NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 1949 UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, D. C. The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, on April 27, 1949, in room 318, Senate Office Building, Senator Tom Connally (chairman of the committee) presiding. Present: Senators Connally (chairman), George, Thomas of Utah, Tydings, Pepper, McMahon, Vandenberg, Wiley, Smith of New Jersey, Hickenlooper, and Lodge. Also present: Senators Tobey, Donnell, Flanders, Watkins, Gillette. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. This is a meeting of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate. We are holding hearings on the North Atlantic Pact. We are honored this morning to have former Senator Warren Austin, now Chief Representative of the United States at the United Nations, and a member of the Security Council, representing the United States. Is that correct the way I have stated it? Ambassador AUSTIN. Yes; it is correct. The CHAIRMAN. Senator Austin, we are very pleased to have you here, and we are prepared to hear any statement you desire to make with reference to the North Atlantic Pact and related matters. STATEMENT OF HON. WARREN R. AUSTIN, CHIEF OF THE UNITED STATES MISSION TO THE UNITED NATIONS Ambassador AUSTIN. Mr. Chairman, will you let me say something personal before I start talking about the North Atlantic treaty? This is a very emotional experience for me, to be invited by this very great committee, on which I was serving when I resigned from the Senate about 3 years ago. I have not been back here since, and now to be asked to come and talk with you about so important and grave a matter as the North Atlantic treaty is a great honor and a great pleasure. The CHAIRMAN. It is mutual. We esteem it an honor to have you here and a pleasure to have you here. We remember quite vividly your valuable services on this committee and your outstanding services in the Senate of the United States. We are glad to have your advice and counsel in view of your broad activities in connection with the United Nations and foreign relations generally. Ambassador AUSTIN. Thank you, sir. The CHAIRMAN. You may; and at the end of the prepared statement you will have to submit to questions, as you know. Ambassador AUSTIN. I am a little bit intrigued by the novel situation of being on this end of the questions. However, I will try to respond to them with the utmost frankness and without any reservations whatever. EFFECT OF THE TREATY ON THE UNITED NATIONS From the point of view of the United States Mission to the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty, by its express terms and by its probable effect would, if properly executed, promote United Nations effort to maintain peace generally, increase its ability to remove causes of war, bring the world nearer to its goal of substituting pacific settlements for the ancient practice of fighting out controversies among nations, and aid in the promotion of social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom. This is one of its objects. It would be a shield under the protection of which such purposes and policies of the United Nations could be more rapidly achieved in the North Atlantic area than if the fear of aggression should continue to deplete the energies and confidence of peoples. This is the other object. These objectives are complementary. HOPES FOR UNITED NATIONS SUCCESS Here in this committee, which only 4 years ago considered carefully the United Nations Charter, I hardly need recall the hopes we held then that there would continue to be a large measure of cooperation among the great powers. We did not expect the drastic deterioration in relations between east and west which has occurred. We certainly did not conceive that the Soviet Union would so brazenly violate the solemn Charter pledge to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of other states. None of us imagined the adoption of a deliberate and calculated policy of obstruction that has prevented the conclusion of peace treaties and impaired the work of the United Nations. RUSSIA AND THE UNITED NATIONS It was hard to believe what we were seeing. While most of the world was seeking to build a system of collective security in the United Nations, the Soviet Union sought security through the discredited policy of territorial aggrandizement. This feudalistic concept of security threw its black mantle over country after country in eastern Europe. Only decisive action by the United Nations, supported effectively by the United States, prevented Iran, Greece, and Korea from being drawn into the shadows. COUNTERMEASURES BY DEMOCRATIC COUNTRIES As a result of the growing opposition of the non-Communist world, the balance is swinging toward the forces favoring peaceful progress. This committee can be gratified at the part it has played in influencing that trend. Impetus was given it, I believe, when we decided to help Greece and Turkey. It attained historic proportions when we joined in the European recovery program. It is now being advanced by our adherence to the North Atlantic Treaty. Our devoted support of the United Nations has immeasurably strengthened that trend. INCREASING UNITY OF NON-SOVIET WORLD The increasing unity of the non-Soviet world is being demonstrated in the United Nations. Two years ago there was a widespread tendency to regard major differences simply as a conflict of interest between the United States and the Soviet Union. As a