IMPACT OF THE UNITED NATIONS SYSTEM ON Ten years ago the most important existing international organizations were the League of Nations, the International Labor Organization, and the Pan American Union. The United States had helped create all three, but had not joined the League of Nations and only in 1934 became a member of the International Labor Organization. It was an active member of the Pan American Union from its inception. The three organizations each represented a type: (1) the worldwide organization with general political, security, and economic functions, (2) the world-wide organization with specialized functions in a particular field of human interest, and (3) the regional organization with general political, security, and economic functions. The United States Government gave consideration during the Second World War to the prospective postwar requirements for each type of organization. It concluded during the war that there would be a need for a number of specialized agencies of a relatively nonpolitical character. It was inclined to feel that regional organizations might become less necessary if an effective universal type of organization could be created, but it was not prepared to give up the Pan American Union or to reject the possibility of regional arrangements elsewhere. It remained unwilling to join the League of Nations, giving this possibility almost no serious consideration, but it felt an urgent need for a new successor organization of universal character, with broad functions of its own and with responsibilities for coordinating in some measure the activities of the specialized and regional organizations. The United States took the lead in bringing about the reconstruction and expansion of the international mechanisms which it favored. It acted as host government for a number of international conferences of a constitutional character, at which the basic instruments of the new organizations were prepared or planned, including the San Francisco Conference of 1945, which resulted in the United Nations Charter. The United States is now a member of the United Nations and of the following autonomous specialized international organizations that are a part of the United Nations system: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. International Refugee Organization (a temporary organization). United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. World Health Organization. International Civil Aviation Organization. International Telecommunications Union. In some respects the specialized agencies were the first to have a significant impact on the work of the United States Government, since the specialized agencies were able to begin operations more rapidly than the United Nations. Almost every question as to the work of the specialized agencies involves at least two and usually several departments and agencies of the United States, including as a minimum the Department of State and the department or agency having the predominant functional interest, if any one department or agency can be so distinguished in the particular case. The multiplication of specialized agencies, the growing volume of their work, and the constant necessity for determining what views the United States will advocate as a member have found administrative recognition in several ways. New units and staffs have been established in the various interested agencies of the United States, a structure of interdepartmental committees has developed which parallels the structure of the international specialized agencies, and new processes and procedures have been developed for formulating the position to be taken on the innumerable questions of policy that arise. Many of the specialized agencies have substantial powers within their own specific fields, and it is accordingly necessary to take seriously the opportunities, responsibilities, and risks of participation in their work. The impact of the United Nations proper on governmental activities of the United States has been somewhat different from that of the specialized agencies. On the economic and social side of the United Nations, questions of broad interest throughout the Government have frequently been considered, and it has been necessary to organize significant pieces of United States preparatory work on an interdepartmental basis. On political affairs the constant sessions of the Security Council and the recurring lengthy sessions of the General Assembly have required constant activity on the part of the representatives of the United States. They in turn have required constant assistance and guidance from the seat of government, but the questions involved have been considered primarily within the province of the Department of State and the President. In some cases they have come before the National Security Council, but there has been relatively little other organized interdepartmental consideration of such matters. Responsibilities have been centralized in the Bureau of the Assistant Secretary of State for United Nations Affairs, which has utilized informal consultations with other agencies to the extent deemed necessary. The United Nations structure includes a Military Staff Committee to advise and assist the Security Council, on which the representation of the United States has been provided by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It has so far proved impossible for the Military Staff Committee to function as originally intended. The result has been that the military aspects of the Korean crisis have been handled entirely outside of the Military Staff Committee. The United Nations military arrangements for operations in Korea have taken the relatively simple form of designating the United States Government as the unified command. Member nations were requested to make forces available to the unified command. The political arrangements respecting these matters at the United Nations headquarters are understood to have involved close coordination of the activities of the Department of State and the Department of Defense under the immediate direction of the President. REORGANIZATION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE AND THE FOREIGN SERVICE At the beginning of the Second World War, the total personnel of the Department of State in Washington was less than 1,000 and that of the Foreign Service abroad, including local employees, was about 4,000. The establishment was not much larger than it had been 10 years earlier, except for the staff concerned with the trade agreements program. By 1950 the departmental personnel in the United States had reached approximately 8,000 and that abroad approximately 24,000, including local employees in the various countries, of whom there were 9,000 in occupied Germany. This growth had reflected the addition of many new functions and activities, and it had been