Revision of the United Nations

Report Outline
Proposals for Changes in World Organization
Causes of Dissatisfaction with United Nations
Possibilities of Progress Under Present Charter

Proposals for Changes in World Organization

American Rearmament to Strengthen Security

In creating the United Nations, the peoples of the Allied nations reaffirmed their faith that an international organization could be established which would be able “to maintain international peace and security” and make it possible to eliminate war as a means of settling international disputes. Now, less than three years after the United Nations Charter was signed at San Francisco, June 26, 1945, the United States is faced with the necessity of maintaining a military establishment over ten times as large as before World War II, and devoting over a third of all federal government expenditures to national defense.

Since United States rearmament is considered necessary because of threatened aggression by another member of the United Nations—Soviet Russia—the question has been raised in American minds whether world security can actually be achieved through the United Nations, and the various defense arrangements authorized by its Charter, or whether the cause of peace would be better served by some new form of international organization.

A preliminary answer is offered by a resolution favorably reported by unanimous vote of the Foreign Relations Committee May 19 and now awaiting action by the Senate. This resolution, sponsored by the committee chairman, Sen. Vandenberg (R., Mich.), would keep the present organization, but would strengthen security by the progressive development of regional and other collective arrangements “in accordance with the purposes, principles, and provisions of the Charter.” It recommends that the United States join such regional arrangements as affect its national security. While advocating the strengthening of the U. N. by voluntary agreement to limit use of the veto and by renewed efforts to provide a world police force, the resolution would have the United States make clear its determination to exercise its own sovereign rights of self-defense.