A Low-Yield Anniversary

Along Manhattan's East River, a special eleven-day session commemorating the 25th anniversary of the United Nations was just getting under way when the statesmen's words of peace were upstaged by the contrapuntal sounds of a world still preparing for doomsday. The discordant notes came from Novaya Zemlya on the Arctic Circle, from Lop Nor in China's Sinkiang province, and from the Nevada desert. For the first time since the nuclear era was born (like the U.N., just 25 years ago), the Soviet Union, Communist China and the U.S. all exploded experimental nuclear weapons on the same day.

As seismographs around the world measured the impact of the closely spaced explosions, the U.N.'s anniversary session was shaping up, like the U.S. underground test, as a strictly low-yield affair. On the first day, when General Assembly President Edvard Hambro of Norway rose to declare that "the world will be listening to what we say and watching what we do," he stared out over vast expanses of empty seats and delegates of far less stature than had been anticipated.

Domino Dropouts. The disappointing turnout pleased only the swarms of grim-faced FBI men and 8,000 New York police assigned to U.N. security (some of the U.N.'s own 230-man guard force used the occasion to stage a "sick-out" in support of wage demands). In 1960, the 34 world leaders who showed up for the U.N.'s 15th anniversary included such luminaries as Dwight Eisenhower, Nikita Khrushchev, Jawaharlal Nehru and Fidel Castro.

The U.N.'s 25th drew leaders of 45 nations, but the list was loaded with little-known names. From the major powers, the only leaders scheduled to show were Richard Nixon and Britain's Prime Minister Edward Heath. East bloc representation suffered from a domino sequence of dropouts. Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin had been known to be anxious to attend the ses sion, presumably to add new thrust to Moscow's continuing global "peace offensive." With U.S.-Soviet relations cooling perceptibly over the Middle East, Kosygin canceled his travel plans and dispatched Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko instead. Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia quickly followed suit by dispatching their foreign ministers. That left Rumanian President Nicolae Ceausescu as the only Eastern European star-quality representative at the meeting. Ceausescu, of course, made the trip not so much to visit the U.N. as to drum up trade deals and tour Disneyland (a treat, he was well aware, that was denied Khrushchev during his 1959 U.S. tour for security reasons).

Paltry Resources. The U.N.'s champions point to its growing membership and its increasingly vital activity in such fields as economic aid and education as signs of its continuing health. But on balance, the U.N.'s record of achievements (see box) has been very discouraging.

In none of the major crises of the 1960s--notably Viet Nam, the Middle East, Biafra and the arms race--has the U.N. been able or willing to take a positive role. One of its problems is paltry resources, a handicap that can be partially cured if it acts soon on proposals to increase the U.N.'s on-call peace-keeping force from 11,000 to 25,000 men. But the organization's relative impotence in the major East-West confrontations is all but certain to continue, if only because the U.N. was never designed to be a world government, much less one strong enough to rein in the great powers. The wry rule of thumb posed by Philippines Foreign Minister Carlos Romulo years ago still holds: "When there is an issue between two small powers, the issue disappears. When there is an issue between a small power and a big power, the small power disappears. When it's an issue between two superpowers, the U.N. disappears."

If the major powers are less and less inclined to bring matters of substance before the U.N., that is partly because of its unwieldy size and distorted representation. The Pacific island republic of Fiji, which last week became the 127th member of the U.N., has a population of only 520,000; yet it is a giant compared with some of the microstates that will soon be knocking on the U.N.'s doors. Of a total of some 65 territories, trusts and colonies that are headed for independence, 50 have populations under 100,000. All together, these potential members will represent fewer people than there are in New York City. But in the General Assembly they will be able to amass enough votes to block the two-thirds majority needed for any important decision.

If past experience is any guide, the new ministates will be using their debating privileges to the maximum, a stupefying--and increasingly serious --problem for the U.N. The U.S. has suggested that the smaller nations be given "associate" membership but no General Assembly vote. Another proposal is that each nation's vote be weighted to reflect the size of its population. With its steadily growing membership, the U.N. promises to become an ever more faithful mirror of Marshall McLuhan's "global village." But unless some measure is adopted to deal with the small-nation problem, it will also become less useful as a forum for quiet, fruitful diplomacy among the powers.

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