Word: vetoes
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...that the General Committee was expected to act on the veto, both Austin and Vishinsky arrived early. In a corner of the committee room they talked earnestly through their interpreters. Later, Vishinsky reversed his stand, declared that Russia would not oppose discussion of the matter by the Assembly. The Russians were not taking any risk; Vishinsky knew Austin would not support drastic changes in the veto power...
...intentioned speeches that marked the first sessions of the United Nations General Assembly, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov's survey of the situation confronting the world peacemakers stands in real contrast to the polished platitudes of striped-trousered diplomats. No one has stated the problem of atomic control and the veto so thoroughly, nor probed to the heart of so many of the questions dividing East from West. But on both these major issues--which might be considered one in essence--Molotov carried his thinking only to the limits established by his own frame of reference...
...Russian delegate concluded that elimination of the veto power, either in the Security Council or in the Atomic Energy Authority, would mean the end of the United Nations. With unanswerable logic, but again only within the limits of his own hypothetical alternatives, he pointed out the absurdity of majority rule in which the vote of Honduras is equal to that of the United States or the ballot of Haiti holds as much weight as that of the Society Union. Therefore, he said, the only possible hope for peace lay in Big Five unanimity...
...hand, then, we have the absurdity of placing unequal nations on an equal plane, and on the other, an impracticable principle of unanimity among powers who, as reasonable men may, disagree on many questions. Neither Molotov, nor all the representatives who have been clamoring for restriction of the veto, seem to have realized the further implications of its removal: that if a world organization is to consider making decisions by a majority, it is necessary that the votes of the various nations bear some relationship to their power, population, and consequent importance in world politics; in short, some form...
Whether Molotov has considered this implication or not, his prophecy that the elimination of the veto would mean the end of the United Nations applies to the idea with curious irony. Such a step as proportional representation would indeed mean the end of the United Nations--a United Nations whose Statement of Purposes contains the utterly anachronistic "sovereign equality of all member nations"--but an end, despite the difficulty of its attainment, that would be a new beginning...