[No. I
The Main Functions of the United Nations
in the Year 2,000 A.D.
John Humphrey *
One of the reasons why we study the past and analyze the present
is to prepare for the future. It may well be, of course, that this
world has no future, that we are reaching the time when, more
or less rapidly, the life which eons ago began to assert himself
in the slimes of the oceans, having flowered in what we call
civilization, will utterly disappear and the Earth will no longer
be distinguished among all the planets as the sole depositary of
life. Somewhere else in the solar system the drama may be repeated
or –
for all we know – may be going on now. But our Earth
will be as dead as the moon. A rigidly logical observer considering
the evidence before him might indeed reach such a conclusion. But
one of the characteristics of the kind of men and women which
inhabit this planet is that they are seldom logical. Most of them,
moreover, possess a spark of optimism; and this optimism has
always been an important factor in helping the race muddle
through its difficulties, however hopeless they may seem. It is in
that spirit of optimistic illogicality that the present essay is written.
The purposes of the United Nations, and hence the functions
of the organization, are defined in the first article of the Charter.
They are: to maintain international peace and security; to develop
friendly relations among nations; to achieve international cooper-
ation in solving international problems of an economic, social,
cultural or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encourag-
ing respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms; and
to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the
attainment of these ends. The article covers the intentions of the
founding fathers in 1945, but it does not fully reflect the present
situation as it has developed over 25 years of United Nations
history. Thus, although it is not mentioned in the Charter,’ because
it was not contemplated in 1945, a function of the United Nations
*Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto.
‘Article 76 of the Charter speaks of the “progressive development” of
the inhabitants of trust territories towards self-government or independence
but the Declaration regarding Non-Self-Governing Territories contained in
chapter XI does not mention independence.
McGILL LAW JOURNAL
[Vol. 17
throughout the greater part of its history has been to accelerate
the liquidation of colonialism. And the balance between the purposes
of the Organization in terms of priorities which the Charter reflects
has been radically changed over the years. The emphasis now is
on the economic and other needs of the underdeveloped world, a
far cry indeed from the preoccupations of 1945. But for present
purposes Article 1 of the Charter will be a good guide. I am
concerned chiefly with the dichotomy between the political and
the functional.
When on October 30, 1943, the foreign ministers of the Soviet
Union, the United Kingdom and the United States and the Chinese
ambassador to the Soviet Union recorded in the Moscow Declaration
on General Security their agreement to establish at the earliest
practicable date a general international organization, they were
thinking of an organiation “for the maintenance of peace and
security;” 2 and, although at Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco
other functions were also entrusted to the United Nations, to
maintain international peace and security remained its primary
and essential puripose.
It is now only too abundantly clear that the United Nations
has not performed and cannot, in the present configuration of
power and political climate, perform this primary function of
maintaining world peace and security. The record is not wholly
negative. There have been instances when the United Nations or
at least the fact of its existence have helped to prevent conflict
which might have degenerated into general war. However, the
real deterrent to war since Hiroshima has been not the United
Nations but the balance of terror and fear of the power of the atom.
This failure of the United Nations has been due in large part
to a weakness in the Charter so fundamental and indeed so trans-
parent that, even before the San Francisco Conference, perspicuous
critics, basing their predictions on the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals
and the results of the Yalta Conference, were able to predict that
the collective security system created by the Charter would not
work. This weakness was the assumption that the great powers
2 The text of the Declaration can be found in the Yearbook of the United
Nations, 1946-47, p. 3.
3n an article published in the Canadian Forum in April, 1945, I said that,
if the great powers were given a right of veto in the Security Council, the
new international organization would, in so far as these powers were con-
cerned, be nothing more than a defensive alliance. “As long as the great
powers are able to agree among themselves”, I wrote, “they will be able to
maintain the peace. But, if they cannot agree, their treaty of alliance will
prove as ineffective as similar treaties have been in the past.”
