In corridor and dining-room conversations during the past eight years among national representatives and Secretariat officials in the handsome Chateau de la Muette on the western edge of Paris, it has often been boasted that the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) is the most successful of the many postwar experiments in international organization. The boast is supported with a variety of comparisons, some inevitably invidious.

Perhaps the most striking development in the non-political activities of the United Nations system during recent years has been the rapid expansion of its field operations. While this evolution received its chief impetus from the “Expanded” Technical Assistance Program (ETAP)inaugurated in 1950, there have also been significant shifts of emphasis toward “aids to member states” in the “regular” programs of those specialized agencies concerned with welfare, notably the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Labor Organization (ILO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and most recently, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This growth in the volume of outpost activities has led not only to the establishment of field offices in many countries but to an increasing consideration of the pros and cons of devolving the administration of aid programs from central headquarters to the country or regional level.

No field of study is more slippery than international relations. The student of government has a clear frame of reference: the state within which occur the developments which he examines. The student of international relations, unhappily, oscillates between the assumption of a world community which does not exist, except as an ideal, and the various units whose decisions and connections form the pattern of world politics—mainly, the nation-states. International organizations therefore tend to be considered either as the first institutions of a world in search of its constitution or as instruments of foreign policies. The scholar who follows the first approach usually blames, correctly enough, the nation-states for the failures of the organization; but he rarely indicates the means which could be used to bring the realities of world society into line with his ideal. The scholar who takes the second approach stresses, accurately enough, how limited the autonomy of international organizations has been and how little they have contributed to the achievement of their objectives; but because he does not discuss his fundamental assumption—the permanence of the nation-state's driving role in world politics—he reaches somewhat too easily the conclusion that the only prospect in international affairs is more of the same.

The very notion that coalition diplomacy possesses economic aspects implies a concept of coalition as a form of international organization reaching well beyond the classical political and military alliance. An alliance normally commits each member to join with its partners if any of them is involved in hostilities. It may be solely defensive or both offensive and defensive. Whatever its scope, it takes as given the military establishment of each member and the economic resources each is prepared to devote to building its military strength. A government may feel that possession of reliable allies permits the meeting of its security interests with less effort and at less cost than being entirely on its own, but this is a matter for independent decision by each member, calling neither for consultation nor for planned joint effort.

The existence of regional arrangements rests on two assumptions: First, the recognition that world unity, based on a common way of life and common values, is still very distant; and second, the increasingly inescapable conviction that, in our time, the great majority of national states are political and economic units illequipped to develop fully and even survive on solely national bases. Politically, most states have lost ground in a world which has had its centers of power radically diminished in the course of a generation. Economically, they are units too small to develop fully their natural resources and overcome their poverty unless they work together. The modern world needs to create regional units as a bridge between the isolated national state and a sufficiently integrated world collectivity of the future.

This article presents briefly the findings of a case study in which two questions are investigated:

a) Did the idea of an International Finance Corporation, first publicly expounded by the United States International Development Advisory Board, have its source in a United States agency or in an international organization?

b) What were the causes of the modification of policy announced by the United States government on November II, 1954, when it decided to support the establishment of the International Finance Corporation, and did international organizations have any part in bringing about this change of policy?

Some sixty-five years ago, when on April 14, 1890, the Union of American Republics was established, the great hope for world peace, the great promise of bringing international relations under the rule of law, lay in the development of arbitration. The Plan of Arbitration proposed by the Conference was for its time a radical one. Arbitration was to be obligatory for all disputes except those which in the judgment of a state might peril its independence; and the example thus set by the American States was not without its effect at the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907. The limitation of armaments was obviously beyond the plans of practical statesmen. But even so, that was not ground for discouragement. If only the procedure of arbitration could be given greater authority and extended into ever-widening fields, it might be possible to look forward to an agreement upon the limitation of armaments when there was no longer the same need of them.

1948 and 1949 were critical years of decision for many European nations caught in a web of events of such significance and suddenness as to call into question in a matter of months political traditions and concepts whose roots reached well back into die nineteenth century. Faced with the expanding east-west conflict, many countries felt themselves not only endangered and forced to look to their military defenses, but also obliged to choose one side or the other in die developing struggle.

Words spoken and actions taken at the United Nations echo around the world, and have very great impact on the hundreds of millions of individuals whose opinions, collectively, make up world opinion. World opinion, in its turn, has a distinct and traceable impact on diplomacy and international relations. Many consider it the only real weapon the UN possesses.

