A Step along an Evolutionary Path: The Founding of the United Nations

Jean Krasno is Executive Director of the Academic Council on the United Nations System, headquartered at Yale University, and associate director of United Nations Studies at Yale.

The founding of the United Nations can best be seen as part of the evolutionary process of international organisation. Because the United Nations is an organisation of national governments, we cannot begin our evolutionary tale before the birth of the nation state marked by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. During those early years of nationhood, bilateral diplomacy was the primary means of communication and conflict resolution between European states, but by the early nineteenth century the concept of large-scale, multilateral conferences had emerged as a tentative first step towards developing a dialogue on co-operation. Four major conferences took place between 1815 and 1822 in response to the devastation created by the Napoleonic Wars. Over the next hundred years, leaders of Europe’s greatest nations, referred to as the Concert of Europe, assembled some thirty times to discuss urgent political matters of the day. These resplendent gatherings took place in Berlin, Paris, London and other cities around Europe. The most powerful countries in the concert became known as the “great powers” and formed a kind of executive committee of European affairs. The concert gradually admitted new members, accepting Greece and Belgium in 1830 and Turkey in 1856. As Inis Claude explains, “Diplomacy by conference became an established fact of life in the nineteenth century.”¹

 

In addition to the focus on security issues addressed by the concert, European countries were also beginning to work together on other concerns which crossed state borders. River commissions were created to manage navigation on the Danube and the Rhine. Increased trade and migration brought the spread of diseases such as cholera, prompting a total of six international conferences dealing with health issues between 1851 and 1903. At about the same time, two international “peace” conferences were held at The Hague, the first in 1899 attended by twenty-six countries and the second in 1907 at which the number of nations was expanded to forty-four, including most of Latin America. The contribution of the conferences at The Hague was not only the introduction of non-European states and the sense of equality given to all those participating—in contrast to the “great power” hegemony of the concert—but also the idea that international relations might be based on standard norms and the regular convening of members. These conferences did not create a permanent institution, but they laid the groundwork for an established multilateral consultation process which eventually led to the formation of the League of Nations after the First World War.

The League of Nations

The First World War brought an end to the Concert of Europe with its sporadic meetings and to the system initiated by the Hague conferences. But, following the war, the two concepts reappeared and were merged in the formation of the League of Nations, which combined the “great power” executive committee status of the concert and the egalitarian universality of the Hague idea. The league’s council became the executive committee, granting permanent status to five of the major powers and incorporating a number of rotating members, while the assembly, reflecting the egalitarian ideal of the Hague concept, granted equal voting rights to all league members. The league not only merged the two earlier frameworks but also added another layer by establishing a permanent secretariat and regular meetings to further institutionalise the co-operation which had begun over a century before.

 

However, the league experiment encountered a number of serious setbacks before its ultimate demise at the outbreak of the Second World War, which it had failed to prevent. First, the United States, whose president, Woodrow Wilson, is credited with being the “father” of the league, never joined. Wilson, a Democrat, failed to convince the Republican-led Senate to ratify the treaty as required for membership. The permanent seat reserved for the United States was left unoccupied throughout the league’s short life span.

 

The other problem was that two of the other permanent members on the league’s council, Italy and Japan, emerged as aggressor nations, forming an unholy alliance with Nazi Germany to ignite yet another global conflict. The league’s rules of consensus gave everyone a veto, deadlocking the organisation and leaving it unable to react effectively when one permanent member, Japan, invaded Manchuria and another, Italy, invaded Ethiopia. Economic sanctions were imposed on Italy, but were removed when it completed its occupation of Ethiopia. Moreover, the league never condemned war but only asked its members to wait three months before resorting to war. The league had been built on the premise that war was a mistake and that dialogue and negotiation could resolve disputes that might arise among its members. It was unprepared to deal with the purposeful aggression of the Axis powers.