[No. I
MAIN FUNCTIONS OF THE UNITED NATIONS
which had been victorious in the Second World War would continue
to cooperate in peace as they had been obliged to cooperate –
sometimes reluctantly –
in war, an assumption which was explicitly
enshrined in the Moscow Declaration when the four great powers
agreed that “their united action, pledged for the prosecution of
the war against their respective enemies, will be continued for
the organization of peace and security.” The new international
organization was to be, in other words, a continuation of the
wartime alliance. As the outbreak of the Cold War was soon to
prove, this assumption was wrong. The two great superpowers
in particular were unable or at least unwilling to cooperate; and
for a quarter of a century their clashes have bedevilled the United
Nations. This rivalry has not prevented the General Assembly from
playing its intended role, because its decisions are taken by majority
vote and no member state possesses a veto over them. Resolutions
of the General Assembly, however, have the force of recommen-
dations only; and, while the Charter gives the Assembly the right
to discuss any questions relating to peace and security and to
make recommendations with regard to such questions, it specifically
provides that “any such question on which action is necessary
shall be referred to the Security Council.”4 It is in the latter
body –
the organ having “primary responsibility” for the mainte-
nance of peace and security5 and which was intended by the Fathers
to have some of the characteristics of a world government because
the members of the United Nations agreed to accept and carry out
its decisions –
that the failure of the great powers to cooperate,
as it was assumed in 1945 they would, has had its most deleterious
consequences; for in the Security Council each of the five great
powers has a right of veto and hence the right, which one of them
has exercised abundantly, to prevent the Council from performing
its intended functions.
If the assumption that the great powers would continue to
cooperate in peace as they had done in war had no basis in reality,
it does not follow that, in 1945, an international security organization
could have been founded on any other hypothesis. The Fathers
knew as well as their critics did that the assumption might be
groundless. But if the two superpowers were to become members
of the new organization –
and it seemed essential that they should
the Fathers had no other choice. The United Nations would be a
–
great power organization based on the assumption that the great
4 Article 11(2) of the Charter.
5 Article 24(1) of the Charter.
McGILL LAW JOURNAL
[Vol. 17
powers would cooperate to make it work or there would be no
general security organization as conceived by the Moscow Decla-
ration. The Fathers therefore accepted the risk inherent in pro-
ceeding on the basis of an assumption regarding the truth of which
they must have had doubts.
Had they had more confidence in the correctness of the assump-
tion, it would not in strict logic have been necessary for the great
powers to insist on the establishment of a safeguard against the
possibility that the assumption would be groundless. That they
did not pursue their logic to this rigorous conclusion is the best
proof that they recognized the frailty of their hopes. For in the
veto they created an instrument which would protect each one of
them against the others. It was their intention, moreover, to create
an organization which, while they could jointly use it to govern
the rest of the world, could in no circumstances be used against
the interests of any one of them. Not only would each of the five
great powers have a permanent seat in the Security Council, which
was to be the sole organ in the United Nations having coercive
powers, but in matters of substance each of them would have a
veto over any decision which the Council might otherwise take.
There was nothing new about the veto. It had always been the
corollary of and the instrument for implementing the rule of
unanimity which, with relatively unimportant exceptions, had
traditionally governed in international politics and organization.
It had indeed been the rule in the League of Nations when, with
important exceptions, unanimity was the rule and every member
state had a veto both in the Council and in the Assembly. Under
the Covenant, however, it had been legally possible for the com-
munity of states to resist agression notwithstanding the stance
which the aggressor might take because, under Article 16, the
appointed sanctions were to be automatic in the sense that, without
waiting for the League to take any action in the matter, which
was not required, all the other members could and were indeed
obliged to apply the sanctions contemplated by the article. Under
the Charter, while member states reserve “the inherent right of
individual or collective self-defence,””
individual action was
proscribed and collective action by the organization requires a
decision of the Security Council. Under the Covenant, moreover,
a member state could not use its veto to prevent either the Council
or the Assembly from investigating and reporting on any dispute
submitted to it. In the United Nations even a party to a dispute
may, if it is one of the five great powers, prevent the Council from
6 Art. 51 of the Charter.
[No. I
MAIN FUNCTIONS OF THE UNITED NATIONS
dealing with it or making a recommendation. So that the right
of veto possessed by each of the five great powers under the
Charter is a much more powerful instrument of obstruction than
the generalized veto ever was in the League of Nations. Still more
important, in the time of the League, the international power
configuration was radically different from what it has become
since the end of the Second World War. Military and economic
power was diffused and no state was invulnerable to the combined
power of all the others. Collective security in the classical sense
was therefore practicable and indeed could have succeeded in the
case of the Italian aggression against Ethiopia had there been a
will to make it work. Today, either one of the superpowers is
probably invulnerable against any combination which could be
organized against it. It is doubtful indeed whether collective security
as it was understood in 1920 is now practical politics. The deterrent
which has prevented the disaster of a Third World War has been
fear of the power of the atom.
