Among the many differences between the League of Nations and the UN systems is that characterized by the increasing expansion in the latter's structure of field operations along with the development of the administrative structure of field offices. This essay deals with the key field post, that of the UN Technical Assistance Board (TAB) Resident Representative, in the most far-flung of the new UN field networks.

According to the press, the Ministerial Council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) held its twelfth annual ministerial review at NATO headquarters in Paris from December 13 to 15, 1961. It was reported that diplomatic soundings of the Soviet Union's intentions on Berlin would be undertaken by the United States and the United Kingdom, Berwith the approval of thirteen other NATO partners and the acquiescence of France, The French Foreign Minister, Mr. Maurice Couve de Murville, was reported to have expressed the view that the Soviet offensive on Berlin was aimed ultimately at the neutralization of Germany and the detachment of Germany and the Scandinavian counganization tries from the NATO alliance, and to have urged that the West strengthen its military forces.

The decision of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to occupy Czechoslovakia in August 1968, while it represents a fundamental turning point in Soviet foreign policy, most of whose implications are ambiguous yet ominous, should not be permitted to obscure the fact that the Soviet regime remains confronted with a wide array of postponed internal and external problems that demand action and yet defy resolution. The decision to arrest forcibly the processes of liberalization in Czechoslovakia stands out as an uncharacteristic act of will on the part of a regime whose four years in power have been marked by drift, indecisiveness, vacillation, paralysis, and “muddling through.” For five years the government of Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin has postponed action on painful problems, has permitted events and situations to accumulate dangerously, and in general has allowed itself to be dominated by events rather than domesticating them. During its first two years in office the regime's inaction was perhaps inaccurately ascribed to prudence, caution, and calculated restraint. It now appears in retrospect that paralysis was confused with prudence, inertia was mistaken for caution, and factional indecisiveness was accepted as self-restraint.

During the past century revolutionary organizations have, in the name of mankind, sought the violent transformation of the existing international framework. Their aim has been the liberation of nations submerged by fate or repressed by coercion and the destruction of the entire nation-state system, considered a passing phase of history. Even those revolutionary organizations dedicated to a specific national struggle have tended to see the triumph of their cause as a step toward a conflict-free world society in which the basic aspirations of all will have been achieved. In the heyday of anticolonial revolts nationalism per se tended to dominate the ideology of the various movements. In the last decade, with fewer countries to liberate from a foreign oppressor and more to be liberated from domestic regimes supported by worldwide imperialism, the universal ideological context of the revolutionary struggle has become more pronounced. Today most, but by no means all, revolutionary movements proclaim an allegiance to world revolution; nevertheless, as in the past, most continue to act as covert governments or illegal armies, underground or in exile, and to represent not the universal but the particular. Such organizations may have deep sympathies, even specific alliances, with fellow national revolutionary organizations or legitimate governments, but they are often comparable, if not parallel, to normal international arrangements. Even the most militant movements in the vanguard of world revolution, despite all their paraphernalia of antinational ideology, are nearly always established on a national basis and act as alternative national regimes. At best, revolution in one country may be actually allied with similar revolutions, but rarely is it submerged in a fully integrated, universal transnational movement.

To understand and appraise the United Nations in its twentieth year we must consider whence it came and where it has come. As Abraham Lincoln once so wisely said: “If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending we could better judge what to do and how to do it.” When the Charter was drafted, it was contemplated that the Great Powers would work out an acceptable peace which the United Nations could maintain. But a stable and acceptable peace—a consensus or modicum of common understanding on the basic principles of coexistence—was never established after the last world war. The Great Powers were in no position to cooperate to maintain a peace the terms of which they were unable to agree upon. Rivalry and conflict among the Great Powers led to a Cold War in which the adversaries lost sight of their common interest in peace and were prone to exploit their differences rather than to attempt to find means of composing them. Even apart from the Cold War the whole world was struggling to adjust itself to revolutionary political, economic, and social changes, and the adjustment in many areas was difficult, painful, and not altogether rational. There was widespread need of adjustment to the radically changed conditions of life which modern science and technology made possible. In many areas the striving for economic improvement was accompanied by movements to break the bonds of colonial rule and feudal and tribal relationships. The very survival of the United Nations under these circumstances attests to humanity's essential need of the United Nations as an instrument of international cooperation in a world which has become increasingly interdependent despite ideological, national, and cultural differences and outlooks.

This article presents a formal model that shows how states can credibly reassure each other simply by maintaining a cooperative outward narrative. The reassurance literature to date has focused largely on costly signaling, whereby benign states must distinguish themselves by taking specific actions that hostile types would not. The mere lack of overtly expressed hostility without costly signals has been considered “cheap talk,” on the assumption that this behavior is costless for hostile states and thus uninformative. In contrast, this paper argues that maintaining a cooperative façade while secretly formulating and executing exploitative policies carries inherent trade-offs, and thus constitutes a credible reassurance signal. Foreign policy planning and implementation requires communication among various individuals, groups, and organizations, which has some probability of being observed and punished by outside actors. Yet efforts to conceal the policymaking process and reduce this probability are costly—they require investments in internal monitoring and restrictions on internal communication that can substantially degrade policy outcomes. Thus, to the extent that a state's foreign policymaking process is transparent—that is, that concealing internal communications is difficult—the absence of positive signals of hostility is a credible signal of its benign intentions. The argument is illustrated with a case study of German reassurance signals during the July Crisis preceding World War I.