The War Years

US President Franklin Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull believed in the Wilsonian concept of the league even though it had been discredited for failing to deal effectively with the aggressive tactics that eventually led to the Second World War. During the war years, Roosevelt instructed his State Department staff to reconstitute a framework based on the league idea which would not only provide the means for consultation and peaceful settlement, but also give the organisation enforcement powers to prevent aggression. It was assumed that the new institution would have a plenary assembly and an “executive” council much as the league had had. However, because the new organisation was to have enforcement powers, a new strategy had to be devised. Under the league, the council and the assembly had concurrent powers and neither had the authority to enforce decisions. Ruth Russell, in her excellent book on the period, describes the thinking of the State Department and Roosevelt at the time:

 

Given the fundamental decision to clothe the new institution with some kind of enforcement power, it was natural to think of making the smaller organ more of an executive agent for the whole organization and of centering in it the control of the security function.²

 

Roosevelt had expressed enthusiasm for an enforcement mechanism based on the wartime alliance of the four major powers: Britain, China, the Soviet Union and the United States. France, which had been occupied by Germany from the onset of the war, was not a part of these preliminary discussions. In the Moscow Declaration of October 1943, Roosevelt and Hull carefully orchestrated an agreement among the four foreign ministers to pledge their countries to continuing wartime co-operation through the establishment of an organisation committed to maintaining international peace. However, at home, a State Department committee set up to study these proposals opposed the idea of providing such predominance for the major powers. It suggested that there be a larger body which would look more like the League of Nations council in order better to balance the might of the “Big Four”. These powers would still make up an “executive committee”, but any decision emanating from the body would have to have a majority of the whole council membership, including the votes of those holding non-permanent seats.

 

It was felt that the consent of the major powers was necessary because they would be providing the military force required to give the organisation the teeth it needed. These nations would not allow their militaries to be conscripted into an enforcement action against their will. They would just withdraw from the organisation. On the other hand, unanimity of the whole council as had been required under the league was to be avoided. However, to ensure the solidity of the enforcement threat, the council’s decisions would have to be binding on all the members in the organisation.

 

In his radio address to the nation on Christmas Eve 1943, President Roosevelt told the American people:

 

Britain, Russia, China and the United States and their allies represent more than three-quarters of the total population of the earth. As long as these four nations with great military power stick together in determination to keep the peace there will be no possibility of an aggressor nation arising to start another world war.

But those four powers must be united with and co-operate with all the freedom-loving peoples of Europe and Asia and Africa and the Americas. The rights of every nation, large and small, must be respected and guarded as jealously as are the rights of every individual within our own republic.³

 

The United States was the emerging pivotal power and was taking the lead in creating this new organisation. That the United States was also a democracy is central to the evolution of the conceptual development underlying the structure and wording of what became the founding charter of the United Nations. As Wilson had learned the hard way, Roosevelt knew that the United States could not become a member of the new institution without Senate approval. He therefore set about early in the process to bring leaders of the Senate into the dialogue through a special committee headed by Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg and Democratic Senator Tom Connelly. Vandenberg was deeply concerned that the new organisation should undertake to keep a “just” peace. In addition, the Senate committee noted a concern expressed by a number of civic groups about the position of smaller states within the organisation. Secretary Hull and Roosevelt had to take the senators’ concerns very seriously because they needed both the support of the Senate and the American people. Senate concerns prompted Roosevelt to make this statement on 15 June 1944:

 

We are not thinking of a superstate with its own police forces and other paraphernalia of coercive power. We are seeking effective agreement and arrangements through which the nations would maintain, according to their capacities, adequate forces to meet the needs of preventing war and of making impossible deliberate preparations for war, and to have such forces available for joint action when necessary.⁴

Dumbarton Oaks

When the preparations for a new international organisation were ready for discussion by the major powers, Roosevelt called a meeting at Dumbarton Oaks, a large estate in Washington DC. The US team that had contributed to the preparations were, among others, Leo Pasvolsky (an American of White Russian origin), Ralph Bunche, Alger Hiss and Grayson Kirk. Hiss describes the attitude of the team towards the League of Nations experiment thus:

 

The League was regarded as definitely our forerunner. There was no hostility toward it. There was a feeling that it had to be improved upon, that it had failed, and that we could learn from its failure. It was not universal enough; it was too Euro-centered, and it didn’t seem to us to have the necessary powers that an international organization should have. And also we knew we would in a literal sense succeed the League and take over its properties and its functions. But the UN in no sense was hostile. The League was considered a brave experiment and there was much we could learn from its few successes and its failures.⁵

 

The meetings at Dumbarton Oaks took place in two sessions. The Soviets and the British met with the Americans first, starting the discussions on 21 August 1944. The Soviets left on 28 September, and the next day the Chinese arrived for a nine-day meeting with the Anglo-Americans. This procedure was a political necessity at the request of the Soviets who had not entered the war in the Pacific against Japan and did not want to appear to the Japanese that they were in collusion with the Chinese. The meeting with the Chinese was largely a formality and Hiss claims they were not major participants in the process.

