Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, General; the United Nations, Volume I, Part 1

Department of State Atomic Energy Files

The Deputy United States Representative to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission and Commission for Conventional Armaments (Osborn) to His Special Assistant in New York (Russell)

[Paris,] November 5, 1948.

Dear Charlie: Yesterday was the big day and it came off all right. We started at 10:30 in the morning in the Plenary Session, and ended up about a quarter to 8.¹ Vishinsky spoke in the morning—for an hour and a half—and Czechoslovakia. Ramadier also spoke in the morning and made an able speech. (Senator Austin was the only speaker when the debate opened in short session late in the previous day.²)

In the afternoon we had speeches by Yugoslavia, Canada, Byelorussia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Poland, Philippines, Australia, Ukraine.

The Soviet speeches were extraordinarily repetitious and on the same old themes of Wall Street monopoly, invasion of sovereignty, threats of atomic destruction by imperialists. To my surprise, Vishinsky and one other had the effrontery to state at length, and with emphasis, that the decision of the majority of the General Assembly, which he recognized was a foregone conclusion, did not represent the wishes of the majority of the world; that what was a majority of the General Assembly was a minority of the peoples, and what was a majority of the peoples was a minority in the General Assembly. This from the only country in the General Assembly which makes no pretence at free elections.

Rolin of Belgium spoke much too long, an hour and ten minutes, but he made an able speech and some of his material was very good. Among other things, he said that the Soviet questioned the sincerity of the United States, to which he wanted to make a very brutal reply, as follows: “It is certain that at present the United States alone has an adequate stock of bombs. During this transition time of brief advantage, they have two choices: one, international control; two, to use the bomb now against their principal enemy before he has it. The latter terrible proposal has been made. It has been considered. It has been refused by the United States public and by the United States military. Having refused this terrible alternative, the United States can only find security in international control. This is conclusive evidence of their sincerity.”

Hector McNeil made a brilliant reply to Vishinsky, much of it very quotable.

The verbatim record of this whole debate should be scanned carefully for quotations which can be used in future debates. The Soviet made some very bad statements which can be used against them in the future, and our friends on the Commission made some very fine statements which can be used. I am going through the verbatim here myself for excerpts, and will see that we get a full copy for our files in New York.

From noon oh Evatt was trying to get us to compromise on a modification of the Indian amendment³ for continuing the work of the Commission to completion. McNaughton and I refused categorically. From five o’clock on Hector McNeil was trying to get us to compromise by accepting the first part of the Indian amendment which would have inserted the words “in substance or in principle” in the first paragraph. I refused categorically and turned him over to McNaughton.

We had Ben Cohen, who was sitting at the head of the Delegation by that time, all primed to raise a point of procedure if Evatt ruled that the Indian amendments could be passed by a simple majority. But the question never came up. The vote on the first Indian amendment was 9 for, 15 against and 26 abstentions. The vote on the second Indian amendment, to have the AEC complete its work, was 5 for, 31 against and 15 abstentions.⁴

It was now very late and we had been struggling to prevent delegates leaving entirely and to bring back some of the absent ones, but with only partial success. The final vote on the Canadian resolution⁵ was 40 yes, 6 no, and 4 abstentions. The abstentions were Afghanistan, India, South Africa and Venezuela. We expected these and had been working over them, but with no effect. However, we got the votes of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen and Ecuador, all of whom had abstained in Committee 1.

The absentees on the final vote were as follows: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iceland, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Siam. All of these would have voted favorably except possibly Iran and Iraq, though these voted favorably in Committee 1 and we have no reason to think they would have abstained if they had been present. There were three important receptions going on that afternoon, including General Marshall’s, and it was very hard to hold the delegates until 8 o’clock, particularly as many thought that the voting would not take place until next day.

I suppose there will always be some question whether we could have gotten a two-thirds majority if the resolution had not included instructions to the AEC to go back to work. General McNaughton feels very strongly that such an amendment would have been voted into the resolution in any event by a substantial majority, and that without it we would never have approached two-thirds for the balance of the resolution. I am inclined to agree with him. The thing that really put it through in such fine style was the tremendous support the resolution got from Belgium, France and Australia. Belgium and France would only have gone along with complete suspension if we had used very coercive efforts—if at all. Australia would have fought us to the limit on it and would have had tremendous support from India, Syria, the Philippines, El Salvador, and a considerable number of others. I think we did well to come out as we did.

