A History of the United Nations: Volume 2: The Age of Decolonization, 1955–1965

575 Pages·1989·55.793 MB·English

by  Evan Luard (auth.)

A HISTORY OF
THE UNITED NATIONS
Volume 2: The Age of
Decolonization, 1955-1965
Also hy Evan Luard
CONFLICT AND PEACE IN THE MODERN
INTERNA TIONAL SYSTEM
INTERNA TIONAL AGENCIES: The Emerging Framework of
Interdependence
THE UNITED NATIONS: How it Works and What it Does
SOCIALISM WITHOUT THE STA TE
A HISTORY OF THE UNITED NATIONS, VOLUME 1: The
Years of Western Domination, 1945-1955
THE MANAGEMENT OF THE WORLD ECONOMY
TYPES OF INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY
ECONOMIC RELATIONS AMONG STA TES
WAR IN INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY
THE BLUNTED SWORD: The Erosion of Military Power in
Modern W orld Politics
A HISTORY OF
THE UNITED NATIONS
Volume 2: The Age of
Decolonization, 1955-1965
Evan Luard
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-20032-0 ISBN 978-1-349-20030-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20030-6
© Evan Luard 1989
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1989
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Seholarly and Referenee Division,
St. Martin's Press, Ine., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
First published in the United States of Ameriea in 1989
ISBN 978-0-312-02787-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publieation Data
(Revised for volume 2)
Luard, Evan, 1926-
A his tory ofthe United Nations.
Includes bibliographical referenees and indexes.
Contents: v. I. The years ofWestern domination, 1945-1955
v. 2. The age of deeolonization, 1955-1965.
I. United Nations-History. I. Tide.
JX1977.L79 1982 341.23'09 81-16701
ISBN 978-0-312-38654-2 (v. 1)
ISBN 978-0-312-02787-2 (v. 2)
Contents
Priface
Vll
Introduction: the United Nations after a Decade 1
Round Two in the Midd1e East: the Suez War 18
2 Hungary 58
3 North Africa 75
4 South Africa 104
5 The Trusteeship System 120
6 Lebanon and Jordan 144
7 Cyprus 161
8 The Call for Decolonization Intensifies 175
9 The Role. of the Secretary-General 198
10 The Congo 217
11 Goa 317
12 West lrian 327
13 Malaysia 348
14 Yemen 359
15 Cu ba 377
16 Cyprus Again 407
17 The Crisis over Peace-keeping Costs 443
18 Round Two in Kashmir 467
19 The Dominican Republic 491
20 Conclusions: the Second Decade 514
Notes 549
Index 561
Preface
The purpose of this his tory is to survey the actions taken by the
United Nations in seeking to maintain world peace over the years;
and to consider whether there are any conclusions that can be
drawn about the way it might be made more effective in
performing that role.
Like its predecessor, the volume covers aperiod of only ten
years. But that period was one in which the United Nations
played a more central part in world events than perhaps at any
other time. For this reason a his tory of the organization's actions
is in danger of becoming something like a his tory of the world
during that period. Since I have neither the ambition nor the
ability to provide this, I have confined myself, as before, to setting
out only the essential facts concerning the origins and develop
ment of each conftict; and of concentrating, so far as is practi
cable, on describing the way the organization responded to those
events; and above all its efforts to res tore the peace or promote a
solution. Though this inevitably involves drastic compression
only if an entire volume were devoted to each crisis could an
adequate understanding be provided - it has still resulted in a
volume considerably longer than I would have liked. But it could
not have been made any shorter, I think, without significantly
distorting and over-simplifying the course of events and reducing
its value for the serious student of world affairs. If it is worth
seeking to learn lessons from the past (which is no doubt
debatable), the past itself needs to be adequately described.
I am grateful to a number of international officials and others
who were directly concerned for providing information on some
of the incidents described or offering comments on the typeseript,
especially to Sir Brian Urquhart for helping to clarify some ofthe
Byzantine complexities of the Congo episode; to the Ford Foun
dation for providing financial support during the times that the
book was being written; and, by no means least, to Mrs Pamela
Hewitt for the invaluable secretarial assistance she provided for
this, as for other of my books over a number of years.
vii
Introduction: the United
Nations after a Decade
Historians, with reason, deplore the tendency to organize the past
into convenient segments - whether they be reigns, centuries or
millennia - pointing out that the important trends in human
his tory are f~r too gradual and irregular to be divided up into
these convenient quanta. In reallife there are no exact thresholds,
turning-points or terminations.
The United Nations, like other human institutions, changes
only slowly and imperceptibly. There are no clear dividing lines.
To recount its his tory decade by decade thus risks imposing a
pattern on its development which events themselves may not
justify.
It is none the less tempting to see 1955, just ten years after the
organization's foundation, as a significant year in its evolution. Its
first decade, as we saw in the previous volume, was above all a
period of cold war. That conflict set its imprint on every action of
the organization and every debate which took place within it.
After ten years this slowly begant to change. The Geneva
Conference of 1955, the first serious manifestation of ditente,
though it did not yet mark the end of the confrontation, was an