What was new in 1945 was the limitation of the unanimity
rule and hence of the right of veto for the sole benefit of five great
powers. And the result was the creation of an international political
system wherein these powers, had they been able to continue their
wartime cooperation, would have been able to impose their hegemo-
ny on the rest of the world. What was contemplated was world
government in security matters reminiscent of the Concert of
Europe, but institutionalized and more stable while being at the
same time more rigid. On the assumption that the great powers
would cooperate amongst themselves and that there was therefore
no need to create a collective security system which could prevent
wars between them, they habilitated the United Nations to deal
with local disputes and wars in which none of the great powers
had an interest. It was to be a policing operation aimed at the
rest of the world.
There were no flaws in the logic apart from the safeguard which
the great powers erected against each other. If the system did
not work it was because the assumption on which it was based
was wrong as events were soon to prove; and the situation worsened
as effective power concentrated more and more in the two super-
powers. The United Nations would not be able to deal effectively
even with local disputes and wars because, as it soon also became
apparent, the interests of the great powers would extend to almost
every conceivable situation.
It is easier to diagnose the present in the light of the past than
it is to look into the future. At the best any picture that we can
McGILL LAW JOURNAL
[Vol. 17
now obtain of the future will be blurred and uncertain; and it
could be totally misleading. But there are some signposts that can
be read now; and the driver of a motorcar does not bring his
vehicle to a stop because there might be some obstacle ahead. It is
in the nature of man to plan for the future and even though he
cannot be sure, he usually makes his plans by reference to the
present situation as he sees it developing. In a world political situa-
tion not radically different from the one prevailing in 1945 – when
it was, as we have seen, possible to predict the failure of the secu-
rity system established by the Charter –
it should not be any more
difficult now than it was then to throw some light on the probable
outcome. A quarter of a century has, of course, brought great
changes but the factors with which we are here concerned have,
if anything, made the total situation worse. Despite some prolif-
eration in the possession of thenno-nuclear weapons, power is
concentrated even more in the two superpowers. And their rivalry
has increased as their influence extends over greater areas of the
world’s surface. Ideologically their differences are almost as sharp
as they were in 1945. And we are dealing with the same constitutional
texts. There is some contemporary evidence of improvement in the
relations of the superpowers and perhaps some disposition by them
to cooperate, outside the United Nations, in some security matters.
There is even some fear in the smaller countries that the super-
powers may impose a hegemony over the rest of the world. The
emergence of China as a possible third superpower also raises
questions. But if that happens, it would only compound our present
difficulties; for a third superpower would by definition also be invul-
nerable to any deterrent which might be organized by the United
Nations. But, barring some quite unforeseen and unlikely conjecture
which would force the superpowers to unite their efforts in common
defence, the overall picture is likely to be substantially the same
in the year 2000 A.D. as it is now and was indeed in 1945; and it
would be unwise to base our planning for the future on any other
assumption. There is, in any event, no compelling reason for thinking
that, in the light of past and current trends, the great powers and
particularly the two superpowers –
there may then be three which
would only compound the difficulties – will be better able to
cooperate in security matters 25 years from now than they have in
the past. So that however pessimistic it may be, the conclusion
seems to be inescapable that in the foreseeable future as in the
past, the United Nations will not be able to perform its primary
function of maintaining international peace and security. The deter-
rent which will operate, if indeed it does continue to operate, will
[No. I
MAIN FUNCTIONS OF THE UNITED NATIONS
be not the security system contemplated by the Charter but the
balance of terror and fear of the atom.
Theoretically, it is possible to devise a system of world govern-
ment which, given certain conditions, could ensure a degree of
security; and there is no lack of utopian plans 7 based on principles
which are familiar to political scientists, including formulae used
in the constitutions of federal states; but they all come to grief
at the point of implementation. To bring any of these schemes into
operation would require the consent and agreement of all the
participating states so that just as each of the five great powers
can under article 108 prevent amendments to the Charter, they
would each have a veto on the creation of any new international
organization. There is little likelihood that, failing a catastrophe
on the scale of nuclear war, the depositaries of state power would
be willing to transfer to an international security organization the
degree of sovereign power necessary to make it work.
