Please write a 200-250 word response to the following question. In your answer, please refer to the readings and the lectures. During the San Francisco conference on the UN, the US and other big power

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 1945. They were impressed by the massive size of the United States, which in contrast to Europe had not been touched by the devastating destruction of the war.

There was a sense of enthusiasm and many had never been to such an international gathering. As Perez Guerrero of V enezuela describes: There was a genuine spirit of co-operation, I suggest. Some of the countries, like Saudi Arabia, were very new.

My first conversations on oil with Saudi Arabia date from that time, from the train taking us to San Francisco with some of the younger chaps of the Saudi Arabian delegation. 2 4 1 9 Spring in San Francisco was a welcome change from the bombing, fires, and rubble of the war.

Plans were made to receive the international delegations with excitement and touches of elegance. The main plenary sessions were to take place in the opera house at the civic center and the adjacent veterans’ memorial building. Special chefs were brought in to prepare the food and hotels made room to house these important guests. In Washington, other preparations were being made. Oliver Lundquist, who was on loan to the State Department from the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), was assigned to work on the graphic presentations for the San Francisco Conference. His team was in char ge of designing an official delegate’s badge as a credential to identify members of the conference. They did not really start out to design a logo for the UN: W e were thinking in terms of getting a delegate button, badge and credential made for San Francisco and it was not any long range plan on our part. We had several ideas on it and had a little contest among ourselves in the agency and came up with this one which was designed by a fellow named Donald McLaughlin—I have to give him primary credit for it—he was one of my assistants at the San Francisco Conference and he was more in charge of the actual graphic work there. 2 5 Lundquist explains that the color blue was purposely selected, and that when the design was shown to Stettinius, the secretary of state responded, “’Oh that’s fine and I like that color .’ We had used the blue color as the opposite of red, the war color, and then peace. . . . So then we 2 0 referred to it as Stettinius blue. It was a gray blue, a little different than the modern United Nations flag.” 2 6 Lundquist relates that the symbol of the globe was slightly different in the original design: W ell, actually , it looked superficially like the existing one except that the latest one has been changed slightly.

We had originally based it on what’s called an azimuthal north polar projection of the world, so that all the countries of the world were spun around this concentric circle and we had limited it in the southern sector to a parallel that cut off Argentina because Argentina was not to be a member of the United Nations. We centered the symbol on the United States as the host country.

. . . Subsequently, in England our design was adapted as the of ficial symbol of the United Nations, centered on Europe as more the epicenter I guess of the east-west world, and took into account the whole earth including Ar gentina.

By then, of course, Argentina had been made a member of the United Nations so that it was no longer necessary to cut them off.

2 7 Major Themes and Debates at San Francisco At San Francisco the founders had to come to agreement on the major themes and language to be used in the UN Charter.

While they had agreed upon the major purpose of the Or ganization—to maintain international peace and security—they had to reach consensus on other points: membership in the Organization; competency of the General Assembly and Security Council; trusteeship; self-defense; the role of the Security Council and the power of its members, 2 1 including the use of the veto; the role of the Secretary-General; the framework for the use of force by the United Nations; and human rights. Membership Immediately , the debate over membership exploded. The American countries who had met in Mexico insisted at the San Francisco Conference that Argentina be accepted for original membership. Nelson Rockefeller, assistant secretary of state for Latin American af fairs in the U.S. State Department, had attended 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, Francisco. Foreign Minister Molotov, leading the Soviet delegation, was furious that the Yalta agreement had been ignored. But the Latin Americans had twenty-one votes at the conference and refused to accept the membership of the Ukraine and Byelorrussia. The U.S. position taken by Truman was that while the Americans had agreed to admit the two republics as members, this did not necessarily mean that they could become original members and participate in the conference. The conflict over the three candidates was sent to committee. Molotov tried unsuccessfully to have the Argentina discussion removed from the agenda altogether.

As a gesture of good will, the Latin Americans agreed to vote in favor of the two republics and the motion was passed unanimously.

But Molotov still refused to equate this with an acceptance of Ar gentina, calling the Argentine government fascist and throwing himself into a tirade, which was captured by the press covering the conference. Senator Vandenber g thought that the entire 2 2 episode had “done more in four days to solidify Pan America against Russia than anything else that happened.” 2 8 Molotov , apparently in retaliation on 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 that had been resolved in Yalta.