indication that at least its intensity was beginning to decline.
Coming in the wake of the Korean armistice of 1953 and the
conference on Indo-China the following year, it was taken by
many to he raid a new and somewhat less acerbic era in East-West
relations. A change in the international climate ofthat kind could
not fail to be reflected within an organization that has at all times
shown itself a faithful mirror of the outside world.
1955 was an important year for the UN for another reason,
only marginally related. It saw the settlement, after seven or eight
years of bitter conflict, of the long-standing dispute about the
admission ofnew members (Volume I, Chapter 19). That dispute
2 A History of the United Nations
had been resolved by a compromise providing for the admission
of almost all the potential applicants. The objections against them
which had been so passionately raised before, concerning their
system of government or the means by which they had acquired
independence, were now tactfully dropped. That agreement too
may have reflected the new spirit of detente: the 'spirit ofGeneva'.
It was certainly an important event for the organization, for two
reasons. It acknowledged, or rather reaffirmed (since it had been
at least implicit in the terms of the Charter), the universal
character of the organization: the one qualification which the
Charter laid down - that a member-state should be 'peace loving'
- was no longer used as a means of blackballing potential
entrants. But it was mainly significant for another reason. In
releasing the log-jam, it paved the way for a large number of
admissions over the coming years: admissions which were to bring
about a fundamental alteration in the balance among the mem
bership as a whole.
Of the fifty-one original members of the organization only
three (India, Lebanon and Syria) had emerged relatively recently
from colonial rule or were about to do so; though Egypt and Iraq,
and arguably other countries (such as China and Iran), had
enjoyed a 'semi-colonial' status. The twenty Latin-American
members, though colonies 150 years before, were no Ion ger
motivated by any strong anti-colonial sentiment. But in the
package deal of 1955 four more ex-colonies (Ceylon, Cambodia,
Laos and Libya) and a semi-colony (Jordan) became members.
By 1960 a further twenty-three former colonies had joined them;
and by 1965 nineteen more. By that time, therefore, out of 119
members altogether, almost fifty had emerged only recently from
colonial rule; while another twenty had been colonies in a former
age, and at least half a dozen more had been under a form of
foreign tutelage which was little different from colonial rule. A
change of this order could not fail to influence the direction of the
organization's attention, and the character of its activities.
The altered balance in the membership was associated with a
further change which affected the organization from this time.
From the middle ofthe 1950s the great majority of conflicts which
the organization considered related, directly or indirectly, to the
ending of the colonial era. The type of cold-war issue which had
Introduction 3
domina ted in the early years - such as those concerning Azerbai
jan, Korea, human rights in Europe, elections in Germany, Berlin
and similar issues - were now discussed less often. Issues relating
to colonial territories were brought up persistently. By the year
this volume opens this had already begun to be apparent. In that
year, 1955, the concern of third world countries on the question
was demonstrated at the highly publicized conference at Ban
dung. The war waged by Greek-speaking Cypriots against the
British in Cyprus was first brought to the attention of the
organization in the same year. The war in Algeria, which had
broken out the previous year, began to be discussed. Confticts
between the French authorities and nationalist movements in
Tunisia and Morocco became important subjects of debate.
Issues relating to South Africa, first raised several years before,
were pursued more vigorously.
As the years went by, more and more such confticts arose: either
at the moment the independence struggle reached its climax (as
over Algeria and South Arabia), or in the aftermath ofindepen
dence (as over the Congo, Cyprus (1964), Kashmir (1965) and
other cases). Even issues which were not colonial in the strictest
sense - such as the Suez war and the crisis in Lebanon andJordan
in 1958 - concerned relationships between Western powers and
countries formerly dependent on them, and were therefore widely
seen, in both North and South, as of similar origin. In 1960
concern on this question was expressed, in more generalized form,
in the highly publicized Declaration then passed on the granting
of independence to colonial peoples (p. 186 below). From that
point the organization no longer took an interest only in particu
lar cases where a colonial people was struggling for independence.
I t now expressed explicit support for the process of decolonization
as a whole.
The desire to spotlight attention on these issues accentuated
changes in UN procedure which had been first introduced by the
Western powers. The increased emphasis the latter had placed on
the debates of the Assembly, as opposed to those of the Council,
was welcomed by those who raised such questions, since these
provided a better platform, free of veto, for their campaign. It
was thus in the Assembly rather than in the Council that, for
example, the claims of Arab states on behalf ofTunisia, Morocco
and Aigeria, of Greece on behalf of Cyprus, and of India and