Does this mean that we have reached an impasse in our efforts
to bring order into the relations of nations ? Or is there perhaps an
alternative and better approach ? Have we been putting the cart
before the horse, as it were, by our lawyer-like fashion of concen-
trating on the problem of security ? Might not security come as a
by-product of some other development ? The concept of “peace by
pieces” is not new nor is the idea that the best way to strengthen
international organization to the point where it will be powerful
enough to impose its will in security matters is gradually to transfer
to it from the jurisdiction of national states more and more eco-
nomic and social functions and generally more functions of a non-
political character. Since before the Second World War there has
been a school of thinkers, often associated with the name of David
Mitrany, and known by the name of functionalism, which says that
this is the way and the only way to build international peace and
security. The point was never better put, however, than it was by
Field Marshal Jan Smuts, who is not usually known as a function-
alist, and indeed was not a functionalist in the sense in which that
term is now commonly used, in his pamphlet, The League of Nations:
A Practical Suggestion, which played such a great role in the drafting
of the Covenant of the League of Nations.
“It is not sufficient,” he wrote “for the League merely to be a sort of
deus ex machina, called in in very grave emergencies when the spectre
of war appears; if it is to last, it must be much more. It must become
part and parcel of the common international life of States, it must be
7 See my article on the Parent of Anarchy, International Journal, Vol. I, p. 11.
McGILL LAW JOURNAL
[Vol. 17
an ever visible, living, working organ of the policy of civilization. It must
function so strongly in the ordinary peaceful intercourse of States that
it becomes irresistible in their disputes; its peace activity must be the
foundation and guarantee of its war power.”8
It will be suggested later in this essay that, while many functional
organizations have been created to which states have transferred
large portions of their sovereignty in economic and social matters,
no serious effort has ever been made to strengthen an international
security organization by building up its non-political functions.
Functionalism is older than the school which has taken its name.
From the Congress of Vienna until the present day, states have been
willing to create and use international agencies for the accomplish-
ment of certain ends which they could either not perform efficiently
themselves or which could be better performed by an international
body. The first of these agencies was the Central Commission of
the Rhine which was established in 1831 pursuant to a recommen-
dation of the Congress of Vienna. The reasons which prompted the
creation of this agency were not political but purely practical. Before
the Congress of Vienna riparian states had the right, under inter-
national law, to close to navigation by foreigners those parts of an
international river which flowed through their territory; and if
navigation by foreign ships was permitted, it was subject to the
payment of tolls and other controls. That a ship navigating such
a river might be held up by a whole series of obstacles before it
reached its destination, gave rise to an intolerable situation which
none of the riparian or other states could rectify acting alone and
which could only be corrected internationally. The Rhine Commis-
sion was followed by other river commissions and still other inter-
national agencies or unions for other functional purposes. I would
require more than one article to describe all the various functional
agencies which were created in the 19th century when international
organization was still in its infancy, and a fortiori all those which
now exist. I will mention only a few. The International Telegraphic
Union, now known as the Telecommunications Union was estab-
lished in 1865, and is therefore older than many states, a fact
which helps us put the development into some perspective. The
perhaps the most obvious response to
Universal Postal Union –
a purely functional need –
came in 1874, but only after efforts
to move foreign mail under bilateral arrangements had “revealed
the hopeless inefficiency, from a business point of view, of adhering
to theories of independence in such matters as postage.” Another
8 Quoted in F.P. Walters, A History of the League of Nations, Vol. 1, p. 59.
9 .L. Brierly, The Law of Nations (sixth edition).
[No. 1
MAIN FUNCTIONS OF THE UNITED NATIONS
obvious example of the need for international cooperation in a
purely functional matter is provided by the long history of efforts
to control epidemics. Germs, as the present cholera epidemic shows,
do not respect national boundaries; but it was only in 1907 that
an International Office of Public Health, the forerunner of the
present World Health Organization, was established.
When the League of Nations began business in 1920 there were
already in existence a considerable number of such functional
agencies, including the International Labour Organization which,
like the League, had been created by the Treaty of Versailles. The
League itself was entrusted with some technical functions.’ Poten-
tially much more important, from the point of view of the develop-
ment of a strong world organization, the Covenant also provided
that all international bureaux already established by general treaties
were to be placed under the direction of the League “if the parties
to such treaties consent;” and all such international bureaux and
all commissions for the regulation of matters of international
interest thereafter constituted were also to be placed under its
direction.” This provision was included in the expectation that all
international offices would be merged in the League and managed
by its Secretariat. Unfortunately, the expectation was not realized
–
a consequence, the official historian of the League tells us, of the
failure of the United States to join the League.’ Had the League
of Nations been thus fortified, it is just possible that, when it was
faced with the great crises of the thirties, it would have performed
better as a collective security organization.
