Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 April 2017
Points 2 and 3 of the Vandenberg Resolution, considered and agreed to on June 11, 1948, stated that it was the sense of the Senate that the United States Government, by constitutional process, should particularly pursue the following objectives within the United Nations Charter:
(2) Progressive development of regional and other collective arrangements for individual and collective self-defense in accordance with the purposes, principles, and provisions of the Charter.
(3) Association of the United States, by constitutional process, with such regional and other collective arrangements as are based on continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, and as affect its national security.
This article gives in slightly revised form the substance of an address made by the author at a conference sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania and the Foreign Policy Association at Philadelphia on May 6, 1949.
1 S. Res. 239, 80th Cong., 2nd Sess.
2 “La Réforme du Pacte de la Société des Nations sur des hases continentales et regionales” (a report to the Fifth Session of the Union Juridique Internationale, Paris, 1926, p. 99). Different, but equally lacking precision: de Orúe, J. R. y Arregui, , “Le régionalisme dans l’Organisation Internationale,” in Recueil des Cours de l’Académie de Droit International de La Baye, Vol. 53 (1935), p. 89 Google Scholar.
3 Meetings of July l and 3, 1936.
4 In our days at least, it seems to me that a qualification is necessary here. No regional arrangement should be allowed to have for its object the territory of a sovereign state without the participation, or at least the consent, of that state.
5 How to Win the Peace (London, 1943), p. 119.
6 See also Eugene Staley (quoted by Hambro, loc. cit.), “The Myth of the Continents,” in Foreign Affairs, Vol. 19 (1940-41), No. 3, p. 485.
7 In Vol. 56 of the Recueil des Cours de l’Académie de Droit International de la Haye (1936).
8 Note: “Alliance” clearly in the sense of regional arrangement.
9 Wynner, and Lloyd, , Searchlight on Peace Plans (New York, 1944), pp. 381–384 Google Scholar.
10 The treaties constituting the Soviet Bloc are purposely left out, since, although they refer to a region, the element of compulsion is too evident for them to be classified as a regional arrangement in the technical sense as defined above. They merely constitute a closely organized sphere of influence of the Soviet Union.
11 Wolgast, E., “Le Diplomate et ses Fonctions,” in Recueil des Cours de l’Académie de Droit International de La Haye, Vol. 60 (1937), p. 309 Google Scholar. This author gives the rule in question the dignity of a “law” operating in foreign policy.
12 R. E. L. Vaughan Williams, “Les méthodes de travail de la Diplomatie,” ibid., Vol. 4 (1924), p. 265.
13 President Wilson’s State Papers and Addresses (New York, 1918), p. 524.
14 H. Wehberg in the 1922 meeting of the Institute of International Law.
15 Article 13.
16 Lack of space makes it impossible fully to analyze these important clauses.
17 Artide 3.