The Executive Board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) held its 61st session in Paris from May 7 to May 29, 1962, under the chairmanship of Dr. Mohamed Awad (United Arab Republic). The Executive Board heard the Acting Director General's oral report on the activities of UNESCO since December 1961 and then reviewed the Acting Director-General's proposals on the Emergency Program of Financial Aid to Member States and Associate Members in Africa. It recommended that the Acting Director-General examine the possibility of carrying out the project for the establishment of a center for the production of school textbooks in Ethiopia and authorized allocations of $100,000 each for assisting educational planning in Southern Rhodesia and the Ivory Coast. The Board renewed its appeal to member states to continue contributing the emergency program so that at least the present deficit of $750,000 would be covered. The Acting Director-General was invited to report to the twelfth General Conference of UNESCO, to meet from November 9 to December 12, 1962, on the Organization's activities within the framework of the civilian operations of the UN in the Congo.

The tenth session of the General Assembly met at UN Headquarters from September 20 to December 20, 1955. At the opening plenary meeting, Mr. José Maza (Chile) was unanimously elected President of the session. On the motion of the United States, the Assembly by a vote of 42 to 12 with 6 abstentions decided not to consider any proposals to exclude the representatives of the government of the Republic of China or to seat representatives of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China during the tenth session.

The eighteenth session of the World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Board was held in Geneva from May 28 to 30, 1956. The session was devoted largely to administrative matters. The Board chose for technical discussion at the tenth and eleventh WHO Assemblies, respectively, the subjects, “The Role of the Hospital in the Public-Health Program” and “Health Education of the Public”. The Board noted the reports of the expert committee on maternal and child health, the committee on malaria eradication, and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)/WHO joint committee on health policy.

The first formal action by the Allied Governments in considering the problem of reconstruction of the disrupted transport system of Europe's devastated areas was taken in October, 1942, when the Inter-Allied Committee on Post-war Requirements set up a Technical Advisory Committee on Inland Transport, with Professor E. R. Hondelink of the Netherlands as chairman. On November 18, 1942, the Hondelink Committee held its first meeting in London, with representatives present from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States. The work of the Committee consisted of 1) the preparation of estimates of requirements of equipment for the rehabilitation of inland waterways, railways, and ports against estimated movements of military and relief materials, and 2) the planning of an organization to expedite the movement of relief and priority traffic in post-war Europe. As a result of this work, the basis was laid for the eventual Agreement establishing the European Central Inland Transport Organization.

It has now become quite axiomatic to say that United States participation in the United Nations system is having an effect upon the substance I of United States foreign policy. What is not so well known as yet is that this participation is the cause for the creation of a new piece of machinery I for aiding the conduct of our foreign policy. Established in 1946 as the United States Delegation to the United Nations, this new outpost of the Department of State illustrates in its organization and operation many of the changes which have come about as bilateral diplomacy has given way to multilateral, “conference-type” United Nations diplomacy. Located at the headquarters of the international organization in New York City, the permanent Mission and its work are symbols of the importance and endless variety of problems posed for American foreign policy by our membership in and support for the United Nations. Since it is still in the process of development, the following study of the organization and role of the United States Mission to the United Nations should be taken as a preliminary analysis.

The first part of the eighth ordinary session of the Assembly of the Western European Union (WEU) took place in Paris from June 4 to 8, 1962. Mr. Arthur Conte (French Socialist) was re-elected President. In addition to the usual reports on defense questions, the Assembly took up the question of the negotiations between the European Common Market and the United Kingdom. On the solution of the Commonwealth problem in the negotiations, the Assembly recommended that special provisions should be worked out to cover a transitional period for imported foodstuffs, especially from the temperate zone. On political union, the Assembly's recommendation proposed that it should take the form of a Community institution, with an executive independent of the member states and responsible to an elected assembly and a ministerial council voting in some cases by qualified majority.

During its 1180th meeting held on December 18, 1964, the Security Council had before it the report by the Secretary-General on the UN peacekeeping operation in Cyprus for the period September 10–December 12, 1964. The object of the meeting was to determine, on the basis of the report, whether or not it was desirable to extend the mandate of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) beyond its expected date of expiration on December 25, 1964. At the President's invitation, Spyros Kyprianou, Foreign Minister of Cyprus; Orhan Eralp (Turkey); and Dimitri S. Bitsios (Greece) took places at the Security Council table.