President Truman had to resort to sending a special envoy to Moscow to seek an audience with Stalin to clear things up. Alexei Roschin, who was among the Soviet delegation in San Francisco, says that Stalin accepted the envoy’s presentation of the matter and informed Molotov to adhere to the decisions taken at 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. Competency of the General Assembly Ambassador Garcia Robles of Mexico, who took part in the Chepultepec Conference, and was also part of the Mexican delegation at San Francisco, recalls that the Latin Americans also emphasized the importance of enhancing and making more specific the powers of the General Assembly .

It was agreed that the General Assembly could take up any matter considered important to the members, but that when the Security Council was seized with a matter , the General Assembly would refrain from taking up the topic. The competency of regional or ganizations in relation to the UN as had been discussed in Mexico was also agreed upon and this language was entered into the Charter.

This provision recognized the right to resolve a local issue regionally before handing it over to the international body.

2 9 Importantly , it was eventually 2 3 agreed that the General Assembly would not only be able to address economic, social, and security issues, but that it would have power over the budget. 3 0 T rusteeship The concept of trusteeship was taken up 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 France had been occupied by the Nazis, it was not able to function as a mandatory power during the war years and Syria and Lebanon had been left on their own to govern their territories. 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, which would throw Syria and Lebanon back under French control. Because the League mandates were still in force, 3 1 technically France was still the mandatory power over Syria and Lebanon. In response to the Arab proposal, France tried to force Syria to sign a treaty delineated certain demands that would maintain some French control. Syria refused and in May 1945, during the San Francisco Conference, France began bombing Damascus. The United States and Britain protested the bombing and insisted that the French withdraw, highlighting that the world was trying to establish peaceful relations and ought not to resort to war tactics. When the French withdrew , the Syrians claimed their independence and refused to negotiate any further with the French. 3 2 Khadduri explains that the Arab nations wanted assurances that these countries would not fall under the Trusteeship Council: 2 4 For this reason Arab countries proposed that there should be something mentioned in the Charter of the United Nations that these countries should never be considered under the Trusteeship system of the United Nations but should be treated as independent since they had already been participating in the San Francisco Conference. This matter was taken to the steering committee. It was suggested to add a special Article (Article 78) which states that “The trusteeship shall not apply to territories which have become members of the United Nations. 3 3 Colonial issues, as such, were not to be discussed at the conference, so as not to alienate the colonial powers, but there was another reason. The United States itself had been internally split on the idea. Lawrence Finkelstein, as a young member of the staff, witnessed the debate from inside the State Department: The thing that I wanted to emphasize that I think is fascinating is that the reason that the colonial agenda was not as far advanced by the time the San Francisco Conference began as were most of the other issues of the Charter is that there had been a deep split in the US government on the issue going back for years. This emer ged sharply in the late spring of 1944 as planning for the Dumbarton Oaks conversations was moving into an advanced stage. There had been a lot of preparation in the State Department of drafts for a trusteeship plan and a declaration having to do with principles of colonial government. There had been some consultation with the British. Most thought that this plan was ready to 2 5 proceed, but it was the military service which threw a monkey wrench into the works for two reasons. The first, they were very concerned that these questions would involve territorial issues which might open up disputes among the countries still conducting the war against the Axis powers. We are talking about 1944. Their main argument was that they didn’t want to introduce any unnecessarily contentious issues that might cause splits particularly between us and the Russians. The second issue was we were winning island by island from the Japanese, some of which had been under League of Nations mandate after W orld War I but others which had not. So, the navy was against any concept of trusteeship which might internationalize those islands and thus deprive the navy of US sovereignty over them. 3 4 Still the controversy was not completely settled and a debate arose on whether to use the word “independence” in the Charter when talking about the goal of the administration of colonies or trusteeship territories. According to Finkelstein, Stassen did not want to use the word because he was worried about losing the approval of the colonial powers, mainly the British. His staf f tried to dissuade him in his car on the way to making his speech, but, ignoring them, he gave a powerful address against using the term, which received very negative headlines in the press. This was a massive embarrassment to the United States, itself a former colony.

General Carlos Romulo, head of the Philippine delegation at San Francisco, 3 5 recalls the fight that ensued: And in the Trusteeship Committee, we were discussing a proposal of the superpowers or the colonial powers then, that the aspirations of non-self- 2 6