Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations by Stephen C. Schlesinger

Author:Stephen C. Schlesinger [Stephen C. Schlesinger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-01-05T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

THE TWENTY-THREE QUESTIONS

The operative principle among the Big Three in San Francisco was that the Great Power veto had to be preserved at all costs (China and France shared this view). Otherwise, they believed, the wartime alliance would collapse, and the United Nations could not survive. According to the formula agreed upon at Yalta four months earlier, the five permanent members of the Security Council had an absolute veto over “substantive” matters—enforcement measures, investigations, the imposition of settlements, and related questions. However, they could not cast a veto over “procedural” issues, especially the right to discuss a dispute at the council level; a majority of the eleven-member Security Council would decide any such controversy. When a dispute arose to which one of the Big Five was a party, the permanent member had to abstain, though the remaining Big Powers could wield their veto.

Consequently, Secretary Stettinius’s mantra to the U.S. delegation was that the Yalta formula was untouchable: It formed the basis of the United Nations and must be upheld without change. There was no dissent among the U.S. delegates. Both Senators Connally and Vandenberg, who were crucial to a ratification fight in the Senate, felt the veto was essential because it provided a shield against encroachments on national sovereignty, something that had not been available to the United States under the League of Nations covenant. Without such protection, Connally argued, a majority of U.N. states, all Lilliputian in size, could vote the United States into a war that Washington did not want: “Since we would have to furnish most of the resources and manpower, I believed the U.S. should retain the right to say ‘no.’” The Soviets and the British agreed. The British permanent undersecretary for foreign affairs, Sir Alexander Cadogan, emphasized that the Big Five represented more than half the world’s population and constituted much more than half its military might; thus, it had to have the veto. In any event, he said, no armed action could take place under Security Council auspices without Big Power unity. Disunity rendered any council resolution worthless.¹

But the actual Yalta text defining the veto lacked precision. Stettinius was well aware that there was ambiguity about the breadth and limits of the veto. It was an uncertainty that so pervaded the conference that in due course it was to prompt the smaller nations to demand answers to almost two dozen questions about the scope of the veto. Shortly after the Yalta meeting, Stettinius on March 5, and later Undersecretary of State Grew on March 24, tried to clear up the fuzzy language in public statements. They were, in part, reacting to Army Signal Corps intercepts showing dissatisfaction over the veto among many delegations. Grew reminded the smaller nations of the distinction made at Yalta between voting on “substantive” and on “procedural” matters. Under this prescription, Grew explained, states that feared they might never be able to bring a dispute to the Security Council should recognize that discussion in the council was considered inherently “procedural” and thus exempt from “nay” votes.

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