain on voting in the postwar World Assembly—and kept it secret. Six weeks after the sorry deal was struck at Yalta, the New York Herald Tribune sniffed out part of the story, and forced the White House to explain:

“Soviet representatives at the Yalta conference indicated their desire to raise at the San Francisco conference of the United Nations the question of [additional] representation for the Ukrainian Soviet Republic and the White Russian Soviet Republic in the assembly of the proposed United Nations organization. The American and British representatives . . . agreed . . . but the American representative stated that if the United Nations organization agreed to let the Soviet Republic have three votes the United States would ask for three votes also. . . . The ultimate decision will be made [at San Francisco].”

“Secret Dealing.” The bargain was bad enough, but the deceit was worse. In the proposals drafted last fall at Dumbarton Oaks, and in all the whooping since then, the Assembly had been touted as the forum where all nations, big and small, would have an equal voice. True, a voice was about all the Assembly would have—the power was concentrated in the eleven-member Security Council, dominated by the big fellows. For that very reason, the Assembly’s “sovereign equality” was precious to the little fellows.

But in a world manifestly run by the Big Powers, the loss of this tattered privilege might have been just another dose of “reality” if it had been judiciously administered. Cried Arkansas’ James W. Fulbright, who had just made an eloquent plea for world cooperation in the U.S. Senate: “Why in the world couldn’t they have announced it at the same time as they announced the other results of Yalta? I don’t like this kind of secret dealing.” .

Nor did anybody else. Washington’s colony of little-nation diplomats fell into the nether pits of gloom. Parisians heard that Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, selected last week to head France’s delegation to San Francisco, first learned of the deal from his morning newspaper. Australia’s Herbert V. Evatt, in the U.S. on his way to London for a preliminary Empire conference, was astounded and enraged. All the dominions knew that Russia had asked for three votes, but not that the U.S. had consented or decided to demand three for itself. British officialdom seemed to be in a similar quandary.

Salvation in Limbo? A week before the secret leaked out, the President imparted it to the three Congressional members of the U.S. delegation to San Francisco: Senate’s Foreign Affairs Chairman Tom Connally, Michigan’s potent Republican Arthur H. Vandenberg, New Jersey’s Republican Representative Charles A. Eaton. Letting them in on the truth, the President swore them to secrecy.

Mr. Roosevelt’s excuse to them: Stalin wanted more votes, and the bargain was the best to be had. Stalin, said the President, at first asked for 16 additional votes—one for each of the Soviet Republics. When Mr. Roosevelt countered that he would then want a vote for each of the 48 states, Stalin settled for three: one each for the Ukrainian and White Russian Republics, one for the Soviet Union.

Growled Arthur Vandenberg, who may well sway the U.S. Senate for or against any treaty ratifying a world charter: “I . . . deeply disagree. . . .” All three Congressmen made their disgust acidly plain to Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius Jr., who had suddenly discovered spots on his shiny new world.

Fifty-odd Washington newsmen belabored the Secretary with 33 written questions, all adding up to the bitter brevity: “What the hell?” Mr. Stettinius sweated, lost his famous smile. His unspoken hope was that the San Francisco Conference would quickly consign the deal to some limbo where the mess could be conveniently forgotten.

Sense to Stalin. Only Joseph Stalin could answer the prime question: what was Russia after? At Yalta, he had argued that Russia needed extra votes to offset Britain’s six (the United Kingdom, four dominions, India). And he had pointed out, unanswerably, that India was no more independent than the 16 quasi-autonomous Soviet Republics.

But this explanation did not hold water. Actually, Britain wishes that it did have a dependable bloc of Empire votes; the four dominions can be as uppity as so many hogs on ice. In any case, nobody knows better than Joseph Stalin that the number of votes in the impotent assembly will make no real difference. There, as in any world body, it is the power behind the votes that will count. Well aware of this fact, the British neither asked for nor wanted more votes.

A better explanation was Joseph Stalin’s old interest in the gradually increasing autonomy of the Republics which make up the Soviet Union. The two Republics for which he demanded Assembly membership as a starter actually do have separate foreign commissariats, and both have dealt separately with Poland’s Warsaw Government.

So long as Soviet Russia is a one-party dictatorship, and Communist at that, the Republics cannot have truly independent policies, domestic or foreign. But Stalin may be leading them toward a vast federal sodality, with room for Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in Europe, Manchuria and perhaps other lands in Asia. In such a union, any newcomers would want assurance that they could keep their international standing.

If that was Stalin’s gigantic dream, individual representation for his Republics made plenty of sense—to him.