Thousands of words have been written on “strains within NATO” and the “conflicts of interest” which attend any international organization. For several years—almost from its inception—various prognoses have been made as to how soon NATO or its subordinate agencies would fly apart from the centrifugal forces of diverging self-interest. As early as 1953 General Gruenther warned that with the recovery of self-confidence, the cohesive glue of fear would have less effect. Yet, as Secretary Dulles stated last spring at Copenhagen, we are often inclined to ignore the successes of NATO and to concentrate on its problems.

The 31st session of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), comprising the 1137th to 1149th meetings, was held in New York on April 4 and from April 19 through 28, 1961. There was some discussion as to whether the Council could meet since there was a vacancy in its membership due to the General Assembly's failure to elect the eighteenth member of the Council. Mr. Zorin (Soviet Union) expressed the view that a meeting of the Council as constituted at that point would be a violation of Article 61(1) of the Charter specifically providing for ECOSOC membership of eighteen; his delegation felt that it was essential to come to an understanding with the President of the General Assembly with a view to the election of the eighteenth member at the earliest possible date. The United States delegate suggested that the problem be referred to the Office of Legal Affairs. A vote on a Polish proposal that the meeting adjourn under rule 54 of the rules of procedure pending a vote in the General Assembly was defeated by 7 votes to 6 with 4 abstentions.

Article 21 of the Charter of the United Nations provides that the General Assembly shall adopt its own rules of procedure and shall elect its President for each session. No other mention of the President of the General Assembly is to be found in the Charter and, as in the British fashion, his role is more a reflection of evolution than definition in the rules of procedure. It is perhaps for this reason that the highest office of the General Assembly has not been described at any length in the literature about the United Nations.

The eighteenth session of the Administrative Council of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) was held in Geneva from March 23 to April 26, 1963, under the chairmanship of Mr. Gabriel Tedros (Ethiopia).

The eleventh session of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Assembly met in Montreal from May 20 to June 2, 1958. Represented at the meeting were 52 contracting states; two non-contracting states (the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia) sent observers, as did the UN, the International Labor Organization, and the International Air Transport Association. After statements by various delegations, the President of the ICAO Council reviewed the activities of the organization since the last Assembly meeting in 1956. He stated that the intervening period had been one of great activity in ICAO centering around preparations in all fields for the advent of turbine-powered aircraft. A specially created Jet Operations Requirements Panel had studied the requirements of the new long-range jet aircraft, and a Special Implementation Panel had been created by the Council. A preliminary study of the economic implications of long-range aircraft had been prepared by the Air Transport Committee and was being submitted to the Council. He stressed that while special attention was being given to the coming operations of jet aircraft, this emphasis should not cause the organization to disregard the continuous growth of aviation during 1956 and 1957. The technical assistance activity of ICAO had continued, during the period under review, to give important support to implementation through the assignment of experts and technicians and the training of students in countries where there were technical assistance missions, as also by granting fellowships and scholarships for study abroad.

A summit meeting of the Presidents of Ghana, Guinea, Mali, and the United Arab Republic, attended also by the Libyan Foreign Minister, the Ceylonese Ambassador in Cairo, and Premier Ferhat Abbas of the Algerian provisional government, was convened in Casablanca by King Mohammed of Morocco in early January 1961 for the purpose of coordinating policy on the Congo and of considering a suggestion for the formation of an African high military command. Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Togoland, and Tunisia were invited but did not attend the conference. Excluding Ghana, all those states present which had troops with the UN Operations in the Congo (ONUC) had announced their intention of withdrawing them prior to the meeting.

The United Nations Special Fund was the result of a compromise between two proposals which were debated at nineteen meetings of the Second (Economic and Financial) Committee during the twelfth session of the General Assembly. The first of these proposals was an eleven-power draft resolution, based on the recommendations of the Scheyven Committee, to establish a Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development (SUNFED). The second was a United States proposal to ncrease the financial resources of the Expanded Program of Technical Assistance (EPTA) and to establish within it a Speical projects Fund Which would be used to widen the scope of EPTA7's activities.

The seventeenth plenary meeting of the International Cotton Advisory Committee was held in London June 2–8, 1958. Following discussion of a document on recent developments in the world cotton situation prepared by the standing committee and the secretariat's annual review of the world cotton situation, the meeting made the following statements. The world production of cotton during 1955–56 was an all-time record of 42.7 million bales; the production during 1956–57 was reduced to 41.3 million bales. Although there was an increase in production outside the United States in 1957–58, the reduction of about 2 million bales in the United States brought world production down to 39.3 million bales. The consumption of cotton exceeded production by about 1 million bales during 1956–57 and the current year's estimates pointed to a further disappearance of about 2 million bales in excess of current production. Delegates discussed cotton production in the United States, noting the drastic decline in production due to a reduction of acreage and, to a smaller extent, unfavorable growing conditions, the responsible and careful manner of surplus stock disposal, and the advantages which would follow from a lowering of the domestic cotton price. During the discussion reference was also made, inter alia, to the undesirable effects of dual pricing systems, export subsidies, and special currency arrangements.

The twenty-third session of the International Wheat Council was held in London at headquarters October 30–31, 1957, under the chairmanship of Mr. F. Sheed Anderson. Present were delegates and advisers from thirty-two countries and an observer from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The appointment of Mr. W. C. Duggan as Secretary of the Council was reported.