 

A significant outline of the charter was produced at Dumbarton Oaks. It was agreed that there would be a Security Council, a General Assembly, a Secretariat and an International Court of Justice. Hiss, who took the notes for the State Department at the meeting, explains that the “economic and social council was only barely sketched” and “trusteeship was not taken up at all”. (Trusteeship initially concerned the administration of territories taken over after the war from the Axis Powers. Later, the Trusteeship Council that was eventually established also came to handle issues of decolonisation.) Voting and the rights of veto on the Security Council were not settled at Dumbarton Oaks and were taken up again at Yalta. In Washington, Andrei Gromyko, who was the Soviet ambassador to the United States, headed the Soviet delegation. Alexander Cadogan represented the British and Edward Stettinius headed the American delegation. The Chinese delegation was led by China’s ambassador to London, V. K. Wellington Koo. This meeting was not at the level of heads of state. That was to take place in Yalta and was why certain politically sensitive issues such as the veto and trusteeship had to wait.

 

At Dumbarton Oaks there was no agreement on exactly what the membership of the new organisation ought to be except that members should be “peace-loving” nations. Under instruction from Moscow, Ambassador Gromyko stated that the Soviet Union wanted a seat for each of its fifteen republics plus a seat for the Soviet Union itself, a total of sixteen members. Hiss remembers Roosevelt telling the American team to say to Gromyko that if they insisted on that “the whole thing is off”. Roosevelt basically took Gromyko’s statement as a bargaining position, but nevertheless this issue was to go through various stages before it was finally settled. Both Stettinius and Cadogan found Gromyko quite “compatible” to work with, and they felt that he understood the American position on the fifteen republics. It was mentioned that in that case, the United States could invite all its forty-eight states to join.

 

Another point of contention between the Soviets and the Western powers which surfaced at Dumbarton Oaks was the issue of what the competence of the organisation should be. The British and the Americans both agreed that in addition to the focus on security, the organisation should address economic and social issues. The belief was that the conflict in Europe had in part arisen from economic and social problems, and that therefore they should be part of the organisation’s agenda. The Soviets, on the contrary, felt that the new structure should deal only with security. Alexei Roschin, adviser to the Soviets, explains that they were “strongly against” any other competency for the organisation.⁶ They were so committed to the idea of collective enforcement that they keenly supported the creation of a UN military staff committee. The Soviets also wanted the veto to apply to all decisions emanating from the Security Council, even on procedural matters. Interestingly, Hiss recounts that initially the British, and most particularly Churchill, were not in favour of the veto and had to be convinced by the Americans.

Yalta

The meeting in Yalta, from 4 to 11 February 1945, was at the level of heads of state and brought together Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. This meant that a number of issues left unfinished at Dumbarton Oaks could now be resolved.

 

The issue of membership was essentially finalised, even though some of the agreements unravelled by the time the delegates reached San Francisco later on. Basically though, the membership of only “peace-loving nations” was defined at Yalta to mean those countries that had declared war on the Axis powers by 1 March 1945. Argentina still had not declared war and had been supporting Nazi Germany, much to the anger of the Soviets in particular. The Soviets felt that the agreement meant Argentina would not become an original member and would not be invited to the San Francisco conference where the charter would be finalised.

 

On the issue of the fifteen republics, Stalin suggested that the Soviet Union plus three republics should be original members: Lithuania, the Ukraine and Byelorussia. The US position was absolutely negative. The republics were constituent parts of the Soviet Union and not sovereign states. But every time the issue came up, the Soviets would say to the British, “And what about India?” Churchill was adamant that India, which was still under British rule, had to be a member, however one might think about its sovereign status. That was the stalemate until a diplomatic mistake was made which ironically resolved the matter. Hiss, who was again the secretary and note-taker, describes what happened. The foreign ministers (for Britain, Anthony Eden, for the Soviet Union, Vyacheslav Molotov, and for the United States, Edward Stettinius) met in the morning at their dacha, and the heads of government met in the afternoon at another dacha:

 

It was my duty to read the minutes as soon as they were completed, and to my surprise I saw that the minutes said that agreement had been reached, that votes would be given to White Russia [Byelorussia] and the Ukraine. So I rushed up to Eden and said, “Mr. Eden, it’s a mistake, we didn’t agree.” And he, quite testily—which wasn’t his usual manner—said, “You don’t know what’s happened, speak to Ed.” I went to Stettinius and he threw up his hands and said that after the meeting, on which there was substantial agreement on many matters, he had reported to Roosevelt as he usually did and had started by saying, “Mr. President, it was a marvelous meeting. We reached general agreement.”

