It has been well said that "Everyone wants peace, but not everyone is prepared to work for it." No people in this world want peace more than the American people. They have always wanted it, they have sought it in various ways, but they have not always been ready to work for it. If we wish peace, we must be prepared to wage peace, with all our thought, energy, and courage. That is the purpose of this treaty. TRADITIONAL AMERICAN POLICY When the United States was a small and weak country, isolated by many weeks from other continents, our forefathers wisely based our foreign policy upon the realities of those times, and we managed to stay apart, to a large extent from developments in other lands. However, our responsibility for assisting in the maintenance of peace beyond our borders has been long recognized and assumed. For more than a century and a quarter this Government has contributed to the peace of the Americas by making clear that it would regard an attack on any American state as an attack on itself. We gave our unilateral declaration to this effect. As the years passed and our neighbors to the South grew in stature, they accepted a similar responsibility. But beyond this responsibility, we did not see clearly the impact of an unstable world on our security. In 1920 many nations of the world joined in an attempt to maintain international peace and security through the League of Nations. Although the President of the United States had played a leading part in drafting the League Covenant, the United States was not prepared to enter the League, and we withdrew from the participation with other nations in their first effort to wage peace on a world-wide basis. As a consequence, we had no effective means to prevent the Second World War. IMPACT OF WORLD WAR II ON AMERICAN POLICY But by 1945, after the tragedy of involvement in a Second World War, we realized fully that times had changed, drastically and irrevocably. It is the responsibility of this generation to base the conduct of foreign affairs upon the realities of today. Today no place on earth is more than a few hours distant from any other place. Today neither distance nor ocean nor air affords security. Security today and henceforward can only be assured, in the President's words, by stopping war before it can start. THE CREATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS In 1945 a new and greater effort for the maintenance of international peace and security was undertaken in the establishment of the United Nations. In the preamble of the Charter the peoples of the United Nations expressed their determination to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind And for these ends the Charter goes on— To practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors; and For the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg : Jos BECH HUGUES LE GALLAIS For the Kingdom of the Netherlands: E. N. VAN KLEFFENS For the Kingdom of Norway: HALVARD M. LANGE WILHELM MUNTHE MORGENSTIERNE For Portugal: JOSÉ CAEIRO DA MATTA PEDRO THEOTÓNIO PEREIRA For the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: ERNEST BEVIN OLIVER FRANKS For the United States of America: DEAN ACHESON I CERTIFY THAT the foregoing is a true copy of the North Atlantic Treaty signed at Washington on April 4, 1949 in the English and French languages, the signed original of which is deposited in the archives of the Government of the United States of America. IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I, DEAN ACHESON, Secretary of State of the United States of America, have hereunto caused the seal of the Department of State to be affixed and my name subscribed by the Authentication Officer of the said Department, at the city of Washington, in the District of Columbia, this fourth day of April, 1949. The CHAIRMAN. The committee is honored today by having present Secretary of State Acheson, who will be the first witness to be heard. Mr. Secretary, proceed in your own way. The questions of the committee and others will be deferred until you have finished reading your statement, if that is agreeable to you. Secretary ACHESON. That is entirely agreeable, Mr. Chairman. STATEMENT OF HON. DEAN ACHESON, SECRETARY OF STATE Secretary ACHESON. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I welcome this opportunity to discuss with you the North Atlantic Treaty signed on April 4. That treaty is no new document to you. It has been developed, to an extent without parallel in my knowledge, as a cooperative enterprise between the executive and legislative branches of the Government and particularly between the Department of State and this committee. Without the vision and assistance of your chairman, of your former chairman, and the members of this committee, this treaty could never have been concluded. The text embodies many constructive suggestions from members of the committee. The President has spoken on the treaty in recent weeks, and the Department of State has made available a considerable amount of source material regarding it. Since you already have in your possession some of what I shall say today, shall make my statement as short as possible and will then be at your disposal for questions. I should like very briefly to review with you the reason for this treaty, and its purposes. It has been well said that "Everyone wants peace, but not everyone is prepared to work for it." No people in this world want peace more than the American people. They have always wanted it, they have sought it in various ways, but they have not always been ready to work for it. If we wish peace, we must be prepared to wage peace, with all our thought, energy, and courage. That is the purpose of this treaty. TRADITIONAL AMERICAN POLICY When the United States was a small and weak country, isolated by many weeks from other continents, our forefathers wisely based our foreign policy upon the realities of those times, and we managed to stay apart, to a large extent from developments in other lands. However, our responsibility for assisting in the maintenance of peace beyond our borders has been long recognized and assumed. For more than a century and a quarter this Government has contributed to the peace of the Americas by making clear that it would regard an attack on any American state as an attack on itself. We gave our unilateral declaration to this effect. As the years passed and our neighbors to the South grew in stature, they accepted a similar responsibility. But beyond this responsibility, we did not see clearly the impact of an unstable world on our security. In 1920 many nations of the world joined in an attempt to maintain international peace and security through the League of Nations. Although the President of the