[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 105 (Monday, June 26, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S9030]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE UNITED NATIONS

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, when President Truman addressed the 
opening session of the conference that met in San Francisco in April 
1945, he told the gathered delegates, ``You members of the conference 
are to be the architects of the better world. In your hands rests our 
future. By your labors at this conference we shall know if suffering 
humanity is to achieve a just and lasting peace.''
  Neither Truman nor any other realistic person then or later believed 
that an organization of the international community could, by itself, 
bring about an end to war. And, of course, the United Nations has not 
been able to achieve that.
  But in regretting what an organization has not done, we should not 
overlook its achievements, and those of its associated organizations.
  Today marks the 50th anniversary of the creation of the United 
Nations. It is the only world body which has endured for so long.
  Commemorative ceremonies are taking place in San Francisco today to 
mark the occasion. The Senate and the Nation can be proud of the fact 
that, among the delegates to those ceremonies is a man who was present 
when the original delegates began to meet, Senator Claiborne Pell of 
Rhode Island.
  It is a tribute to the enduring ideals of public service in our 
Nation that many of those who served 50 years ago in San Francisco 
continued in long and distinguished careers of public service. We are 
fortunate that Senator Pell was able to return after 50 years.
  The history of the world since the creation of the United Nations has 
been turbulent
  The United Nations Organization often has been as unpopular as it has 
been admired in the United States and around the world. Its 
shortcomings have been criticized, and its errors have been magnified 
by those who opposed its creation and their political heirs.
  Like every organization created and manned by human beings, it is far 
from perfect.
  But the same observation can be made about every form of human 
organization, governmental and corporate, public and private. None are 
perfect; all can bear improvement. What's significant isn't how far an 
organization falls short of perfection, but how close it has come to 
achieving its goals.
  It is a remarkable fact that in a century drenched with the blood of 
innocents in wars both large and small, the United Nations has provided 
a forum in which some of the world community's most dangerous 
disagreements could be controlled, if not reconciled.
  Those who argue that the organization is a failure because it hasn't 
stopped war forget that throughout the long history of humankind, 
nothing has successfully stopped war. Huge, tyrannical empires like the 
former Soviet Union successfully curtailed wars among their component 
states--but that's not a model for peace that any free people can 
admire.
  Today, when the painful costs of war in human life, human health, and 
hard-earned treasure is less visible to us in the fortunate nations of 
the Western World, it is tempting to suggest that the United Nations' 
shortcomings are so great, its failures so substantial, that it serves 
no further purpose that is in the American national interest.
  There are many voices willing to make that claim. But they are 
mistaken.
  In the post-cold war world, our Nation is the only remaining 
superpower. Our global trading partnerships and our security interests 
alike mean that American must be involved with the world.
  It is not in the American interest to unilaterally take on the 
mediation of each and every conflict that may arise between nations. 
Yet a peaceful and stable world community is very much in our national 
interest.
  There is no body other than the United Nations that can serve as a 
mediating forum for the disputes and conflicts that inevitably arise 
among the members of the international community. With all its 
shortcomings, if the organization did not exist, we would be forced to 
invent it.
  In April 1945, when the idea of a world body was taking shape, 
President Truman observed, ``When Kansas and Colorado have a quarrel 
over the water in the Arkansas River, they don't call out the National 
Guard in each state and go to war over it. They bring a suit in the 
Supreme Court of the United States and abide by the decision. There 
isn't a reason in the world why we cannot do that internationally.''
  In the wake of a half-century in which states have repeatedly gone to 
war, not to the negotiating table, Truman's words sound sadly 
idealistic. We think we know better.
  But perhaps it is we who are being foolishly cynical. Perhaps it was 
Truman, that Midwestern man of great common sense, who understood more 
deeply what was at stake. He understood that if we did not strive to 
create a great organization, we would not achieve even a good one. He 
knew that if we approached the task with less than our ideals, we would 
reap much greater disappointment.
  At a distance of 50 years, there is much many of us have forgotten 
about the times in which the United Nations was forged, and about the 
forces that made men and women work for its creation. On the 
anniversary of its creation, it is a good time to think back and 
remember that we are all charged with the responsibility Truman 
expressed 50 years ago: ``We must build a new world, a far better 
world--one in which the eternal dignity of man is respected.'' That is 
a task every bit as important for our generation as it was for 
Truman's.

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