The United States public and government, initially unrealistic in their visions of UN potentialities, have recently been turning toward the extreme of skepticism. There are various reasons for the change: the squabbles over Chinese representation and Rhodesian sanctions, the ever–increasing budgets voted by small powers who apparently pay a disproportionately low share of UN expenses, United States disillusionment at being out–voted by the Afro–Asian bloc, and the latter's insistence that the only really important function of the UN is to end colonialism and racism. Although some of these frictions have been adjusted, others are in danger of flaring into major disagreements, and, in any case, the old easy assumption of permanent US–UN friendship has gone by the board.

The Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) held its eighteenth annual meeting in Washington, D.C., from September 30 through October 4, 1963, under the chairmanship of Mr. Emilio Colombo, Governor for Italy. Introducing the annual report, Mr. Pierre-Paul Schweitzer, the new Chairman of the Executive Board and Managing Director of the Fund, welcomed the governors of the twenty member countries which had joined the Fund since the last annual meeting: Algeria, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Leopoldville), Dahomey, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Rwanda, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, and Upper Volta. With the addition of these new members the Fund had a total membership of 102. Mr. Schweitzer commented that in the fiscal year ended in April 1963 eighteen countries had purchased the equivalent of $580 million from the Fund and the equivalent of $807 million had been received in repurchases. Both purchases and repurchases were less than in the previous fiscal year when the United Kingdom had made a very large drawing. The Fund had also made stand-by arrangements with twenty countries under which $1.8 billion was available, including the recently renewed stand-by arrangement of $1.0 billion with the United Kingdom and the $500 million stand-by arrangement with the United States.

The eighteenth annual report of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, covering the fiscal year July 1, 1962–June 30, 1963, was presented to the Board of Governors on September 30, 1963. The report noted that the number of loans under preparation in the Bank had increased in the period under review, and although it happened that the total of funds lent declined from the previous year, there was no corresponding decline in the number of loans actually made.

Early last summer the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations took a decision which in the course of years is likely to have a very considerable and, in my opinion, a very damaging effect on its work and its efficiency. After a lengthy discussion it resolved by a majority vote that all its advisory commissions should be composed of government representatives — of persons, therefore, acting on government instructions — rather than of persons acting in their individual capacity.

International economic factors increasingly influence American trade and exchange policy, and interdependence also circumscribes the autonomous choice of domestic policies. But the growing concern of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) policymakers over the potential for macroeconomic policy coordination to enhance national as well as world welfare implies that international economic relations present opportunities rather than constraints under some circumstances. This suggests that understanding domestic economic policy choice within its international context involves not only how policy choices are made within the bounds of international constraints, but also when countries might cooperate to modify the constraints themselves. This research looks to four important historical cases for information on these questions: the first three are the series of cumulating crises in the international monetary system during the 1960s and early 1970s, the fourth is the energy supply shock of 1973 and the recession that followed. The article describes the process of policy selection in each of these cases, contrasting domestic versus international premises for policy choice. The economics literature has emphasized the magnitude of domestic welfare gains available from coordinated national economic policies. Although the cases considered here do not contradict the importance of payoffs, they underline the corresponding role of political, economic, and strategic uncertainty in conditioning elites' policy choices.

The tenth session of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Executive Committee was held in Geneva from April 29 to May 17, 1958. The Committee considered the recommendations arising from the second session of the Commission for Bibliography and Publications; the comments received on the draft International Meteorological Vocabulary were noted. The recommendations resulting from the second session of the Commission for Synoptic Meteorology, which dealt with international meteorological codes, were approved and incorporated in a single Executive Committee resolution. The Committee also considered the decisions taken at the second session of Regional Association V (South-West Pacific). The new president of this association announced that it was proposed to set up a tropical analysis center in Australia and this development was welcomed by the Committee.

Seventh United Nations Technical Assistance Conference: At the Seventh UN Technical Assistance Conference, which met at Headquarters on October 17, 1956, under the presidency of Sir Leslie Munro (New Zealand), 63 governments pledged $14,940,000; this sum excluded the amount to be pledged by the United States. Several participating countries, including the Federal Republic of Germany, Indonesia and El Salvador, were unable to announce their contributions at the Conference as negotiations had not been completed

The economic programs of the United Nations have been jogging along for some time now. The pace, one fears, is not quite fast enough to get anywhere by sundown. Moreover, the road map, if it ever existed, has been mislaid and a thick growth of underbrush has sprung up to obscure the pathway.

The High Contracting Parties, solemnly reaffirming their commitments made in earlier international conventions and declarations, as well as in the Charter of the United Nations, agree to refrain from the threat or the use of force, or from any other means of coercion for the settlement of their controversies and to have recourse at all times to pacific procedures.