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The United States, the United Nations, and the Cold War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Edward T. Rowe
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Extract

The nature of political relationships in the United Nations is of considerable interest to students of international organization and, to a lesser degree, to students of international politics. One important aspect of this question concerns the extent to which Western states as a group and the United States in particular dominate the organization. In their examination of this issue many authors contend that the United States prevailed over the United Nations General Assembly during the assembly's earliest years but progressively lost its control as the membership of the organization increased. Their findings, with some variations in detail, indicate that prior to the first significant membership increase in 1955 the United States, with an automatic two-thirds majority in the General Assembly, was dominant. In their view the United States position from 1955 through 1959 was considerably weakened but remained strong enough to ensure favorable decisions by the organization. With further increases in membership during and after 1960, however, they suggest that United States predominance came to an end. Now the newer, less developed, and nonaligned states determine the character and concerns of the UN.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , Winter 1971 , pp. 59 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1971

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References

1 See, for example, Stoessinger, John G., with the assistance of McKelvey, Robert G., The United Nations and the Superpowers: United States-Soviet Interaction at the United Nations (Studies in Political Science, PS 53) (New York: Random House, 1967), pp. 23–24Google Scholar , 171; Inis Claude, L. Jr, The Changing United Nations (Studies in Political Science, PS 58) (New York: Random House, 1967), pp. 39, 66Google Scholar; Ross, Alf, The United Nations: Peace and Progress (Totowa, N.J: Bedminster Press, 1966), p. 48Google Scholar; Kulski, W. W., International Politics in a Revolutionary Age (2nd rev. ed.; New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1968), pp. 522–527Google Scholar; Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (4th rev. ed.; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), pp. 469–471Google Scholar; and Schuman, Frederick L., International Politics: Anarchy and Order in the World Society (Series in Political Science) (7th ed.; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 245Google Scholar.

2 Rowe, Edward T., “Changing Patterns in the Voting Success of Member States in the United Nations General Assembly: 1945–1966,” International Organization, Spring 1969 (Vol. 23, No. 2), pp. 231–253CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Ibid., p. 248, footnote 15. It was reported there that United States victories in plenary meetings were based upon decreasing majorities. Another reason for undertaking this study was the fact that earlier data was limited to roll-call votes in plenary meetings. This raised the possibility that the impact of membership changes was experienced largely in committee decisions before draft proposals reached the plenary stage. However, the roll-call votes from committee meetings collected for this present article confirmed the results reported in the earlier study.

4 Contested roll-call votes were those in which at least one state supported and at least one state opposed the decision reached. This excluded unanimous votes and those in which there was only support for and abstentions from the decision reached.

5 Votes from committees with limited membership—i.e., which did not include all members of the General Assembly—were excluded.

6 Plenary roll calls came directly from the records of the meetings. Committee roll calls were taken directly from records of committee meetings only in the first four sessions. For later sessions the contested roll calls reported in the annexes of the General Assembly were included. Using the annexes greatly facilitated collection of the data as nearly all committee roll calls are recorded there.

7 The other categories were colonial issues, human rights questions, South African racial policies, membership issues, voting and organizational arrangements, arms control and disarmament, international trade and economic development, peacekeeping, the situation in the Middle East, and a miscellaneous group of other less frequently encountered questions.

8 These involved votes on the removal of Jan Papanek from certain committees because he had been dismissed as a representative from Czechoslovakia after the coup d'etat of 1948; draft resolutions concerned with “condemnation of the preparations for a new war,” some directed against the United States and others against the Soviet Union; several proposals dealing with noninterference with radio signals and the removal of barriers to the free exchange of information and ideas, directed against the Soviet Union; a proposal for elections throughout Germany; General Assembly Resolution 377A (V) of November 3, 1950 (the “Uniting for Peace” resolution); a resolution on “peace through deeds,” directed against the Soviet Union; a Polish draft resolution concerning certain arrests in Spain; several proposals dealing with the question of whether “all states” should be allowed to participate in various activities or only members of the UN and related organizations; an appeal to the Soviet Union not to explode a 50-megaton bomb; and proposals concerned with Chinese refugees in Hong Kong and Macao.

