Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
The conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union has prevented the United Nations from becoming the international government of the great powers which the Charter intended it to be. That conflict has paralyzed the Security Council as an agency of international government. In the few instances when it has been able to act as an agency of international government, it has been able to do so either, as in the beginning of the Korean War, by the accidental and temporary absence of the Soviet Union or, as on the Indonesian issue, by a fortuitous and exceptional coincidence of interests.
1 It is worth recalling in this connection that in one isolated and in certain respects unique instance, the case of the Italian colonies, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States agreed beforehand to accept the decision of the General Assembly as binding.
2 The reader will keep in mind that we are dealing here with political reality, not with constitutional arrangements. The transformations which we are discussing here may or may not be reflected in the legal rules by which the United Nations operates.
3 See above, p. 5, and Politics Among Nations, pp. 239 ff., 435.Google Scholar