The philosophy reflected in this statement is the keynote to an understanding of the conferences held by the “Big Three” toward the close of the war. By that time the diplomatic strategy of the United States (which began with simple co-existence in 1933) had passed into its fourth phase—the complete acceptance of the Russian Communists as full partners the plans for preserving future world peace.
Creation of the United Nations
During August and September 1944, the representatives of Britain, China, Russia and the United States, met at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. At this conference the constitutional foundation for the United Nations was laid. In it Russia was not only made a full partner, but a dominant stockholder. A most significant development was the fact that, while other nations objected, Russia insisted on the right to exercise the veto power even if she were a party to the dispute. This violated the very foundation of international jurisprudence but the democracies consented. They were ready to pay almost any price to get Russia to participate.
By December 28, 1944, the American Ambassador to Russia began to express misgivings about U.S.-Soviet relations and the part Russia would play in the post-war period: “The Soviets have definite objectives in their future foreign policy, all of which we do not as yet fully understand…. From Soviet actions so far, the terms ‘friendly’ and ‘independent’ appear to mean something quite different from our own interpretation.”{80}
Once the tide of war had turned, there was an increased arrogance in Soviet treatment of U.S. officials. General Deane wrote to Washington about Lend-Lease and said: “Even our giving is viewed with suspicion…. The party of the second part (the U.S.) is either a shrewd trader to be admired or a sucker to be despised…. I have yet to see the inside of a Russian home. Officials dare not become too friendly with us, and others are persecuted for this offense.”{81}
By the following April the Prime Minister of England was becoming fed up with the whole Russian picture. He appealed to President Roosevelt: “I deem it of the highest importance that a firm and blunt stand should be made at this juncture by our two countries in order that the air may be cleared and they (the Russians) realize that there is a point beyond which we will not tolerate insult.”{82}
There is some evidence that the President of the United States was also beginning to awaken to the realities of the situation, but one week after this message was written, President Roosevelt died. The monumental task of finishing the war and building the United Nations fell into the hands of those who still insisted that the Russians were being misunderstood and that a successful partnership could be definitely achieved.
On April 25, 1945, 1,400 representatives from 46 nations met in San Francisco, and after due deliberation agreed upon a United Nations Charter.
Anyone familiar with the Communist Constitution of Russia will recognize in the United Nations Charter a similar format. It is characterized by a fervent declaration of democratic principles which are sound and desirable; this is then followed by a constitutional restriction or procedural limitation which completely nullifies the principles just announced. For example, the Russian Constitution provides for universal suffrage and voting by secret ballot. Then, in Article 126, it provides for a single political party (the Communist Party) which will furnish the voters with a single roster of candidates. This, of course renders completely meaningless all the high-flown phrases dealing with universal suffrage and secret ballots. Freedom of the press is likewise guaranteed, and then wiped out by the provision that all writings must be “in the interest of the workers.”
In precisely this same way the United Nations Charter provides for “the sovereign equality of all its members” (Article 1) and then sets up a Security Council which is dominated by five permanent members (Britain, Russia, China, France and the United States) any one of which can nullify the expressed desires of all other member nations by the simple device of exercising the veto power.
The Charter allows each member nation to have one vote in the General Assembly. This sounds like democracy, but then it provides that the General Assembly can do nothing more than make recommendations, and must refer all of its suggestions to the Security Council for action! (Articles 11–14). This makes the Security Council the only legally binding legislative body in the U.N. To make this absolutely crystal clear the Charter provides in Article 24 that any nation which joins the U.N. must “agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council.”
This means that in spite of the bold declaration that the U.N. is “based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples” the cold fact is that the members are all committed to obey the will of a handful of nations in the Security Council. As the next ten years dramatically demonstrated, all members of the U.N.—particularly the little nations—could be subjected to the choke-hold which the USSR had provided for herself by holding membership in the Security Council and dominating that body through the frequent use of the veto power.
The Charter further provides that membership in the U.N. shall be restricted to “peace-loving” states (Article 4). This was thoroughly discussed at San Francisco, and Secretary John Foster Dulles has emphasized that the U.N. was designed to be a collective organization of friendly nations to preserve peace rather than an assemblage of all the nations in the world. In other words, the United Nations was built on the premise that its members would only include those nations which had had a demonstrated history of being “peace-loving.” Eight years after the adoption of the U.N. Charter, Secretary lies explained to the American Bar Association why the United Nations had failed to preserve the peace: “Now we see the inadequacy of an organization whose effective functioning depends upon cooperation with a nation which is dominated by international party seeking world dominion.”{83}
As some authorities have since pointed out, the U.N. provided for a world-wide police commission and then made the top international gangster a member of that commission. It was like setting up a fire department to put out the conflagration of war and then putting the world-community’s foremost firebug on the department. From the point of view of the little nations, it was like promising to provide a good shepherd to protect the small, weak countries, and then appointing the wolf and all her pups to protect the flock.
All this became apparent during the “decade of disillusionment” which immediately followed. In 1945, however, a war-weary, hopeful free world felt the United Nations was all it purported to be—an organization for collective security designed to stand like a bastion against aggressor nations.
Communist Attitudes at the Close of World War II
A clear indication of what the United States could expect from post-war Communism came on May 24, 1945, when the leading French Communist, Jacques Duclos, wrote a letter on behalf of his Russian superiors demanding that the Communists in the United States be required to immediately abandon their policy of friendly collaboration with capitalism and return to their historic mission of world revolution. Back in 1940 the Communist Party of America had formally withdrawn from the Third International to avoid having to register as a foreign agent under the Voorhis Act. Later the Communist Party of America was dissolved in an attempt to attach the Communist membership to one of the major U.S. political parties. For this purpose they called themselves the Communist Political Association.