When the United Nations took the place of the League in 1945
it was entrusted with economic, social and other non-political
functions far greater than those of its predecessor. We have already
seen that one of the main purposes of the new organization was
to achieve international cooperation in solving problems of an eco-
nomic, social, cultural or humanitarian character and in promoting
and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental
freedoms. One of the principal organs of the United Nations was
to be an Economic and Social Council and this Council would set
up functional commissions and sub-commissions to assist it. Later
there would be regional economic commissions in Africa, Europe,
the Far East and Latin America. Part of this development was the
implementation of the report of the Bruce Committee, which had
10 Art. 23 of the League Covenant.
11 Art. 24 of the League Covenant.
12 Walters, op. cit., p. 60.
McGILL LAW JOURNAL
[Vol. 17
been appointed by the League Council in 1939 to study the economic
and social activities of the organization. The Committee recommend-
ed the creation of a Central Committee for Economic and Social
Questions which would have had the same authority in economic
and social matters as the Council had in the political field. The report
was published only a few days before the German invasion of Poland,
but the Central Committee which it recommended was to live as
the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. Not only
did the United Nations benefit in some respects, but certainly not
all, from the experience of the League but in 1944 and 1945, there
were new problems including how to reestablish national economies
which had been destroyed by the war; and the old problems,
including those produced by cleavages between the industrialized
countries and between the latter and the underdeveloped countries
which had been intensified by the Great Depression in the thirties,
had become more acute. These problems, it was now recognized,
were anything but transitory and their solution would require
permanent international machinery. The United Nations, moreover,
was confronted from its birth “with national attitudes that had
never before occupied the centre of the stage under traditional
forms of international collaboration, in particular the pre-occupa-
tion of its members with full employment, economic development
and economic stability.” 13
Not only did the United Nations itself become an important
agency for international cooperation in economic and social matters
but many new agencies were created for the same purpose –
some
of them independently and even before the San Francisco Confer-
ence and others under the auspices of the United Nations. There
is now indeed such a plethora of such agencies that it defies easy
description. The most important of these agencies, now called
specialized agencies, of which there are now 13, were brought into
relationship with the United Nations under Articles 57 and 63 of
the Charter. The Charter says that the Economic and Social Council
“may coordinate the activities of the specialized agencies through
consultation with and recommendations
to such agencies and
through recommendations to the General Assembly and to the
Members of- the United Nations.” But no attempt was made as had
been done by the abortive Article 24 of the League Covenant, to
bring the agencies under the direction of the United Nations. If the
reason given by the official historian of the League referred to
13 The United Nations and Economic and Social Cooperation, Part II, p. 194.
The Brookings Institution, 1957.
[No. I
MAIN FUNCTIONS OF THE UNITED NATIONS
above, for the failure to implement Article 24 of the Covenant was
the defection of the United States, one would have expected the
experiment to have been repeated in 1945, when United States
participation in the new organization was a foregone conclusion.
There must have been other reasons why no article corresponding
to Article 24 was included in the Charter.
One of these seems to have been the idea which apparently
influenced the position taken by some of the smaller countries,
including Canada, that separate specialized agencies would give
them a better opportunity to play a significant role in functional
matters. Since the functions of these agencies would be technical
and scientific, it could be expected that the smaller powers would
be allowed to play a more significant role in them than in the great
power dominated, primarily political, world security organization. 4
This was probably one of the reasons why Canada opposed the
proposal of the great powers to give to the Economic and Social
Council the right to examine the administrative budgets of the
specialized agencies. 5 As Mr. Paul Martin later said on behalf of
Canada in the Economic and Social Council (January 29, 1946),
“there can be no question of the United Nations centralizing all the
specialized agencies to the point of absorption, or of attempting
to give these specialized agencies policy directives on matters lying
within their own sphere of competence.” 16
Another reason why the functional agencies were permitted to
take an independent course was the natural jealousies which exist
between departments of government within states and their desire
to conduct their business beyond national boundaries in direct
contact with their homologues
in other countries without the
necessity of going through ministries of foreign affairs. Cogent
arguments can be marshalled in favour of the decision taken at
San Francisco; but in practice it has meant that, amongst other
things, domestic jealousies and the failure to coordinate national
policies spill over on to the international level. Much of the prolif-
eration in the activities of the specialized agencies and their failure
to coordinate these activities as between themselves and with the
14 See Clyde Eagleton, “The Share of Canada in the Making of the United
Nations”, University of Toronto Law Journal, VII (1948), p. 351. “This interest,
it may be conjectured, is due in part to the better opportunity for responsible
contribution which these functional bodies offer to smaller states…” Quoted
by Anthony Miller, Functionalism and Foreign Policy (McGill Ph. D Thesis,
1970).
