It is sometimes instructive, as Holmes long ago pointed out to Watson, to begin by asking a few questions about dogs that do not bark in the night. Suez and the Congo are not the only major crises which have disturbed the United Nations. Yet they are the only ones to which it has responded by creating a true United Nations force. Why?

At its founding one of the UN's most publicized advantages over its predecessor, the League of Nations, was the fact that it was a peace organization “with teeth.” This somewhat unattractive phrase referred to Chapter VII of the Charter and the possibility of military force being put at the disposal of the Security Council. In fact this provision of the Charter was one of the first victims of East-West disagreement, and, although the Military Staff Committee met regularly for many years and in the early years held voluminous discussions, the actual military arrangements foreseen in Chapter VII never became a reality. The assumption of the continuing unanimity of the great powers, which particularly affected this part of the Charter, proved to be illusory almost at once, while the idea that the Organization could not and should not take collective action against one of the great powers has continued, with the partial exception of Korea, to be respected. Thus it has become increasingly clear that the United Nations can neither deal with an aggression arising from a great-power conflict nor use the military resources of the great powers directly in dealing with other breaches of the peace, since such a use might all too easily project the great-power struggle onto the situation being dealt with. The development of new forms of peace-keeping machinery have in part been the response of the Organization to this dilemma.

The UN Secretariat has many international operations for which it must provide total or partial logistic support. Arrangements and provision must be made for about 500 conferences each year in various parts of the world. Support must be provided for the numerous offices of the Technical Assistance Board. The 35 information centers and the regional offices of the Economic and Social Council all place regular demands for support on the Secretariat. Support has been required for the many special political and peace-keeping missions—to mention a few, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, the Korean Reconstruction Agency, the UN Truce Supervisory Organization in Palestine, the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan, and visiting missions to trust territories.

Of the many aspects of the UN operation in the Congo (ONUC) that gave rise to controversy, some were unique and can reasonably be chalked up to novelty and inexperience. One, however, is as old as military history itself. This is the matter of political control of a force once it is in the field. Two levels are involved: first, control of the field operations by headquarters; second, control of the military force in the field by the civilian authority—in this case the representative of the Secretary-General.

A police force, domestic or international, must meet two requirements: it must be reliable, and it must be effective. While obviously it cannot be effective if it is not reliable, it can be reliable without being effective, and it is for this reason that the two prerequisites must be distinguished. A police force, in order to be reliable, must be loyal to the political authorities and share their conceptions of law and justice. A police force, in order to be effective, must stand in a certain relation of power to that fraction of the population which is likely to call forth police action by breaking the law.

The predictive power of the social sciences is poor. That of the science of international relations is particularly mediocre, since it deals with a type of social action—the conduct of foreign policy—that is pervaded by uncertainty and in which even the most carefully calculated actions partake of gambling. Therefore, to try to forecast the chances of “international military force” in general during the years to come would be an exercise in futility. There are, however, two tasks which a political scientist can begin to perform. One consists of making the necessary distinctions; they may appear tiresome to the general reader and trifling to the impatient reformer, but both those gentlemen ought to remember that the opposite of distinctions is confusion. The second task consists of examining what kinds of international forces appear to be compatible with the international system in which we live.

This essay attempts to envisage potential conflicts of loyalty in the minds of soldiers of a future international peace force and to review some of the means and steps by which such conflicts might be eased or prevented. For it is a fundamental of co'llective action that for any group to be effective in pursuing its object its members must be reasonably free from crises of loyalty.

General disarmament plans, like weapons of mass destruction, supply excessive solutions to problems, and, like those weapons, they tend to leave unanswered many highly pertinent questions about lesser conflicts, low-level disorders, ambiguous enemies, and local policing jobs. By and large, strategic planners have come to recognize this weakness in military doctrines, but it is not certain that the planners of general and complete disarmament (GCD) yet recognize that a blueprint geared to the deliberate violation, the great war, the two super-states in hostile confrontation, may turn out to be quite irrelevant to the real problems of a disarmed or even semidisarmed world. At best such a blueprint is bound to be deficient until it comes to grips with disorders other than classic open encounters of two states—that is, with the painfully familiar gamut ranging from civil war fomented in a great state by outside agents to the purely internal breakdown of law and order in a small state.

The relation of an international military authority to the industrial (once nuclear) powers in a disarmed world is an intriguing one. We should not expect much success in finding an ideal strategy for it. It is hard enough to find one for the United States, Britain, or the Soviet Union in the familiar world of competitive military force.

Report to the General Assembly: The sixth report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the UN General Assembly covered the period July 1 to October 1, 1962. The report stated that the character of the Agency's programs remained much the same in 1961 as in 1960, but there were some changes in their scope. Technical assistance activities, particularly, training, decreased in 1961 mainly because voluntary contributions again failed to meet the target set. The number of scientific meetings had remained at about twelve a year. There had been some growth in the research contract program, and member states were beginning to make substantial use of the services of the laboratory at Seibersdorf. In 1961, for the first time, member states had asked for the Agency's help in planning individual power reactor projects. It was expected that a number of nuclear power plants would come into operation in the developing areas in the late 1960's and that this would require a good deal of preparatory work in the next few years. In May 1962 the Special Fund approved for the first time a project for the peaceful uses of atomic energy; this decision might provide an important new source of finance for certain types of nuclear science projects in the developing countries.