United States had played a leading part in drafting the League Covenant, the United States was not prepared to enter the League, and we withdrew from the participation with other nations in their first effort to wage peace on a world-wide basis. As a consequence, we had no effective means to prevent the Second World War. IMPACT OF WORLD WAR II ON AMERICAN POLICY But by 1945, after the tragedy of involvement in a Second World War, we realized fully that times had changed, drastically and irrevocably. It is the responsibility of this generation to base the conduct of foreign affairs upon the realities of today. Today no place on earth is more than a few hours distant from any other place. Today neither distance nor ocean nor air affords security. Security today and henceforward can only be assured, in the President's words, by stopping war before it can start. To unite our strength to maintain international peace and security; and To ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used save in the common interest * These are the words of the Charter. * The first purpose of the United Nations, as stated in article 1 of the Charter is to maintain international peace and security, and to that end to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace. AMERICAN ACCEPTANCE OF UNITED NATIONS CHARTER The American people overwhelmingly accepted this commitment and the other commitments laid down in the Charter. They showed not merely their desire for peace but their determination to work for peace through full participation in effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace and for the suppression of acts of aggression. The hopes of the American people for peace with freedom and justice are based on the United Nations. COMMITMENTS IN UNITED NATIONS CHARTER The Charter not only spells out, as did the Kellogg Pact, the essential principle of settling disputes by peaceful means instead of war; it goes much further. The Charter commits all members of the United Nations to certain principles in the conduct of their foreign affairs which would, if carried out, do a number of things. First, they would secure peace and do away with the use of force as an instrument of national policy. Second, they would establish the right of nations to independence and self-determination. Third, they would establish that economic, social, and other problems can and should be worked out by international agreement and for the benefit of the peoples of all countries. Fourth, they would recognize and further human rights and fundamental freedoms. Here is more than a vague expression. These are the foundations of a world system, based on law, which would do far more than merely prevent war. Still, the Charter goes further. It establishes machinery and procedures for furthering these purposes. The fundamental fact of the Charter is that these mechanisms and procedures are the institutions and procedures of free peoples, based on solving difficulties and making progress through investigation of facts, free discussion, and decisions by adjustment among representatives of the member nations, all of whom accept and are attempting to achieve the purposes of the world organization. NONACCEPTANCE BY A MINORITY OF CHARTER PRINCIPLES Now, any organization of free individuals or free peoples, whether it is a private one or a national one or an international one, must proceed upon the basis that the vast bulk of those within it are firmly attached to the basic principles of the organization and are trying to carry them out. If this is so, adjustments are made within the area of common purposes; and, no matter how sharp disagreements may be, there are common principles to which appeal may be made and which basically govern the conscience and behavior of the members. Whenever a powerful minority repudiates the basic principles and uses the procedures to accomplish directly contrary purposes or to frustrate the organization, then it obviously will not work as intended. Here lies the basic difficulty which the United Nations has faceda difficulty which would produce serious problems in any international organization, however perfectly devised. This difficulty is that a powerful group, even though a minority, has not genuinely accepted the purposes and principles of the organization and has used its institutions and procedures to frustrate them. This is not a defect of machinery. It is a defect in the basic attitude of some of the members which no change of machinery or procedure can cure. ABILITY OF UNITED NATIONS TO FUNCTION One of the principal problems which has grown out of this situation which I have described is that a sense of insecurity and a fear of aggression have grown up in an important section of the world which is struggling to recover economically, politically, and socially from the drains of the last war. The recovery of this area is of vital concern to the whole world. To attain a sense of security and to be free from the constant fear of armed attack is certainly one of the prime objectives of the United Nations. How, then, is this objective to be obtained when a few of the members of the United Nations frustrate the attempt to attain it through the machinery provided in the Charter? It is certainly not to be obtained by doing nothing about it. It is certainly not hostile to the United Nations or contrary to the Charter to attempt to attain this objective by means wholly consistent with the Charter. The United Nations is not a thing in itself. It is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. The end is progressive development of a peaceful and stable world order where law rather than force and anarchy will govern the conduct of nations in their foreign relations. It was never in the minds of the framers of the Charter that the organization set up under it should be so distorted as to become an international instrument which paralyzed the pacific nations of the world, the possible victims of aggression, while leaving a would-be aggressor with completely free hands to deal with them one by one. In order that there should be no misunderstanding on this point, article 51 was inserted in the Charter. VIOLATIONS BY RUSSIA OF CHARTER PRINCIPLES If I may use an understatement, the sense of insecurity prevalent in western Europe is not a figment of the imagination. It has come about through the conduct of the Soviet Union. Western European countries have seen the basic purposes and principles of the Charter cynically violated by the conduct of the Soviet Union with the countries of eastern Europe. Their right to self-determination has been extinguished by force or threats of force. The human freedoms as the rest of the world understands them have been extinguished |