The present strains on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance have far-reaching implications for members as well as nonmembers. In the current Scandinavian debate on security the year 1969 has become almost a magic number. In Norway there has even been talk of a national referendum on whether to continue membership in NATO. While recent polls show a majority in favor of the alliance, the margin is not large enough to preclude a change during the next three years. Parties, politicians, and pressure groups are already bracing themselves for a major campaign.

Traditionally relations between nations, including Canada and the United States, have been analyzed in terms of the interaction between the executive branches of the two governments. This approach used to reflect relatively accurately the actual state of affairs. It is still broadly consistent with the constitutional allocation of powers, particularly in Canada. While the president of the United States must seek congressional action in order to declare war and Senate action to ratify treaties and to confirm ambassadorial appointments, these powers in Canada fall within the prerogatives of the crown, and constitutionally no parliamentary approval for decisions by the executive branch in any of these areas is required.

The United Nations provides the setting for the expression and carrying out of United States policies on a wide range of subjects of international concern. This article is about how those policies are formulated and expressed in UN organs.

On July 30, 1962, the government of Syria presented a formal complaint against alleged United Arab Republic interference in its internal affairs to Abdul Khaliq Hassouna, Secretary-General of the Arab League. The Secretary-General at Syria's request said he would start preparations for holding an extraordinary meeting of the League's Council to discuss the complaint, but it would take at least five days.

The Executive Board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) held its 55th session in Paris, from November 23, 1959, to December 5, 1959. Under the heading, Execution of the Program, the Board decided, inter alia: 1) to approve the list of invitations to the 23d International Conference on Public Education; 2) to authorize the Director-General to convene, in 1960, a meeting of representatives to the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, if hedeemed it appropriate to do so; 3) to invite member states to submit names of great personalities and to call attention to historic events in the field of education, science, and culture which they planned to commemorate, in conformity with a decision adopted at its previous session; 4) to extend assistance to the governments of the United Arab Republic and the Sudan to obtain, through the Organization, largescale international assistance for safeguarding the monuments of Nubia which were in danger of disappearing, and, further, to authorize the Secretary-General, among other things, to set up an international committee to assist him in the organization of a world-wide campaign designed to secure contributions for whatever international action was to be undertaken; 5) to approve the list of invitations to the 1960 World Conference on Adult Education; and 6) to recommend to the General Conference the inclusion among the activities to be carried out in the 1961–1962 period of an international conference to study ways of improving international transmission of news, to be convened in Havana, Cuba.

Two new experiments in international cooperation, seldom publicized and very little known even to the specialist in international affairs, have been taking place in recent years in the Caribbean area and in the South Pacific. In each instance, colonial nations have established international organizations, advisory in character, to foster economic and social advance. Without political functions, these two organizations — the Caribbean Commission and the South Pacific Commission — have embarked on the task of raising standards of living and advancing the general welfare of the non-self-governing peoples of the area. The first of these, the Caribbean Commission, was the progenitor of the regional system and has served in large measure as a model for the later South Pacific Commission; the story of its development, with the participation first of two and later of four colonial governments, is therefore particularly interesting to follow.

The sixteen-member Council of the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization (IMCO), the newest of the twelve specialized agencies of the UN, held its first session in London after its membership had been completed by the Assembly. A second session of the Council was held in London during July 1959, at which the work program, administrative arrangements, and the relationship of the Organization with the other UN agencies were discussed. Among the new proposals made to the Council was one that IMCO should consider the problem of simplifying the voluminous documentation required by international shipping when entering or leaving port. Another aspect of the Council's second session was a debate on technical cooperation with underdeveloped countries, but a full report on IMCO's participation in UN technical assistance programs was not to be considered until the next Council session, scheduled for March 1960.

The following summary covers the activities of the Security Council from its 783d meeting on August 20, 1957, through its 790th meeting on September 9, 1957.

Regulation of the exploitation of seabed minerals has to be considered in terms both of the technical nature of the operations and of the requirements of the supervisory body. The major issue, however, has been “Who May Exploit the Area?”. Different approaches to this question have been taken by the leading industrialized powers and by the Group of 77. Particular difficulties have arisen over: 1) the extent of the discretion to be exercised by the International Seabed Authority and the security of access of individual operators; 2) the way in which the Authority might itself engage in direct operations through an “Enterprise”; 3) the protection to be given to land-based producers against adverse consequences of seabed exploitation; and 4), the decision-making procedures of the Authority. Future events are hard to predict; but failure to produce a generally acceptable treaty could lead to significant conflict over the international seabed in the years ahead.

