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From International Socialism (1st series), No.20, Spring 1965, p.31.
Thanks to Ted Crawford & the late Will Fancy.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Conflicting Concepts of the United Nations
Conor Cruise O’Brien
Leeds University Press, 2s. 6d.
This lecture, delivered at Leeds University, confirms certain suspicions IS readers will probably have about the UN. O’Brien outlines a number of ‘working assumptions’ held by permanent officials at UN headquarters. The most important of these is that if the US is opposed to a given policy then the UN as a whole will be against it. This assumption was upset only in the case of the Lebanon crisis of 1958, when the US was frustrated by the Afro-Asian bloc.
O’Brien believes, however, that the US has regained control to the extent that the dominant international faction within the Assembly consist of the US and its henchmen plus whatever majority of third world delegates can be won for a given policy.
‘Major propositions which are intended to be carried are now invariably worked out between the US and at least some African and Asian delegates before coming to the floor’.
O’Brien nowhere examines deeply the reasons for this development. Despite his very welcome insights into the conduct of UN diplomacy we are left in the dark about the motives of US imperialism in this arena. The answer may not be so very far to seek. The Marxist left should clear up the confusion.
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Last updated on 14 April 2010