At that moment Bohlen brought Stalin in for a personal call on Roosevelt. Not a negotiating call, really just a courtesy call. Roosevelt in his expansive way said, “Marshall Stalin, I have just been getting a report from my Secretary of State on the morning meeting and he told me there was agreement on everything.” Stettinius started to grab at Roosevelt’s sleeve, but Stalin came back quickly “and the two republics too?” And Roosevelt said, “Yes.”⁷

 

Once the error was made, Roosevelt thought about later saying to Stalin that it was a mistake but decided against it. He understood that Stalin was seeking a balance in what was a heavily Western organisation. He did at one point ask Stalin if Hawaii and Alaska could be admitted as members and Stalin said “sure”, but that would have been impossible under the US Constitution.⁸ In the end, it was generally agreed that the Ukraine and Byelorussia could come to San Francisco and that once there they would be accepted as voting members. The other agreement on representation reached at Yalta was that Poland would be represented by a joint delegation made up of government members in exile in both London and Moscow.

 

Trusteeship was another contentious issue at Yalta. In this instance, Churchill was the one who bristled. At one of the plenary sessions, Stettinius read out the proposal for a trusteeship council. Churchill, who had apparently not been briefed beforehand, was caught completely off guard and “blew up”. Eden had not had time to clear it with Churchill before Yalta. Churchill shouted that he had not been elected the king’s first minister “to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire”. Roosevelt, who was chairing the session, had to call for a recess. Churchill was simply fuming. Hiss was asked to write down in plain language what trusteeship stood for. So, in longhand he wrote, “the territories in trusteeship shall be territories mandated under the League, territories detached from the Axis Powers and such other territories as any member may wish to place in trusteeship.”⁹ Churchill was prepared to accept such a definition and the crisis passed. Of course, the Americans were well aware that after the war, the weakened condition of both France and the United Kingdom meant their colonies might in fact fall under the trusteeship council. The Soviets were supportive of the trusteeship idea and held a very anti-colonialist position, which to some was pure hypocrisy.

 

The veto and the competency of the General Assembly were the other issues which seemed to be resolved at Yalta. Stalin finally agreed to allow the General Assembly to deal with whatever issues arose in the international arena, including economic and social questions. It was agreed that the Security Council would be reserved for security issues and would be the central mandatory body on security affairs. Stalin also agreed that the veto could be limited to substantive issues. That agreement was later challenged by Molotov, his foreign minister, in San Francisco.

 

The meeting in Yalta was generally congenial, and Hiss felt that Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt believed they had a co-operative arrangement and genuine agreement on the principles of the new organisation.

San Francisco

The conference in San Francisco, which opened on 25 April 1945, was to finalise the structure and language of the charter for the new organisation, now to be called the United Nations. While the atmosphere was enthusiastic as the war in Europe was drawing to a close, there were still a number of unresolved issues. Many of the delegates had arrived by train, crossing the vast plains and winding through the high mountains of the western United States before arriving in the “City by the Bay” in early spring. They were impressed by the massive size of a country which, in contrast to Europe, had not been touched by the devastating destruction of the war. President Roosevelt, who had been the driving force behind the creation of the United Nations, would not make it to San Francisco. He died of a massive cerebral haemorrhage on 12 April, only days before the conference opened. He was succeeded by Vice-President Harry Truman.

 

Immediately, the issue of membership exploded. The Latin American countries had met in Mexico at Chapultepec a few weeks previously to discuss the draft charter. They insisted that Argentina be accepted for original membership at the conference. Assistant Secretary for Latin American Affairs in the US State Department, Nelson Rockefeller, was at the Mexico meeting and supported the Latin American position on Argentina. The Latin Americans wanted “universal membership”, meaning that all countries would be eligible for membership. Taking most of the delegations by surprise, including the Americans, Argentina was proposed for membership in the opening sessions at San Francisco. Foreign Minister Molotov, leading the Soviet delegation, was furious that the Yalta agreement had been ignored. Then, the Latin Americans, who had twenty-one votes at the conference, refused to accept the membership of the Ukraine and Byelorussia. The US position taken by Truman was that while they had agreed to admit the two republics as members that did not necessarily mean that they could become original members and participate in the conference.