The resumed 34th session of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), comprising the 1237th–1241st meetings, was held on December 18—20, 1962, under the presidency of Mr. Jerzy Michalowski (Poland). The major substantive issue discussed by the Council during this session was the report of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), which was considered at the 1239th meeting. In this connection, the Council had before it four draft resolutions: 1) recommending the expulsion of Portugal from ECA; 2) calling for the suspension of South Africa from ECA; 3) requesting ECA to reconsider its recommendation concerning the status of Spain, the United Kingdom, and France in the Commission; and 4) taking note of ECA's report and endorsing the program of work and priorities contained therein.

The 1962 annual meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Bank, held in conjunction with the annual meetings of the International Development Association (IDA) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), took place in Washington, D.C. on September 17–21, 1962, under the chairmanship of Mr.Ahmed Zaki Saad, Governor for Saudi Arabia. In the annual address, Mr. Eugene R. Black, President of the International Bank, summarized some of the achievements of the Bank and its affiliates in the past year. He also commented on the external economic difficulties facing the developing countries and pointed out some of the implications of these difficulties as they affected the amount and kind of aid the developing countries needed.

The seventeenth annual meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was held in Washington, D.C., from September 17 through September 21, 1962, under the chairmanship of Mr. Ahmed Zaki Saad, Governor for Saudi Arabia. In his opening address, Mr. Per Jacobsson, Managing Director of IMF, commented on the relation of the Fund's assistance to capital transactions. He remarked that although the Fund's resources had been used in situations involving capital transfers, there had been some uncertainty as to the extent to which, or the circumstances in which, the Fund's resources could be used for helping to meet those deficits in the balance of payments of members that went beyond the current account and were attributable in whole or in part to capital transfers. By a decision of July 1961 the Executive Directors were able to eliminate any doubt which had not already been dissipated by the practice of the Fund that the Fund's resources could be used to alleviate pressures brought about by capital transfers, in accordance with the criteria of Article VI and other relevant provisions of the Fund Agreement. Thus, if a country facing a disequilibrating outflow of capital were to turn to the Fund for assistance, one of the criteria which the Fund would apply would be to satisfy itself that the appropriate measures were being taken to overcome the balance of payments difficulties, and that the assistance provided by the Fund would be repaid at the earliest opportunity, and in any event not later than three to five years after the drawing.

The seventeenth session of the Administrative Council of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) was held from May 5 to June 9, 1962, under the chairmanship of Mr. Juan Antonio Autelli (Argentina). ITU's Secretary-General, Mr. Gerald C. Gross, remarked that the activities of the Union during the past year had continued to increase usefully on a sound financial basis. In discussing the work of ITU in the future, the Secretary-General stated that the efforts being taken by some nations to penetrate outer space constituted one of the greatest intellectual and technical enterprises in human history. ITU's role in this effort would be particularly important.

The fourteenth session of the Executive Committee of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) was held from May 29 to June 20, 1962, under the chairmanship of Mr. A. Viaut, President of the Organization. Three items on the agenda received particular attention from the Committee: the training of meteorological personnel; the use of satellites in meteorology and international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space; and the budget of the Organization for the next financial period.

The tenth annual report of the Consultative Committee of the Colombo Plan was prepared at the Committee's meeting in Kuala Lumpur in November 1961 and reviewed the experience of the Plan in the ten years since its inception. According to the report, for many countries in the area the evidence of their achievements in both the public and private sectors during the past ten years could be seen in a notable expansion of output. National income had grown almost continuously, particularly since 1953. Most of the countries of the area had recorded substantial gains in overall output as well as in important sectors. But in many cases rapid increases in population resulted in diminishing the measurement of gains on a per capita basis. Agricultural production—the mainstay of the area's economy—had significantly increased both in terms of total production and in terms of yield per unit of cultivated land. The area as a whole showed an increase in the index of agricultural output of about 12.5 percent; the average world increase during the same period was 15.5 percent. The production of rice, the staple food of the area, had increased by about 40 percent; and output of maize had registered a gain of over 30 percent.

The fifth South Pacific Conference was held at Utulei village, near Pago Pago, American Samoa, on July 18–27, 1962, under the chairmanship of Mr. Kowles A. Ryerson, Senior Commissioner for the United States on the South Pacific Commission. Topics discussed by the standing committees and in the preliminary sessions of the Conference mainly related to economic and social development and health. Subjects included methods of training Pacific islanders in business methods and practices ways of improving the quality and marketing of agricultural produce and of developing marketing efficiency, the changing role of women in the region, the importance of organized adult eduction schemes, and ways of obtaining a reasonable balance between social advancement and economic development in the South Pacific region. Delegates also reviewed the work of the South Pacific Commission since the last Conference was held in 1959.

The 32nd annual report of the Bank for International Settlements, covering the financial year from April 1, 1961, to March 31, 1962, was submitted to the annual general meeting of the Bank held in Basle on June 4, 1962. In his introduction, the General Manager of the Bank, Mr. Guillaume Guindey, reported that the accounts for the 32nd financial year closed with a surplus of 20,185,172 gold francs, as against 27,324,105 gold francs for the previous year. The reduction in the volume of gold transactions handled accounted for the greater part of the decline in the year's earnings. After deduction of 7,500,000 gold francs was transferred to the provision for contingencies, the net profit amounted to 12,685,172 gold francs, compared with 14,974,105 gold francs for the preceding year. The annual general meeting decided to distribute a dividend of 37.50 gold francs per share. In view of the results for the financial year 1961–1962, the meeting also decided that, as an exception measure, a lump sum of 4.5 million gold francs should be applied in the forthcoming year to the further reduction of the amount of the undeclared cumulative dividend.