The sixteenth annual repot of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, covering the fiscal year July 1, 1960, to June 30, 1961, was presented to the Board of Governors on September 19, 1961. The report noted that in the year under review the activities of the International Bank had been part of a broadening stream of financial and technical assistance to the less developed countries. Aid had been provided by: 1) the International Development Association (IDA), an affiliate of the Bank which was designed to aid economic growth by means of credits bearing less heavily on the balance of payments of underdeveloped countries than conventional loans; 2) the Inter-American Development Bank, which attempted to increase the flow of development funds and to coordinate efforts to assist economic development; 3) the UN Special Fund, which had financed pre-investment surveys, in some cases with the International Bank acting as executing agent; and 4) the Development Assistance Group (DAG), which consisted of ten governments that carried on continued consultations—several of these governments had taken steps to facilitate their extension of aid to the less developed countries. The report noted that the Bank had continued to cooperate with the capital markets and with private institutional investors in raising capital for economic development.

At the end of its twentieth year the United Nations is in the midst of a constitutional crisis the outcome of which is still in doubt. During its lifetime it has survived other profound changes, some no less constitution shaking than the present one. Other developments were absorbed chiefly through a process of informal Charter interpretation and institutional adaptation; whereas the current financial crisis was allowed to reach the stage where formal confrontation of conflicting Charter interpretations could be avoided only by adopting a procedural device to evade decision that, unfortunately, also brought the Assembly to a halt.

The first concrete step in effecting international regulation of air navigation was taken by the Aeronautical Commission of the Peace Conference in 1919 when it drew up the International Air Convention of October 13, 1919, instituting the International Commission for Air Navigation (which came into being in July, 1922) in order to provide rules for air traffic. Later modifications in the text of the Convention were authorized in June, 1929.

On August 30, 1954, a close vote on a motion to prevent debate in the French National Assembly consigned to history a spectacular scheme for the unification; of western Europe. The defeat of the European Defense Community (EDC) precipitated a seven-week crisis in the western world that only adroit diplomacy, spurred by a sense of desperation, could overcome. In the ensuing conferences of London (September 28— October 3) and Paris (October 20–23), the foreign ministers accomplished two vital purposes. They salvaged the Atlantic alliance and they brought Adenauer's; Germany into the family of free nations.

The Organization of American States (OAS) Council met in a special session on October 23, 1962, in Washington, D.C., to discuss the threat to the security of the western hemisphere posed by missile bases clandestinely erected in Cuba by the government of the Soviet Union. The Council voted to act as provisional Organ of Consultation under the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance of 1947 (Rio Treaty). In that capacity, the Council approved the same day a draft resolution calling for the immediate dismantling and withdrawal from Cuba of all missiles by a vote of 19 in favor, none opposed, with I abstention (Uruguay). The delegate of Uruguay explained that he had abstained on the vote because he had not yet received instructions from his government.

The relationship between students of international organization and students of international politics has been an erratic one, marked by appreciable shifts in both salience and sympathy. At some points, we may have been close but hostile, at others close and friendly, and more often than not, distant and mildly skeptical of one another's work. As I see it, the extraordinary gap of the 1960s is beginning to close, and I take it as one of my missions here to help accelerate this process, while enhancing the probability that, as our intellectual paths converge again, we will like what we see.

Some sixty-five years ago, when on April 14, 1890, the Union of American Republics was established, the great hope for world peace, the great promise of bringing international relations under the rule of law, lay in the development of arbitration. The Plan of Arbitration proposed by the Conference was for its time a radical one. Arbitration was to be obligatory for all disputes except those which in the judgment of a state might peril its independence; and the example thus set by the American States was not without its effect at the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907. The limitation of armaments was obviously beyond the plans of practical statesmen. But even so, that was not ground for discouragement. If only the procedure of arbitration could be given greater authority and extended into ever-widening fields, it might be possible to look forward to an agreement upon the limitation of armaments when there was no longer the same need of them.

Tangier, a seaport in the northwestern corner of Africa totalling 225 square miles with a population of 60,000 inhabitants, was internationalized by a Convention signed on December 18, 1923, by Great Britain, France, and Spain, who agreed on its permanent neutrality. Spain occupied the area in 1940, removed British employees, and in 1941 deposed the Moroccan native ruler.

It was reported that during a meeting of the Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) on February 8, 1960, a debate took place on the alleged violations of human rights perpetuated by the government of General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina of the Dominican Republic. Dr. Falcon-Briceno, Venezuelan ambassador to the United States, who had brought the charge on instructions of his government, contended that a concern for human rights was a basic function of the inter-American system and called upon the Council to investigate the situation. He was challenged by the Dominican ambassador, Mr. Diaz Ordoñez, who insisted that the prevailing situation was a matter of exclusively domestic concern to his government and stressed the fact that non-intervention in internal affairs was a basic principle of the inter-American system. The delegates were urged to action by the delegate of Honduras, who expressed the view that the principle of non-intervention should not close the door to action deemed to be necessary for the preservation of human rights and liberties. After a threehour debate, the Council reportedly decided, by a vote of 20 to none, with 1 abstention (the Dominican Republic), to initiate an inquiry into the matter. To this end, five nations—Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Peru, and the United States—were appointed as a working group to consider whether and how the organization could conduct an investigation in the case.

The ANZUS Council met in Wellington, New Zealand, on June 5–6, 1963. In reviewing the course of East-West developments during the past year, particularly those affecting the Pacific area, the Ministers noted with concern the Communists Chinese aggression against India and the continuing threat against that country, the renewal of fighting in Laos, and the persisting communist assault in South Vietnam.