Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XXV, Organization of Foreign Policy; Information Policy; United Nations; Scientific Matters

291. Information Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (Cleveland) to Secretary of State Rusk¹

Washington, December 19, 1963.

SUBJECT

• Briefing of Congress on Enlargement of UN Councils

As a follow up to our breakfast meeting with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I asked for a meeting with the Committee on December 16 to pursue the question of enlarging UN Councils since it then appeared that resolutions amending the UN Charter to expand the Security Council and ECOSOC would be brought to a vote that day. Although this hearing was worked out on very short notice, I believe we can consider that a reasonable spectrum of Senate opinion was consulted since those attending included Senators Fulbright, Hickenlooper, Sparkman, Aiken, Mundt, and Lausche.

The atmosphere in the Committee was good. While there are clearly many apprehensions about the implications of the increased UN membership for the US power position in the Organization, I had the feeling that everyone present felt this was a problem which we all, as Americans, find thrust upon us and that the Executive Branch and the Congress have a common interest in finding a way to deal with this problem so as to protect vital US interests.

Two major concerns were manifested in the questions asked. The first was whether an increase in the Security Council would result in a substantial dilution of our authority there. I explained that if we had our “druthers,” there would be no enlargement, but added that in view of the increased membership and the pressure for greater representation, there will almost certainly be a raid on seats of our friends in the present Council if some sort of an expansion is not forthcoming; thus we would do better to acquiesce in enlargement rather than fight it. Senator Fulbright quickly put his finger on the answer to this by volunteering “It wouldn’t be good politics to oppose it.”

There was a certain malaise about the possibility that the distribution of seats in an enlarged Council could be changed again by Assembly vote even though the distribution provided for in the current resolutions might not hurt us too much. The tenor of these comments would seem to indicate a preference that the distribution of seats should be actually written into the Charter so that it could not be revised without further Charter amendment. In intimating this, however, I do not think that the Senators present balanced out in their own minds the relative advantage that this would give us against the political disadvantage that some of them might have in voting for a formal Charter amendment which assigns a full-time seat to Eastern Europe.

The second consideration which emerged was that any talk of enlargement of the United Nations will revive a discussion over the one-nation, one-vote principle in the General Assembly. Critical remarks were made concerning a country the size of Zanzibar now joining. There was considerable interest in what the ultimate size of the United Nations is expected to be, and I reported our estimate as 125–130. It clearly sticks in the craw (even of a Senator from South Dakota who has the same vote as a Senator from New York) that the one-half million Zanzibaris should have a vote equivalent to the nearly two hundred million Americans. I agreed that this is a problem we are all concerned with and took the occasion to float in a very tentative manner the possibility of developing something like a special screening committee to approve special scales of assessment for peacekeeping operations. This appeared to strike a responsive chord. As far as policy on US ratification of the Charter amendments is concerned, I weighted the scale in favor of no submission to the Senate in the absence of a change on the part of the Soviet Union. However, I left a crack in the door in case we should find it desirable to do so. The situation is still too confused in the aftermath of the recent vote to know how other permanent members will proceed, including France, the United Kingdom and China. (France voted against both resolutions, the United Kingdom abstained on both, and China voted favorably on the Security Council resolution. China abstained on the ECOSOC resolution since it does not reinstate China’s membership on ECOSOC.) Therefore, I do not believe we need to cross this bridge just yet.

I will send you separately an analysis of the enlargement problem which we will give to Fred Dutton for distribution to interested members of Congress.

1. Source: National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1960–63, UN 8. No classification marking. Drafted by Cleveland and Buffum on December 19. Copies were sent to Under Secretary Ball, Governor Harriman, U. Alexis Johnson, Abram Chayes, and Frederick G. Dutton. The memorandum bears a notation indicating that Secretary Rusk saw it.