The second UN Conference on the Law of the Sea, convened in accordance with a resolution1 of the General Assembly, was opened in Geneva on March 16, 1960, under the presidency of Prince Wan Waitha yakon (Thailand), and closed on April 27. Representatives of 88 countries attended. Two questions only were before the Conference: 1) the breadth of the territorial sea; and 2) the breadth of fishery limits. These had been left unsolved by the first Conference, held early in 1958.

The paper examines the role of the world's fishery technocrats and experts in international fisheries management. The system of management provided by the regionally based international fisheries commissions is organized on transgovern-mental and transnational lines. Political delegates to the commissions are usually government technocrats, suggesting that the system is basically transgovernmental. However, the role of scientific advisers to the commissions is studied, since the group may preempt political control through its control on expertise. Results of a questionnaire sent to 900 scientists throughout the world are given, using the data from a structured sample of 84 scientists. Most were found to be trained as natural scientists, and most were employed directly by national governments or through government reseaich institutes. “Elite” scientists in the group, and some executive heads of commissions were also analyzed, and found to have a generally cautious approach to problems of fishery ownership and management. In sum, the transgovernmental system itself was found to allow yet set the limits of transnational role playing by fishery experts.

The 34th session of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), comprising the 1209th–1236th meetings, was held in Geneva from July 3 to August 3, 1962, under the presidency of Mr. Jerzy Michalowski (Poland).

It has been the unfortunate fate of the United Nations to have been most conspicuously unsuccessful in performing that task which was to be its major responsibility and for which it was supposed to be best equipped. Naturally this has also been the fate of the Security Council upon which the Members of the Organization, by the terms of Article 24, conferred “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security”. Against this background of failure and consequent dissatisfaction, many have been asking whether the Security Council is fated to become like the human appendix, an atrophied organ with no useful function to perform or whether the present condition is not one that can and should be remedied or that perhaps will be changed in any case by an improvement in the state of international relations. To form a judgment on these possibilities it is necessary to recall the original conception of the Security Council, to review its record, and to analyze the causes of its decline and the likelihood of their elimination or counterbalancing by other forces.

The thirteenth conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers to be held since the war took place in London on July 8–15, 1964, with the participation of all eighteen independent nations of the British Commonwealth.1 When the conference opened on July 8 under the chairmanship of Sir Alec Douglas-Home (United Kingdom), agreement was reached on an agenda in the following order: 1) a review of the world political situation; 2) the progress of British territories toward independence and membership in the Commonwealth; and 3) means of promoting closer cooperation between the peoples of the Commonwealth; and world economic affairs.

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.

In the field of political science in general and in the study of international organizations in particular, leadership has been a particularly neglected concept. It has served as a kind of residual category —a handy, or bothersome, exogenous variable. Attempts that have been made, in the international organization context, to isolate leadership as an independent variable and to proceed with comparative analysis have, at best, centered on whether a particular leader followed certain maxims or strictures for good leadership or on what battery of tactics a leader may more or less successfully employ in a given context. No attempt has been made, however, to set the parameters for the relevance of various leadership maxims or to separate the quality of leadership from the specific kinds of resources and constraints that prevail in any given task environment. Thus, general comparison of leaders remains conceptually impossible.

The differences which have been building up within the United Nations in recent years over the financing of peacekeeping have reached a point where strenuous measures are needed to rescue the Organization from its divisions and paralysis.

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.

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development made a loan of $30 million for the continuation of a national power expansion program in Yugoslavia. The loan was to help to finance construction of a 240,000-kilowatt hydroelectric plant in central Yugoslavia, and the extension of the country-wide electric power network by the installation of 362 miles of transmission lines and associated substations. The loan was made to the Yugoslav Investment Bank, an institution of the federal government which channeled investment funds for development. The Investment Bank was to re-lend the proceeds of the Bank loan to the enterprises responsible for constructing and operating the power plant and the transmission system. The loan was for a term of 25 years at an interest rate of 5¾ percent; amortization was to begin on December 1, 1966. The loan was guaranteed by the government of Yugoslavia.