“We do not want to entrust to five great Powers or to two great Powers the task of deciding … what our common destiny will be…”.

To anyone who attended the great assemblage gathered at San Francisco in 1945 to write the Charter for the United Nations, these words have a familiar ring. Indeed, they might have been uttered (and no doubt were ad nauseam) by small-power representatives during the seemingly interminable debates over the rule of unanimity—the veto—in the Security Council. In fact, these words were spoken in February 1965 by the Mauritanian delegate explaining, on the final day of the “abortive” nineteenth session of the General Assembly, why he voted with Albania in protest against the “basis of consensus” which had governed the session.

The United Nations cannot be expected to abolish the balancing process, which is the natural expression of the struggle for advantage and influence in international politics. It does, however, endeavor to modify the process. What are the methods which it employs? What actual effect have they had in promoting security? Above all, what relevance do they have for the conduct of American foreign policy?

Conventional wisdom holds that open, collaborative, and transparent organizations are innovative. But some of the most radical innovations—satellites, lithium-iodine batteries, the internet—were conceived by small, secretive teams in national security agencies. Are these organizations more innovative because of their secrecy, or in spite of it? We study a principal–agent model of public-sector innovation. We give research teams a secret option and a public option during the initial testing and prototyping phase. Secrecy helps advance high-risk, high-reward projects through the early phase via a cost-passing mechanism. In open institutions, managers will not approve pilot research into high-risk, high-reward ideas for fear of political costs. Researchers exploit secrecy to conduct pilot research at a higher personal cost to generate evidence that their project is viable and win their manager's approval. Contrary to standard principal–agent findings, we show that researchers may exploit secrecy even if their preferences are perfectly aligned with their manager's, and that managers do not monitor researchers even if monitoring is costless and perfect. We illustrate our theory with two cases from the early Cold War: the CIA's attempt to master mind control (MKULTRA) and the origins of the reconnaissance satellite (CORONA). We contribute to the political application of principal–agent theory and studies of national security innovation, emerging technologies, democratic oversight, the Sino–American technology debate, and great power competition.

In February 2025, US President Trump signed an executive order blocking the initiation of any new investigations or enforcement actions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which had made it unlawful for US companies to bribe foreign public officials. We analyze market valuations of publicly traded multinationals on US financial markets before and after the announcement. On the day of the executive order, former FCPA targets whose stocks are publicly traded experienced returns on equity markets that were about 0.69 percentage points higher than what would have been expected from stock market trends. The effects cumulated substantively, resulting in capitalization gains for the portfolio of past targets of corporate corruption cases of about USD 39 billion and outsized returns to shareholders. These results allow us to contribute to long-standing debates about how much of the costs multinationals experience from corruption are due to legal enforcement versus the inefficiency and uncertainty it generates for firm operations. When legal enforcement is removed, valuations of firms at risk of corruption rise dramatically, indicating that investors perceive the legal costs as an important threat to investment in corrupt firms. Suspending FCPA enforcement is thus likely to induce market confidence in risky investments.

Shortly before he left the State Department in the summer of 1947, Undersecretary Dean Acheson summarized the main objectives of American foreign policy during his term in office. These, he said, had been principally two. One was to “establish the unity and mutual confidence and cooperation of the great powers.” The other, he said, was to “create international organizations necessarily based on the assumption of this unity and cooperation, in which all nations could together guarantee both freedom from aggression and the opportunity for both the devastated and undeveloped countries to gain and expand their productivity under institutions of their own free choice.''x Following out this policy, the United States has helped to create and has participated in an impressive number of international organizations. Some, like the United Nations and its affiliates, are directed mainly to the continuing task of building and maintaining a secure peacetime order among nations. Others, like the Allied control bodies in former enemy countries, have the more temporary job of filling in the gap of leadership until peace treaties have been signed.

