as the future of Germany, agreements that would
allow East and West to accept each other’s dif-
ferences and yet be able to live side by side. The
future of Poland, and Stalin’s determination to
secure a ‘friendly’ neighbour here on his own
terms, soured relations from the start. But if the
United Nations could be set up, a world forum
for resolving conflicts might settle current and
future problems of this kind.
The conference called to draft the UN Charter
met at San Francisco in April 1945. Vital differ-
ences still remained. The United Nations might
yet founder. The US was the keenest proponent
of setting up the world organisation and that this
was accomplished by the end of June 1945 was
the most important diplomatic success of the early
months of the Truman administration.
It was of course clear that the United Nations
would not be a ‘world government’. Its members
remained sovereign nations. The decision-making
procedure, however, would be based on the
Western democratic process of the majority vote,
which would place the Soviet Union and its asso-
ciates in a minority. Therefore the nub of the
problem became how far any nation would have
to accept a decision by majority vote. Clearly
nations were not equal in size or power, nor did
they share the same ideals of government. The
inequality of states had to be recognised by giving
to what were then regarded as the most import-
ant nations – the Soviet Union, the US, China,
Britain and, sentimentally, France – a special
status; they were to be the permanent members
of the Security Council; a number of smaller
states, six in 1945, were then elected by the
General Assembly of the UN to the Security
Council to join the five permanent members for
a fixed period. All the founding member nations,
fifty-one in 1945, were also members of the
General Assembly.
But this division of General Assembly and
Security Council did not solve the problem. The
Soviet Union in particular wished to restrict the
UN’s powers to interfere in case its vital interests
were affected, and it was clear that in voting
strength in both the General Assembly and the
Security Council the US and the West could be
certain of majorities. Nevertheless the US and
Britain did share one interest with the Soviet
Union and that was to give themselves a special
status; the five permanent members were therefore
each given the right of a veto. The wrangling at
San Francisco, where Molotov earned a reputation
for dour negativity, concerned how far this right
of veto should extend – whether it should extend
to practically everything or only to proposals to
enforce decisions of the United Nations. Molotov
wished to be able to veto even mere discussion of
problems. A complicated formula, full of ambigu-
ities, was eventually evolved to determine when a
veto could or could not be exercised by a perma-
nent member. There was no doubt, however, that
any one of the permanent members of the Security
Council could stop military action or any other
form of sanction by the exercise of a veto.
Perhaps the limitations placed on UN powers
in the end saved the organisation, for how oth-
erwise could nations in conflict have continued to
belong to it? The confidence reposed in the UN
early on, by public fervour in the West, express-
ing the faith that it could solve the world’s prob-
lems by diplomacy and debate, was misplaced.
The Russians were more realistic in their assess-
ment of what a United Nations based in New
York meant from their point of view. It was there-
fore remarkable that they agreed at all and that
the Charter of the UN was unanimously adopted
on 25 June 1945. The United Nations over the
years did prove itself a significant tool for the set-
tling of problems, negotiations being conducted
as often in the corridors and coffee bars as in
public debate. The United Nations thus served as
an important adjunct to the channels of inter-
national diplomacy. Sometimes in disputes coun-
tries have indeed used the UN as the principal
forum of negotiation, but at other times they
have bypassed it altogether.
Truman’s UN policy was as successful as the West
could have hoped. But American expectations
were not fulfilled in China. During the Second
World War, the Chinese people and their leader
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek were built up as
heroic allies. Pro-Chinese sentiments had been
strong in the US for decades as long as the
Chinese people remained in China and did not
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