15 Miller, op. cit.
16 Ibid.
McGILL LAW JOURNAL
[Vol. 17
United Nations can be directly traced back to rivalries within
governments. The influence of strong national ministries and the
interests which they represent has contributed to building up the
centrifugal forces which although they have strengthened some of
the agencies, such as the International Labour Organization and
the World Health Organization, have weakened the position of the
United Nations in relation to them.
The very fact, moreover, that in 1945 there still existed a number
of independent functional agencies which had survived the debacle
of the thirties and which, like the International Labour Organization,
had long records of effective achievement, had given rise to vested
interests which were opposed to the transfer of their functions
or any of them to the United Nations. Some officials in the Interna-
tional Labour Office even argued that it would be unwise for the
I.L.O. to associate itself too closely with the United Nations given
the likelihood that it would share the fate of the League and looked
forward to the time when the International Labour Organization
would become the principal organ of the international community
in the economic and social field. Later, the ardour manifested by
its representatives in negotiating the agreement which brought it
into relationship with the United Nations under Article 63 of the
Charter was to indicate that the role of the Economic and Social
Council as coordinator of the activities of the specialized agencies
would be neither easy nor highly productive. And, in any event, the
history of the Council’s relationships with the agencies has too
often been one of United Nations weakness in the face of agency
intransigence. If the doctrine of national sovereignty and its practice
by States has been an obstacle to the building of world order, a
similar phenomenon operates in the relations between international
organizations which are often motivated more by considerations
of jurisdiction than of substance.
In any event, and for whatever reason, an opportunity was lost
in 1945 to put the theory of functionalism to a real test. Many
functionalists, however, would probably not agree with the analysis
attempted in this paper. The main tenet of functionalism is the
proposition that the internationalization of economic, social and
other political functions will eventually remove the causes of war;
and functionalists would say that the important thing is to strength-
en the technical special-purpose agencies. As for coordination, they
would say that it should and will be a gradual process and the
natural result of economic and social cooperation. But the prolifer-
ation of functional agencies in the contemporary world has not
removed the causes of war. There is however a tenet in functionalism
[No. 1
MAIN FUNCTIONS OF THE UNITED NATIONS
as expressed in any event by General Smuts in the passage quoted
above which merits attention. It is the proposition that international
apparatus for maintaining peace and security can and should be
strengthened by adding non-political functions to the mandate of
security organizations. So strengthened, the security organization
might be in a position to impose its will even in political matters
relating to security. I think that there is much validity in this
proposition. This objective can hardly be achieved however merely
by strengthening the authority of the specialized agencies even if
it were possible to establish some modus operandi for coordinating
their many different activities. Even if the International Labour
Organization, for example, became paramount in matters falling
under its mandate, it would never be able to impose its will to
maintain peace and security; and a world community adequately
equipped with powerful technical agencies would still need a police
apparatus. Nor would, by some process of osmosis, the prestige
and authority of the I.L.O. carry over to the benefit of the United
Nations. On the contrary, the process would probably operate in
the other direction. Strengthening the specialized agencies to the
disadvantage of the United Nations will simply weaken the latter.
So that notwithstanding the great increase in the numbers and
powers of the specialized agencies and generally the increasing
functional organization of the contemporary world, we are still
far from any solution to the problem of peace and war. In so far
as the increasing functional organization of the world is external
to the United Nations, it does not increase the political authority
of the latter; nor has the considerable increase in the non-political
functions of the United Nations yet reached the proportions to give
it the kind of authority that it needs to perform its primary function
of keeping the peace. Nor have we yet any convincing evidence
that functionalism as generally understood provides the answer
to the problem of security. But functionalism as understood by
Smuts has still to be seriously tried; and there might be some
wisdom in heeding even now the advice of a wise man. I suggest
that there is no one solution to the problem, but whatever else may
be done we should begin by reversing the trend which has its roots
in the failure of the League of Nations to implement the intention
expressed in Article 24 of its Covenant. To reverse a development
confirmed at San Francisco and by contemporary practice and
theory will not be easy. But in the light of the great stakes –
the issue being whether or not some political order will be brought
into the relations of nations –
it is well worth trying.