A very great effort was made with, the Indian Delegation. Mrs. Roosevelt saw Madame Pandit alone and at length. I had two very long luncheons with Benegal Rau to whom I am personally much attached. Mrs. Roosevelt had Madame Pandit and Mr. Nehru to lunch alone with me and we had a great go at them. McNaughton also worked on them continuously and at great length. But the Indian mind seems able to close itself to the harsher realities of life,…

We made an equal effort with South Africa. I saw them a considerable number of times and so did McNaughton. But the problem of the continued domination of five million blacks by 300,000 whites is fully occupying their minds.

It seems to me that there are several lessons to be learned in this presentation to the General Assembly.

The first lesson is that before coming to the General Assembly with a proposition we ought to conduct a sort of seminar on what the reaction is likely to be. In this case I think we would have foreseen the reaction that a large number of delegates would want to continue the AEC. Had we foreseen this we could have prepared our speeches and arguments accordingly. Instead, the delegation was not only unprepared but many members of the delegation had not thought the thing through sufficiently to be able to put up any argument at all.

The second lesson is that a delegation should be thoroughly and exhaustively briefed among all its members on a matter of this sort, so that the delegates and alternates and all the political officers thoroughly understand the matter and can argue about it insistently. Practically no briefing of this sort was done until after we had gotten well into the debate, and then only with small groups. This kind of briefing is not possible after the work of the Assembly started. It should be done two or three days before the Assembly starts. The whole delegation should be on the spot, at least three days before the Assembly is due to open, instead of arriving at one o’clock the opening morning.

A third lesson is that the real preparatory work for a debate in the General Assembly is done in the Atomic Energy Commission itself. The Canadian resolution would never have gotten a two-thirds vote, or even a majority vote, if it had not been for the full understanding and enthusiastic support of de Rose,⁶ van Langenhove, Wei, McNaughton, Richard Miles,⁷ and, in his own way, Hodgson. These men felt that they had a personal interest in getting the work they themselves had done approved in the General Assembly.

Even when they were superseded in their delegation by prominent figures like Mr. Ramadier and Senator Rolin, they were able in a week or ten days fully to bring these men into agreement with their views, and so to educate them that on the last day these men were making exceedingly able speeches. I must include also Mr. el Khouri, who made a powerful attack on the Soviet for daring to say that this was an American plan, after all the work he, Mr. el Khouri, and the others had done on it. That speech had a very important effect on the Arab delegations.⁸

This last lesson, therefore, is the most important of all. We can get important support in the General Assembly for any measure which in itself is sound, and which has been developed and worked up by the cooperative effort of a number of different states.

This is something we must bear very much in mind as we determine what work in the AEC we deem practical or useful.

Yours sincerely,

Frederick Osborn

1. For the records of the 156th and 157th Plenary Meetings of the General Assembly, November 4, see GA (III/1), plenary, pp. 401–470.
2. For the record of General Assembly consideration of atomic energy at the 155th Plenary Meeting, November 3, see GA (III/1), Plenary, pp. 395–400; for text of Ambassador Austin’s remarks, see Department of State Bulletin, November 14, 1948, pp. 602–606.
3. Reference is to the amendment contained in document A/700, proposed by India at the 156th Meeting. The first point of the amendment would have limited approval of the reports of the Atomic Energy Commission to approval “in substance.” The second point consisted of replacing the fourth paragraph of the Canadian resolution with the following: “[The General Assembly] Calls upon the Atomic Energy Commission to resume and continue its work, to proceed with the study of all the matters within its terms of reference, and to prepare for submission to the Security Council, as early as possible, a draft treaty or convention incorporating the Commission’s ultimate proposals.”
4. At the request of the Soviet Delegation, a vote was also taken at the 157th Meeting on Soviet resolution A/C.1/310 (for text, see footnote 1, p. 445). The proposal was defeated by 40 votes to 6, with 5 abstentions.
5. Supra.
6. François de Rose, Adviser, French Delegation to the General Assembly; Counsellor of Embassy, Permanent French Delegation to the United Nations; Adviser, French Delegation to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission.
7. Richard T. G. Miles, Adviser, British Delegation to the General Assembly; Adviser, British Delegation to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission.
8. Reference is presumably to El Khoury’s statement at the 163rd Meeting of the First Committee, October 18; for the record of his remarks, see GA (III/1), First Committee, pp. 185–186.