Secretary-General U Thant in his Introduction to the Annual Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, 16 June 1962—15 June 1963 commented that the year under review had been marked by a number of developments which on the whole may be said to have brightened the international outlook and strengthened the UN as a result. According to the Secretary-General, the Cuban crisis provided the UN with the opportunity to help avert what appeared to be impending disaster. Proposals which he had been encouraged to make by a large number of Member States not directly involved in the crisis had the immediate effect of tending to ease the situation. In addition, the UN provided an opportunity, both through the Security Council and the Secretariat, for dialogues among the interested parties. The turn of the year also marked a sudden change for the better in the Congo. As a result the terms of the UN mandate in the Congo as far as the military force was concerned had now largely been fulfilled. External military interference in the Congo had ceased, the territorial integrity of the country had been secured, and law and order had generally been restored and were being maintained, although the situation in one or two areas still was giving some cause for concern.

The conference of heads of state and government of the African and Malagasy Union (UAM) decided at a meeting held at Dakar, Senegal, on March 7–10, 1964, to dissolve UAM and to replace it by a new African and Malagasy Union for Economic Cooperation (UAMCE). The decision was in accordance with the recommendations on regional groupings approved by the Council of Ministers of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) at its Dakar meeting in August 1963.

South West Africa Cases (Ethiopia v. Union of South Africa and Liberia v. Union of South Africa): On November 4, 1960, applications were filed in the Registry of the Court by Ethiopia and Liberia, instituting separate proceedings against the Union of South Africa. Both applications concerned the mandate for South West Africa and the duties and performance of the Union, as mandatory, thereunder. The applicants alleged that the Union, acting through official bodies created by it to administer the territory, had violated, and was continuing to violate, Article 2 of the mandate and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations by: 1) arbitrary and unreasonable legislation; 2) the suppression of rights and liberties essential to the orderly evolution of the inhabitants toward self-government; 3) the failure to render annual reports concerning the territory to the General Assembly of the UN; and 4) the exercise of administrative and legislative powers inconsistent with the international status of the territory. The applications contended that the Union of South Africa had thereby modified substantially the terms of the mandate without the consent of the UN, and sought declarations by the Court in accordance with their allegations.

The movement toward a one-world economy that seemed well underway during the middle 1950's has suffered setbacks. Retrogression has been particularly noticeable where previously progress had been most promising—in the relations of the United States with other industrial countries and especially with the European Economic Community (EEC). Difficulties over the United States' payments deficit, the international role of the dollar, and direct investment by the United States, mark the trend. The outcome of the Kennedy Round negotiations, fortunately, was a success, but the very duration and the bitterness of the negotiations were symptomatic of a deteriorating relationship. And complicating these economic problems were the political difficulties arising over the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Vietnam.

The fourteenth session of the Council of the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM) was held in Geneva from May 11 to 17, 1961.1 The Spanish Minister Plenipotentiary, D. José Manuel Aniel-Quiroga, permanent delegate to the European office of the United Nations, was elected by the Council to chair the session. During the first day of the session the United Kingdom was unanimously admitted to membership in ICEM, bringing total membership to 30 countries.

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.

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 spread of nuclear weapons would make the world a much less stable place, and such a spread may be difficult to stop. Yet proliferation is not as yet inevitable.

Several viewpoints are implicitly rejected in this collection. One is that nuclear proliferation would actually be desirable for the world. Another is that such weapons spread is inevitable. Other rejected viewpoints are that such spread can be halted only by a crash program, by a brutal exercise of American national power, or by a substantial surrender of such power.

The international system may indeed hamper a nonproliferation effort in various ways—for example, in a drastic worsening of Soviet-American relations or a major disruption of world oil production.

Yet the most important counter to pessimism about containing proliferation comes from the world's awareness of how bad actual proliferation would be. States which pretend to be indifferent or resigned to such nuclear weapons spread will quietly be making contributions to halting it.