 

The issue of the three candidates was sent to committee. Molotov tried unsuccessfully to have the Argentine issue removed from the agenda altogether. As a gesture of good will, the Latin Americans agreed to vote in favour of the two republics and the motion was passed unanimously. But Molotov still refused to equate this with an acceptance of Argentina, calling the Argentine government fascist and throwing himself into a tirade which was captured by the press covering the conference. Senator Vandenberg thought that the entire episode had “done more in four days to solidify Pan America against Russia than anything that ever happened”.¹⁰

 

Molotov, apparently in retaliation over the Argentine issue and because Poland was still not represented, began to object to limitations on the veto and the broad competence of the General Assembly, issues which had been resolved in Yalta. Truman had to resort to requesting Harry Hopkins, former special adviser to President Roosevelt who was travelling in Germany at the time, to visit Stalin in Moscow and clear things up. Roschin, who was among the Soviet delegation in San Francisco, says Stalin accepted the American’s presentation of the matter and informed Molotov to adhere to the decisions taken in Yalta on the veto and the General Assembly. Argentina was accepted as a member and the conference proceeded. Molotov eventually left San Francisco, and to everyone’s relief Ambassador Gromyko took up the leadership of the Soviet delegation. The decision was also taken that members of the United Nations would not have trusteeship status.¹¹

 

Mexican diplomat Garcia Robles, who took part in the Chapultepec conference and was also in the Mexican delegation in San Francisco, recalls that the Latin Americans also emphasised the importance of enhancing and making more specific the powers of the General Assembly and of delineating the relationship between the United Nations and regional organisations. They felt the right should be reserved to resolve a local issue regionally before handing it over to the international body.¹² Many of these considerations were taken up in San Francisco and the appropriate language was entered into the charter. Importantly, it was eventually agreed that the General Assembly would not only be able to address economic, social and security issues, but that it would also have power over the budget.

 

The issue of trusteeship was resolved at the conference, but again not without controversy. Majid Khadduri, a member of the Iraqi delegation, recalls that the Arab countries were concerned about the status of Syria and Lebanon, which had been invited to participate in San Francisco. Both countries had been mandates of France before the war. But, because of the Nazi occupation, France had been unable to function as a mandatory power during the war years and Syria and Lebanon had been left to govern themselves. They therefore considered themselves independent. The Arab delegations wanted to make sure that countries that had been invited to become members of the United Nations would not fall into the category of trusteeship, throwing Syria and Lebanon back under French control. Because the League of Nations rules had not yet been rescinded, France was technically still the mandatory power over Syria and Lebanon. In response to the Arab proposal, France tried to force Syria to sign a treaty delineating certain demands that would maintain some French control. Syria refused, and in May, while the San Francisco conference was continuing, France began bombing Damascus. The United States and Britain protested and insisted that the French withdraw, emphasising that the world was trying to establish peaceful relations and ought not to resort to war tactics. When the French withdrew, Syria claimed its independence and refused to negotiate any further with the French.¹³

 

On the issue of the veto, Khadduri states that the Arab countries were essentially pro-Western and accepted the great powers’ need for a veto in the Security Council.¹⁴ The veto probably produced the most disagreement in San Francisco and according to one of the American staff members at the conference, Lawrence Finkelstein, “came very close to wrecking” it. The smaller countries were generally opposed to the veto but the major powers, now joined by France, which had been liberated at the end of the war, presented a unified front. The Latin Americans were particularly resistant to the idea. The smaller powers “resented the notion of the veto to begin with and knew that they were going to have to swallow it because there would be no Charter without it and they couldn’t afford not to have the Charter”.¹⁵ In the final vote on the veto, thirty-three nations supported it, two (Cuba and Colombia) voted against it and fifteen countries chose to abstain.