The United Nations provides the setting for the expression and carrying out of United States policies on a wide range of subjects of international concern. This article is about how those policies are formulated and expressed in UN organs.

It is no secret from even the most cursory reader of the daily press that NATO has of late been undergoing what is commonly referred to as a “crisis”. Four factors seem to me crucial components of the difficult problems with which the fifteen nations are wrestling.

In the short span of a year, from the Messina Conference held on June 1 and 2, 1955, by the foreign ministers of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, to the series of meetings begun in Brussels on June 26, 1956, among the same governments, the idea of economic unification of these six countries has made a striking advance toward its realization. The heads of the delegations to the Intergovernmental Committee established by the Messina Conference produced a report in which they jointly and unanimously proposed to start drafting a treaty (or two treaties) to establish a “common market” and an atomic community (Euratom) along the lines of their report. The governments are not yet formally committed to accept all the recommendations of this report; but they agreed at the Venice Conference on May 29, 1956, to take it as a basis for the negotiation of the treaty. This document is therefore to be regarded as much more than another expert opinion on the desirability or the feasibility of economic integration. It outlines the detailed objectives to be reached and contains a relatively precise timetable hammered out through months of arduous discussions which took the better part of the summer and of the fall of 1955 in the Belgian capital. Euratom and the “common market” are of course closely interrelated political issues. Technically, however, they are quite distinct and only the common market is examined in this paper.

The effort to federate the British Caribbean Territories has involved the use of a method much discussed in connection with the federation of states—the functional approach. From this experience can be derived lessons concerning that approach which would seem to be of value to the consideration of the problem of international federation.

From time to time the Editors find it useful to survey some of the new literature in the field of international organization. This time the reviewer has chosen to comment upon all the literature of a certain period within defined limits, instead of selecting three or four outstanding titles for more careful treatment. This article examines briefly all books published in the United States during 1954, 1955, and almost the first half of 1956 that deal primarily with the field of international organization, but with certain classes of exception.

Sixth United Nations Technical Assistance Conference: At the Sixth United Nations Technical Assistance Conference, which met at Headquarters on October 26, 1955, under the presidency of Mrs. Georgette Ciselet (Belgium), 61 governments pledged the equivalent of $28,031,536 to the 1956 expanded program of technical assistance, an increase of $15,767,536 over the amount pledged by governments at the Fifth United Nations Technical Assistance Conference. Several participating countries, including India and New Zealand, were unable to announce their contributions for 1956 because of administrative or legislative reasons.

The development of regional organizations and collective defense arrangements of a regional nature has been one of the principal features of international relations since 1945. The literature on the subject has already become voluminous. This bibliography is designed to provide a key to some of the principal writings on the subject found in the more generally available periodicals and other sources in the English and French languages. An effort has been made to index the basic documents establishing the different regional arrangements together with materials giving reliable summaries of what has been done in each area and throwing light on organizational and political issues.

Report of the Committee on Contributions: In its report to the eleventh session of the General Assembly The Committee on Contributions stated that in accordance with its terms of reference it had considered the rates of assessment to be recommended for the new Member states admitted at the tenth session of the Assembly; it had also considered the question of the inclusion of those rates in the scale of assessments approved by the General Assembly for the contributions of Member states to the UN budgets for the financial years 1956, 1957 and 1958. In the case of all the new Members, with the exception of Libya, percentage rates had already been established for their contributions towards the 1956, 1957 and 1958 expenses of the UN activities in which they had participated before becoming Members. These rates had been calculated on the basis of information relating to national income estimates comparable to that on which the assessments of the then Members had been computed. The Committee had also applied to these countries the same allowance for low per capita income as for Member states, and had taken into account all the other relevant factors mentioned in its terms of reference; the Committee concluded that the rates established in that manner were appropriate in relation to the rates approved by the General Assembly for the assessment of Members, and on the basis of data available for Libya, found it appropriate to recommend the minimum assessment of 0.04 percent.

The following summary covers the activities of the Security Council at its 707th meeting on December 16, 1955, and from its 709th meeting on December 22, 1955, through its 716th meeting on February 6, 1956.

For the convenience of readers, we are listing here membership of United Nations organs for 1956. Dates in parentheses represent ends of terms; unless otherwise noted, the states serve through December 31 of the year listed.