The United Nations Organization (UNO) today is so complex and far flung in what it does for peace that it is hard for us to take it all in. Thanks to James Roush, however, we have eight weeks to survey the UN.

How does a giant oak tree look to a squirrel sitting at its base? Yet oaks and other large plants grow from seeds smaller than squirrels, some as small as mustard seeds. And sometimes it is human beings who plant those seeds. Now a seed in the process of being planted is easier for most of us to take in at a glance than all the leaves and branches of the maturing tree. This morning, then, let us therefore take a few minutes to look back to the planting of the UN seed.

-- We begin by looking at a definition of the United Nations and some of its notable characteristics.

-- We next ask what is radically original in the UN in 2009 compared to its predecessor? The answer: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING beyond membership of the USA in the organization.

-- We then look at the predecessor LEAGUE OF NATIONS. What is original there? Almost EVERYTHING! Except that the USA was not a member.

-- We flesh out this survey of basics with a bit about historic US contributions to the ideas behind LEAGUE and UN. We ask why US did not join League but did join the UNO.

-- We conclude with some references to President McKinley's negotiating techniques in 1898-9 which were revived in 1943-45 and which brought the USA into the UN.




Definition: the United Nations Organization is an international organization (IO) for peace with global reach whose members are territorial nation states. The UN

(1) Is governed by a founding document (CHARTER) as amended.

(2) With a fixed meeting place: New York/Manhattan.

(3) With delegates always on location.

(4) Is staffed by international civil servants (SECRETARIAT) headed by a Secretary General.

(5) A small (SECURITY) COUNCIL with five permanent members (with veto) and ten two-year term members. Focus: short term threats to peace. Issues rulings binding on ALL UN members.

(6) A large (GENERAL) ASSEMBLY. All countries are members. Focus: long-term underlying causes of peacelessness. Supervises or is reported to, indirectly, by numerous NGOs/PVAs. Drafts and proposes treaties (conventions). Meets yearly.

(7) Includes a COURT, INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION (ILO) and other bodies.

This global ILO for peace came into existence in April 1946. Is therefore 63 years old.

What is original in these seven points about the UNO? Virtually NOTHING? The "always on the spot" practice of delegates evolved as the League matured.


Were you born before April 19, 1946? I was. That means that you and I both lived when  the League of Nations lived.

The League of Nations lasted for 26 years from January 10, 1920 until April 19, 1946. It went out of formal existence on the day of the first meeting of the United Nations in London.

Although the best thinking behind the League was done by Americans, the United States never joined.  America's absence from and leadership of the League doomed it to failure. The League's failure, in turn, made straight the path to the Second World War.

The League of Nations had a very promising  and positive first ten years of existence. It then became increasingly defied by nations such as Japan, Italy and Germany and ultimately grew  irrelevant and ineffective.

It expelled only one member for wrongdoing: the USSR for its invasion of Finland. (That was the major reason why the victorious Soviet Union would  not allow the League to live on after World War II.) 

In some ways, however, the League's "Covenant" or constitution was both more flexible  and more democratic than the Charter of the United Nations, whose structure is about 80% identical with the League's. Indeed, the League was vastly more innovative than the United Nations. Vastly. The League did five things for the first time which the U.N. could only copy. And this despite State Department experts thinking through what was needed after WW II with no explicit reference to the League of Nations.



In August of 1914 in Europe a general peace ended which had endured (with isolated exceptions such as Prussia against France and Austria-Hungary against Prussia) a hundred years: since the second squashing of Napoleon. During the rest of the nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe's rulers began to knit themselves and the world together through a growing habit of consultation.

The nations also created a number of important, pioneering international organizations (IOs).

-- In 1865 came the International Telegraphic Union

-- and in 1874 the best and post powerful of all, the International Postal Union.
 
-- 1890 saw the New World's pan American Union.
 
-- In 1905 came the International Institute of Agriculture.
 
-- and in 1907 the International Health Office.

By 1914 there were thirty such specialized IOs. They were all rather humdrum and managed only such matters which did not arouse strong nationalist passions. There was no movement to unite them under an overarching Super-International Organization.

Major developments at the turn of the 20th Century were the First Hague Conference in 1899 and the Second Hague Conference in 1907. These were called by the Tsar of Russia. Governments discussed proposals to settle disputes by arbitration and in other pacific ways. Germany was against many such ideas. Some 44 nations were represented at the second conference in 1907. Seventeen were from Central and South America.

The habit was growing of Hague Conferences every eight years. The members therefore agreed to meet again a third time in 1915. But by then it was too late: World War I had intervened. The weak habit of infrequent consultation among nations had not proven enough to prevent war.


Let me close with a list of five ostensibly ho hum organizational
initiatives  (there were other innovations as well) which the League did
for the first time in human history.
 

        (1) The League of Nations established a PERMANENT SITE (Geneva, Switzerland) for meetings of all member nations.
 
        (2) At that site there met several times a year a small COUNCIL, dominated by the Great Powers.

         (3) In Geneva there also convened from time to time a large ASSEMBLY of sovereign, equal nations.

        (4) Meetings were SCHEDULED and frequent -- particularly of the Council. Gradually, member nations accredited permanent year-round REPRESENTATIVES to the League at Geneva.

         (5) The League of Nations at Geneva was administered by a SECRETARY GENERAL supported by a permanent, year round international civil service called the SECRETARIAT. Even Americans were members of the Secretariat and other organs of the League such as its International COURT and the International Labor Organization. All these features were retained in 1945-46 and until today by the United Nations.

Think of it: before 1920 not a single one of the five elemental organizational features had ever existed before in a worldwide international organization for peace. Now that is what I call heavy lifting! All those innovations carried over to the United Nations. It was, obviously, not those five innovative structural features which induced America to decline to join the League of Nations.



Did time permit there are at least two other bits of history I would dwell on with you today:

-- Former President Theodore Roosevelt's acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in which he advocated a "League to Enforce Peace." Roosevelt made this concept so thoroughly Republican that his hand-picked successor William Howard Taft advocated it well into World War I and a bit beyond.

-- In 1927 Lindbergh's flight to Paris unfroze France-USA relations that had soured over World War One debt repayment. This thaw led to the Kellogg-Briand anti-war treaty in which the USA forever renounced war of aggression as an instrument of national policy.

-OOO-

black mountain 09/22/2009