Weighted voting at the UN has been suggested for various reasons: (1) to overcome the problems of the mini-states now being admitted, with one vote just as the very large states have; (2) to prevent voting in the General Assembly from swinging any further in the anti-West, anti-Israel direction; (3) to satisfy the requirements of democratic justice: i.e., “one person-one vote,” not “one nation-one vote”; and, (4) to reflect more realistically the distribution of power among nations.

The World Bank announced on March 14, 1963, that it had made a loan equivalent to $13,250,000 to help finance a program to rehabilitate and modernize the two principal railway systems in Peru. The railways were an important element in Peru's transportation system, particularly for the movement of minerals, petroleum, and bulk merchandise, and their efficient operation was essential to the country's economic growth. Under the program, diesel locomotives would be put into use, carrying capacity increased, and tracks improved, thereby enabling the railways to reduce transportation costs and to provide more efficient service. The loan was made to the Peruvian Corporation Limited, a private company which owned and operated the railways, and was guaranteed by the Peruvian government. The total cost of the program, which was scheduled for completion in 1965, was estimated at the equivalent of $21.3 million, of which $19.5 million was in foreign exchange and would be covered in part by the Bank loan. The loan was for a term of sixteen years, and amortization was to begin in December 1967.

The twenty-eighth annual report of the Bank for International Settlements covering the financial year from April I, 1957, to March 31, 1958, was submitted to the annual general meeting of the Bank held at Basle on June 9, 1958. Details of the results of the year's business operations were given, together with a review of the current activities of the Bank and an analysis of the balance sheet as of March 31, 1958. The year was characterized by a stabilization of the resources at the disposal of the Bank at the high level reached the previous year and by a further increase in the volume of its operations. The financial year closed with a surplus of 19,317,738 gold francs, against 16,014,462 gold francs for the previous year; the net profit amounted to 9,317,738 gold francs, compared with 8,212,987 for the preceding year. The board of directors of the Bank recommended that the general meeting should declare a dividend of 6 percent.

The 30th annual report of the Bank for International Settlements, covering the financial year from April 1, 1959, to March 31, 1960, was submitted to the annual general meeting of the Bank held in Basle on June 13, 1960.1 In his introduction, the General Manager of the Bank, Mr. Guillaume Guindey, reported that the net profit for the thirtieth financial year had amounted to 15,314,716 gold francs, compared with 9,550,894 gold francs for the preceding year. In view of these very favorable results, the Board of Directors of the Bank had recommended the extraordinary distribution of 42.50 gold francs per share, in addition to the regular dividend of 37.50 gold francs per share; thus the total distribution for this year would amount to 80 gold francs, payable in Swiss francs in the amount of 114.30 Swiss francs per share.

At the Second Part of the first Session, the General Assembly completed the steps required by the Charter for the establishment of its last remaining organ, the Trusteeship Council, by accepting trusteeship agreements for eight territories formerly held under mandate. The territories brought under trusteeship and their administering authorities are: New Guinea (Australia), Ruanda-Urundi (Belgium), the Cameroons (France and Great Britain), Togoland (France and Great Britain), and Western Samoa (New Zealand).

Originally designated by the terms of its Constitution as an international agency for the collection and dissemination of information in the field of nutrition, food, and agriculture, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations developed a much wider field of activity during 1946, its first working year. Recognizing the need for an international agency with real administrative powers, the FAO assumed the task of helping to ameliorate the world food crisis, while at the same time setting up an organization for long-range planning and statistical work.

In this article I explain a nexus between slavery and state formation in Africa, proceeding from initial demographic and institutional conditions to an external demand shift, individual state responses, and their collective systemic consequences. Historically, African rulers faced distinctive challenges: low population density prioritized control of people more than territory, and internal disintegration was often a greater threat than external conquest. A massive expansion in the demand for slaves offered African rulers increased opportunities to use external resources for “outside-in” state building. Many did so by creating highly militarized predatory slaving states. The collective consequence was heightened systemic insecurity. Variation in the timing of these developments reflected regional and historical variation in the expansion of the demand for slaves. Slaving states appeared first in West Africa, reflecting the late-seventeenth-century expansion of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, before spreading to East Africa a century later, following the parallel later increase in the Indian Ocean slave trade. This “outside-in” path to state formation both parallels and contrasts with contemporary postcolonial state formation.