9 UN Document A/1215 reprinted in General Assembly Official Records (4th session), Annexes, Agenda Item 68, pp. 234 –236.

10 General Assembly Official Records (4th session), 273rd plenary meeting, 12 8, 1949, pp.570–571Google Scholar.

11 UN Document A/1422 reprinted in General Assembly Official Records (5th session), Annexes, Agenda Item 24, p. 22.

12 UN Document A/2450 reprinted in General Assembly Official Records (7th session), Annexes, Agenda Item 16, pp. 9—10.

13 General Assembly Official Records (7th session), 430th plenary meeting, 08 28, 1953, pp. 724–725Google Scholar.

14 General Assembly Official Records, Third Committee (9th session), 616th meeting, 12 11, 1954. P. 368Google Scholar.

15 General Assembly Official Records (9th session), 514th plenary meeting, 12 17, 1954, p. 522Google Scholar.

16 UN Document A/4744 reprinted in General Assembly Official Records (15th session), Annexes, Agenda Item 90, pp. 9–10.

17 General Assembly Official Records (15th session), 995th plenary meeting, 04 21, 1961, pp. 495–497Google Scholar

18 General Assembly Official Records (21st session), 1481st plenary meeting, pp. 60–62.

19 It could be argued that the United States asked for less severe measures in later periods because it thought it would get less, and consequently success in recent years might not mean quite the same thing as it did in earlier years. Certainly the cold-war proposals considered in the late 1940s and early 1950s more frequently reflected intense antagonisms than those considered after 1962. However, this was at least as true of rejected Soviet proposals as of adopted proposals of the United States and its allies. Thus, just as support for United States positions might not imply as much hostility in recent years toward Soviet interests, opposition to United States positions might not mean as much hostility toward United States interests.

20 This same method was briefly described and used in Rowe, , International Organization, Vol. 23, No. 2, p. 248, footnote 15Google Scholar.

21 The utility of this method may be open to question because of the problems in using it when the state for which the score was being constructed abstained on a vote. If a state abstained, for instance, would other abstainers be considered supporters and nonabstainers opponents? Fortunately, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union abstained with any frequency on the issues included in this study. These rare instances could be excluded without any distortion of the results. With this in mind the figures in table 2 and the related discussion exclude the eight issues on which the United States abstained and the same number on which the Soviet Union abstained.

22 No roll from the first session were classified in the cold-war category.

23 See Lijphart, Arend, “The Analysis of Bloc Voting in the General Assembly: A Critique and a Proposal,” American Political Science Review, 12 1963 (Vol. 57, No. 4), pp. 902–917CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 See ibid., p. 910, in which the formula for determining the index of agreement (IA) between any two countries is given as follows:

In this formula t equals the total number of times both states voted; £ equals the number of votes in which there was full agreement (or identical voting); and g equals the number of votes in which there was only partial agreement (one of the two states abstained).

25 Ireland's voting on all cold-war issues shifted in a strongly pro-United States direction after 1960.

26 Portugal supported the United States on issues concerning Cuba while Sweden did not.

27 President Youlou was overthrown in August 1963, but it was not until 1964 that the regime of President Alphanse Massemba-Débat moved sharply to the Left.

28 A study using a broader definition of what constitutes a cold-war issue might be one way to examine this possibility. In a rough and admittedly inadequate effort along these lines all roll calls on which the United States and the Soviet Union voted in opposition to each other were examined separately. This meant eliminating all instances of identical votes and those in which either state abstained or was absent. The United States and the Soviet Union opposed each other on a total of 1,529 roll calls. If these roll calls may be considered the cases in which cold-war considerations could have been a factor in the voting, one would expect a significant decline in the percentage of decisions which the United States was able to support. The table below shows the results, arranged by subject category, with the figures indicating the percentage of decisions supported by the United States and opposed by the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the results are difficult to interpret. The patterns for issues involving arms control and disarmament, human rights, trade and development, and South Africa appear to support the hypothesis. The other patterns are either unclear or conflict with the hypothesis. In general the findings are similar to those reported in table I and in my earlier article in International Organization, Vol. 23, No. 2.