Global Governance in the Twenty First Century. Appendix D by Michael L. Chadwick

Author:Michael L. Chadwick [Chadwick, Michael L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Global Affairs Publishing Company
Published: 2007-05-31T21:00:00+00:00

85. United States and the United Nations:

Proceed with Patience, Confidence and Realism

by George F. Kennan, Director, Policy Planning Staff,

United States Department of State, Washington, D. C.

Delivered at the Harold Tribune Forum, New York, N. Y.,

October 20, 1948

Those of us who have occasion to discuss foreign affairs from time to time with interested groups of Americans continue to be asked a great many questions about this Government's attitude toward the United Nations. These questions reveal not only a deep preoccupation with this subject but in many cases a considerable degree of bewilderment and confusion about it.

Why should this be? After all, there is no mystery about all this. The basic facts are simple. They have been set forth clearly and authoritatively on many occasions. Secretary Marshall stated them last spring before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives. Senator Vandenberg stated them more recently, in several passages of his remarkable Freedom House speech.

They are substantially these: Three and a half years ago, during the final phases of the recent war, this country decided to join in the establishment of a world organization devoted to the preservation of peace and the enrichment of international life.

It was clear to everyone at that time that such an organization could not be asked to make the peace which was to follow the war; much less to enforce a peace which had not yet been made.

It was clear that is full effectiveness would rest on the ability of the great powers to agree among themselves on a peace settlement and to retain some basic unity of approach in the post-war period.

It was clear that even outside the question of international security, in all those myriads of other questions which normally have nothing to do with the problems of peace and war, an international organization could develop its full usefulness only if the world community could be relieved of the worst of those fears and tensions with which it had so long been plagued.

Three years have now passed, but these things have not yet happened. It has not yet been possible for the great powers to agree on a peace settlement. The international atmosphere has continued to be dominated by- the most serious fears and tensions.

The world organization has therefore not had the opportunity to develop its full effectiveness, and will not have such opportunity until the basic causes of international unrest have been removed.

This is not the fault of the organization itself, or of the idea behind it. It is the fault of the conditions under which it has been forced to operate.

In these circumstances, it is the aim, and I think the duty, of this Government to proceed with patience and confidence—but also with realism—in matters involving the United Nations; to show itself a true friend and a powerful friend of the organization; to nurture it through these trying times of darkness and uncertainty, taking care neither to weaken it through neglect nor

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