 

As regards the post of secretary-general, Ruth Russell’s summary of the discussions on the election of the United Nations’ chief administrator shows that a number of options were considered. It was suggested that the General Assembly elect the secretary-general on its own. Other proposals were that the Security Council could nominate three candidates from which the General Assembly would select one. It was also discussed whether the assembly ought to elect the deputy secretaries-general as well. It was decided that the General Assembly would elect the secretary-general upon the nomination of the Security Council.

 

The Soviet delegate argued that the nomination of the secretary-general was not a procedural matter and was therefore subject to the veto. The British and French supported that point, and the United States emphasised that the major powers had to have confidence in the chief administrator and therefore had to have some control over the selection. The United States also pointed out that the General Assembly had the power to reject an unsatisfactory candidate. The post was generally considered as fulfilling a bureaucratic function. Nevertheless, the secretary-general was given the power under Article 99 of the charter to bring an issue to the attention of the Security Council, thus adding a political competence to the office. Today, the symbolic nature of the office as a global leader has evolved well beyond the original intent.

The United Nations Is Born

The Charter of the United Nations was signed by fifty members in San Francisco on 26 June 2024 with a spot reserved for Poland as the fifty-first original member for signature at a later date. It had been hoped that Poland would be able to participate in San Francisco but the “Provisional Government of National Unity” was not formed until just before the signing, leaving insufficient time for a delegation to attend the ceremony. Hiss describes the euphoria as the final draft was signed. He explains that Truman placed tremendous importance on it, so much so that the original document was given its own parachute on the flight back to Washington even though Hiss, who was carrying it, had to travel without one. On 28 July 2024 the US Senate approved the charter by a vote of eighty-nine to two. The bipartisan participation by the Senate throughout the process had proved to be a very successful strategy. On 24 October 1945, twenty-nine countries had signed and ratified the charter, affirming a majority of the original fifty-one signatories. On that day, the United Nations was officially constituted and by 27 December all the original members had ratified. While there had been inklings of the Cold War during the negotiating process, there was still a feeling of hope that this new international co-operation could be sustained. Enthusiasm filled the hall at the inaugural session of the United Nations in London on 10 January 1946.

An Evolutionary Process?

At the outset of this article it was claimed that the United Nations is part of an evolving process towards ever-greater international organisation. If that is true, then the United Nations will need to adapt and change just as politics and issues of security change. If it does not, it may be pushed aside by more relevant institutions or it may cease to exist like the Concert of Europe and the League of Nations before it. Detailing its birth facilitates an understanding of how it may or may not need to change. Perhaps the concurrence of the major powers is needed to solidify enforcement and maintain a credible deterrence against aggression. But by what criteria do we measure which are the major powers of a given era? And if we entrust them with enforcement and deterrence, how can we be sure they will share the same sense of global responsibility and act in concert? Through the pressures of a growing democratic civil society, the United Nations is being forced to become more accountable for its actions, as are the member states which drive its decisions and policies. We cannot afford to let the United Nations ossify. It would be very painful to start all over again, and we certainly cannot run the risk of another world war to force the pace of necessary change. 

Endnotes

1. Inis L. Claude Jr., Swords into Plowshares, 4th ed. (New York: Random House, 1984), pp. 24–8.

 

2. Ruth B. Russell, A History of the United Nations Charter: The Role of the United States, 1940–45 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1958), pp. 228–9.

 

3. Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Tide Turns, 1943 (New York: Random House, 1950), p. 562 n.

 

4. US Department of State Bulletins, vol. 10 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1944), pp. 552–3.

 

5. Alger Hiss, interview with the Yale–UN Oral History Project, New York City, 13 February 1990. Transcripts of this and project interviews cited hereafter are available at the Dag Hammarskjöld Library, UN headquarters, New York, and at the Yale University Archives Library.

 

6. Alexei Roschin, interview with the Yale–UN Oral History Project, Moscow, 25 May 1990.

 

7. Hiss, interview.

 

8. Ibid.

 

9. Ibid.

 

10. Russell, History of the United Nations Charter, p. 639.

 

11. Roschin, interview.

 

12. Alfonso Garcia Robles, interview with the Yale–UN Oral History Project, Geneva, 21 March 1984.

 

13. Majid Khadduri, interview with the Yale–UN Oral History Project, Washington, D.C., 20 March 1997.

 

14. Ibid.

 

15. Lawrence Finkelstein, interview with the Yale–UN Oral History Project, Lagrange, Illinois, 23 November 1990.