The fifth annual report prepared by the secretariat of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), International Trade 1956, opened with a survey of developments in the structure and pattern of international trade. During 1956 the value of international trade had risen by II percent from 1955 to more than $90,000 million during the first half of the year and $95,000 million in the second. Because of a slight increase in the general price level the volume of world trade had risen somewhat less, but had exceeded the rate of increase in industrial output. Trade between industrial and non-industrial areas had continued to decline. Due to the greater increase in value of exports of industrial countries than of those of the non-industrial areas, as well as to the greater rise in volume of exports of industrial countries to each other than to non-industrial destinations, the share in world exports of trade among industrial countries had risen to 40.3 percent, while the share of trade between industrial and non-industrial countries fell to 49.2 percent and that among non-industrial countries to 10.5 percent. The report attributed this trend to the decline in exports from non-industrial areas at a time when the share of their imports in world trade had remained unchanged, a situation due primarily to industrial development, slow growth of primary production, and increased domestic demand in the semi-industrialized countries. Examining the long-term market outlook for primary products in western Europe and North America, the report concluded that prospects for export of raw materials and fuels from non-industrial areas were favorable, but that with respect to the market for most foodstuffs the future was uncertain, depending on the rate of growth of agricultural production in the industrial countries.

The eighteenth plenary meeting of the International Cotton Advisory Committee was held in Washington, May 14–22, 1959. Governments from 34 countries were represented as members and 24 attended as observers; representatives from ten international organizations were also in attendance. Eight resolutions were adopted by the plenary meeting, the first four of which were concerned with budgetary matters. The fifth dealt with the future work program and instructed the secretariat to prepare a statement on government regulations on cotton and a report on harsh short staple cotton; the secretariat was also instructed to keep under review the extra-long staple cotton situation, to investigate the possibility of a similar survey on long staple cottons, and to provide as much information as possible on the effect of competition from the Soviet Union, communist China, and eastern Europe on world markets for cotton and cotton textiles. The sixth resolution drew attention to the present surplus situation of extra-long staples and indicated the desirability of convening a special meeting to examine the problems of this commodity with attention to production plans and policies, price and export policies, and steps needed to encourage consumption.

The Board of Governors of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development held its 1963 annual meeting jointly with that of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., from September 30 to October 4, 1963, under the chairmanship of Mr. Guido Carli, Governor for Italy.1 The meeting was held in conjunction with the annual meetings of the Bank's affiliates, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the International Development Association (IDA). The new President of the Bank and its affiliates, Mr. George D. Woods, presented in his annual address a brief summary of the highlights of the year's activities and a more detailed picture of the future opportunities of the Bank

As Secretary-General, it is my firm belief that a new and great effort must be attempted to end the so-called “cold war” and to set the world once more on a road that will offer greater hope of lasting peace.

On October 2, 1961, it was announced that the International Monetary Fund had entered into a stand-by arrangement with the government of Haiti under which that government could draw the equivalent of $6 million from the Fund during the following twelve months. The arrangement with the Fund was considered as a useful supplement to the country's reserves to assist the government in maintaining the convertibility of its currency. The Haitian government had not drawn on its previous stand-by arrangement with the Fund, which had expired on September 30, 1961; in earlier years it had drawn $5.4 million, of which $2.6 million had already been repaid.

The Eighth Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Organization of American States (OAS) took place from January 22–31, 1962, at Punta del Este, Uruguay, to consider the threat posed to the western hemisphere's security by Cuba. Before the meeting, the Inter-American Peace Committee, a standing committee of OAS, after investigating charges made by the representative of Peru that Cuba was engaged in promoting subversive movements in other Latin American countries, unanimously approved a report to be put before the meeting of the foreign ministers. This report included the following points: 1) that the identification of the government of Cuba with the Marxist-Leninist ideology and socialism of the Soviet type presupposed positions that were basically antagonistic to the principle established in the OAS charter that the solidarity and high aims of OAS were based on the effective exercise of representative democracy; 2) that the present government of Cuba impeded the exercise of the right of self-determination, as it was conceived in the inter-American system; 3) that the serious and systematic violation of human rights by the government of Cuba not only constituted one of the principal causes of the international tensions affecting the peace of the hemisphere but was also in open contradiction to various instruments of the inter-American system. Also, it stated 4) that the connections of the government of Cuba with the Sino-Soviet bloc of countries were incompatible with the principles and standards that governed the regional system, and particularly with the collective security established by the OAS charter and the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance; and 5) that the intense subversive activity in which the countries of the Sino Soviet bloc were engaged in America and the activities of the Cuban government that had been pointed out in the report represented attacks upon inter-Amercian peace and security as well as on the sovereignty and political independence of the American states, and therefore a serious violation of fundamental principles of the inter-American system.