result, the voting was mixed and marked by a large number of abstentions. The actions and attitudes of the Soviet Union, inside and outside the United Nations, have altered that situation. Today, most major issues are recognized as a conflict between the Soviet Union and the rest of the world. Abstentions are fewer; the majorities are larger, and the minority is usually the six voices and votes controlled by the Soviet Union. These majorities run between 40 and 50; 43 to 6, with four abstentions, is an example which we frequently have. We are now witnessing in the United Nations the unity that is progressively making aggression and obstruction less attractive and less feasible; that is, the unity of those countries outside of the Soviet group. They are growing more and more to act like one world. I don't mean to say that they always vote in a bloc. There is a variation which is represented by perhaps the factor of five or six votes among these countries that are outside the iron curtain. It is difficult for the meaning of facts like these to penetrate the isolation which the ruling class of the Soviet Union has created for itself behind the walls of the Kremlin. But slowly it penetrates even there. The Soviet rulers have seen that we cannot be driven out of Berlin, and they are learning that the European recovery program cannot be defeated; that free nations will no longer permit themselves to be submerged one by one; that the Charter of the United Nations means what it says, and that the overwhelming majority of the nations are determined to uphold and defend it. While this process continues, we hopefully keep open the door to cooperation. Time after time we reiterate the invitation to this group to join with us. You realize that in some of our organs they will not even sit at the table with us. ECONOMIC RECOVERY AND THE TREATY Now, I would like to speak of economic recovery and the treaty. I have divided this paper up into chapters, because it is more convenient for me to think this matter out that way from the point of view of the United States Mission to the United Nations. And that is the characteristic of this testimony. I am trying to present the view of our mission to the United Nations. The claim has been made that economic recovery should be cur primary objective in the North Atlantic area and that the treaty may endanger that objective. The premise is correct, but the conclusion is not. Economic recovery is the surest defense against the spread of totalitarian tyranny, but that recovery requires security and confidence. The treaty would not have come into existence if there had not been a real need for it. The last two World Wars raged across the lands of the European signatories of this treaty. We share with them the desire to remove the miscalculations which could invite a similar tragedy. This community-that is to say the North Atlantic communitywith its bridgeheads on both sides of the Atlantic, is engaged in a great cooperative effort to attain economic recovery and the blessings of political stability and social progress. The United States is assisting on a very large scale because we know that a healthy Europe is a strong force for peace, a vital element in a strong United Nations and a friendly partner with the United States in its efforts to establish greater security for all. SECURITY AND RECOVERY The nations of the North Atlantic area have learned that they must stand together and make plain in advance that they will do so. believe that they knew it as far back as February 1946, just after the Organization had been set up in London, for I find in one of the speeches of the Honorable James Byrnes, who was then Secretary of State, remarks which plainly showed that. I would read parts of it if you ask me to, but otherwise I will not take your time. In that speech, Secretary Byrnes forecast this situation, and he makes perfectly plain that, if we are going to have greater security for all, we must ourselves be strong and we must be ready to contribute our part with the neighbors in the North Atlantic area to prevent or to suppress these attacks from outside upon this area. The preservation of the freedom and independence of any one of them is of vital concern to all of them. An armed attack upon one is considered an armed attack on all. The treaty is intended to remove the feeling of insecurity which hinders economic recovery in Europe by establishing a needed preponderance of moral and material power for peace. I say "preponderance"; I would like to emphasize it. SOVIET ATTACK ON THE ATLANTIC TREATY Now I would like to talk with you just a moment about the Soviet attack on the North Atlantic Treaty in the General Assembly. It does throw light upon what the treaty means to them. As we expected, the Soviet Union has attacked the North Atlantic Treaty in the General Assembly. The nature of that attack exposed the awareness of the Soviet group to the intimate relationship between the treaty and the United Nations. THE SECURITY COUNCIL VETO AND THE TREATY Every member of the Soviet group spoke against the treaty in attempting to defeat a resolution aimed at correcting abuse of the special privilege of the so-called veto in the Security Council. The Soviet Union, which has used the veto 30 times-some of those times in cases to which the founders of the United Nations did not intend the veto to apply, for they said so in establishing the Charter-realized that the treaty might endanger objectives which it can use the |