accompanied by the frequent necessity for making adjustments in the internal organization of the Department. The major reorganizations occurred in 1944, 1945, and 1949. Prior to the 1944 reorganization, which occurred in two stages some months apart, the Department had grown rapidly during the early war years but without any major change in organizational pattern. The administrative difficulties of 1943 appeared to arise to a large extent from the fact that the Department had grown by a process of accretion until the whole structure had become disorderly. The basic unit of organization was the division. Individually, the divisions. represented some basis of specialization-geographic, functional, or administrative but they varied widely in size and importance. Moreover, the processes of adaptation required by the war had mainly taken the form of establishing new divisions while leaving undisturbed the older divisions performing related work. In most cases the division. chiefs reported to the four existing assistant secretaries. The assign ment of divisions among the assistant secretaries seemed incoherent on its face and had obviously been influenced more by personal factors than by considerations of administrative clarity. Central staff units for forward planning, coordination, and policy control were largely absent or undeveloped, with the exception of a significant staff activity in the field of postwar studies and planning. The pattern as a whole was a carry-over from the days when an isolationist foreign policy could be administered by a relatively small group of officials who were intimately acquainted with each other and the Secretary, with the requirements for systematic organization at a minimum. The Stettinius reorganizations of 1944 attempted to deal with these difficulties in several ways. Perhaps the most significant and lasting in its effects was an improved grouping of functions and activities at the operating levels; the 60-odd divisions and other units were brought together into 12 offices and a new echelon of authority and of coordination was established at the office director level. The four geographic divisions became offices, and units within them became divisions, thus restoring the balance of the Department on the geographic side to some extent. Policy and coordinating committees were established and provided with a secretariat; these devices were less important in themselves than in the overt recognition given to an unsolved problem. In connection with the reorganization, the geographic offices were designated as the coordinating centers for all actions relating to particular countries, including those relating to economic as well as political affairs; but this decision did not prove to be widely respected or wholly workable, in view of the extent to which policy questions were assuming global and multilateral forms. The reorganizations of 1945 were extensive but largely unplanned. They resulted from the transfers of new functions and staffs after the end of hostilities, already noted, and the efforts of the Department to assimilate them. The organizational units known as offices were increased from 12 to 18, mainly by the addition of new offices incorporating the new functions and staffs, together with the reorganization of some of the existing offices. Much of the newly acquired economic personnel was absorbed into previous units; a new Office of Economic Security Policy was created, to deal mainly with economic affairs of the occupied areas. The Office of the Foreign Liquidation Commissioner was established as a temporary organization to deal with war surplus disposal abroad. The Division of Budget and Finance was elevated to office level, in part to deal with appropriations for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. The previously existing Office of Public Affairs became two offices, the second being labeled the Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs. The 1,600 employees taken over from the Office of Strategic Services were greatly reduced in numbers and arranged in two offices, Research and Intelligence, and Intelligence Collection and Dissemination. Further changes occurred in 1946, 1947, and 1948. All were of a piecemeal character, although various plans for the general reorganization of the Department continued to be the subject of active study both inside and outside of the Department. The changes that actually occurred were on the one hand a shaking down and in some cases a liquidation of activities taken over from the war agencies, and on the other a meeting of the constant stream of requirements arising out of new problems, such as policy for the occupied areas and GreekTurkish aid. The net effect was a substantial expansion in the size of the Department that began to appear permanent. The expansion, moreover, involved the assimilation of large groups of individuals who by experience and predilection were somewhat foreign to the habits of thought previously prevailing in the Department. The result was an accentuation of latent frictions. Two basic cleavages were reaching the point where sweeping action of some sort began to appear necessary when the Hoover Commission began its studies. One was the cleavage between the geographic offices, on the one hand, and the functional offices, particularly those dealing with economic affairs, on the other. The Hoover Commission found this cleavage expressed in a "system whereby coordinate authority at the substantive policy action level is vested in two different types of units, geographic and economic, each of which reports to different heads who, in turn, report only to the Secretary and Under Secretary." The results were found to be an elaborate system of lateral clearance, excessive use of the committee device, diffusion of responsibility, and duplication of work. The Hoover Commission recommended that action responsibility be concentrated in four regional bureaus headed by assistant secretaries and a fifth bureau for international organization affairs, also headed by an assistant secretary. The Commission proposed to reduce the size of the functional offices in part by transfer of staff to the regional bureaus and in part by transfer of work to other agencies of the Government, with the staffs that remained in the functional offices to act in an advisory capacity on policy matters of a global character. The other cleavage referred to above was that between the departmental personnel as a group and the personnel of the Foreign Service, particularly those on duty in strategic positions in the Department. The Hoover Commission found that "serious unrest and bad feeling exist between the members of these two services and make effective administration an impossible job." It attributed these difficulties to the existence of two personnel systems and criticized the tendencies |