United Nations means what it says. We are criticized for treating the statement of the law by the International Court of Justice as authoritative. We are criticized for taking collective security seriously.

This criticism is, I think, a sign of strength of our strength and of the strength of international law. It is a tribute to a blending of political purpose with legal ethic.

American foreign policy is at once principled and pragmatic. Its central objective is our national safety and well-being-to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." But we know we can no longer find security and well-being in defenses and policies which are confined to North America, or the Western Hemisphere, or the North Atlantic community.

This has become a very small planet. We have to be concerned with all of it-with all of its land, waters, atmosphere, and with surrounding space. We have a deep national interest in peace, the prevention of aggression, the faithful performance of agreements, the growth of international law. Our foreign policy is rooted in the profoundly practical realization that the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter must animate the behavior of states if mankind is to prosper or is even to survive. Or at least they must animate enough states with enough will and enough resources to see to it that others do not violate those rules with impunity.

The preamble and articles 1 and 2 of the charter set forth abiding purposes of American policy.30 This is not surprising, since we took the lead in drafting the charter-at a time when the biggest war in history was still raging and we and others were thinking deeply about its frightful costs and the ghastly mistakes and miscalculations which led to it.

The kind of world we seek is the kind set forth in the opening sections of the charter: a world community of independent states, each with the institutions of its own choice but cooperating with one another to promote their mutual wel

For the text of the U.N. Charter, see American Foreign Policy, 1950-1955: Basic Documents, vol. I, pp. 134-161.

fare, a world in which the use of force is effectively inhibited, a world of expanding human rights and well-being, a world of expanding international law, a world in which an agreement is a commitment and not just a tactic.

We believe that this is the sort of world a great majority of the governments of the world desire. We believe it is the sort of world man must achieve if he is not to perish. As I said on another occasion:

If once the international rule of law could be discussed with a certain condescension as a utopian ideal, today it becomes an elementary practical necessity. Pacta sunt servanda now becomes the basis of survival.

Unhappily, a minority of governments is commited to different ideas of the conduct and organization of human affairs. They are dedicated to the promotion of the Communist world revolution. And their doctrine justifies any technique, any ruse, any deceit, which contributes to that end. They may differ as to tactics from time to time. And the two principal Communist powers are competitors for the leadership of the world Communist movement. But both are committed to the eventual communization of the entire world.

The overriding issue of our time is which concepts are to prevail: those set forth in the United Nations Charter or those proclaimed in the name of a world revolution.

The paramount commitment of the charter is article 2, paragraph 4, which reads:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

This comprehensive limitation went beyond the Covenant of the League of Nations. This more sweeping commitment sought to apply a bitter lesson of the interwar period-that the threat or use of force, whether or not called "war," feeds on success. The indelible lesson of those years is that the time to stop aggression is at its very beginning.

The exceptions to the prohibitions on the use or threat of force were

31 Address by Secretary Rusk before the American Law Institute on May 22, 1964; text in the Department of State Bulletin, June 8, 1964, pp. 886-891.

expressly set forth in the charter. The use of force is legal:

-as a collective measure by the United Nations, or

-as action by regional agencies in accordance with chapter VIII of the charter, or

-in individual or collective selfdefense.

When article 2, paragraph 4, was written it was widely regarded as general international law, governing both members and nonmembers of the United Nations. And on the universal reach of the principle embodied in article 2, paragraph 4, wide agreement remains.

Thus, last year, a United Nations Special Committee on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation Among States met in Mexico City.32 All shades of United Nations opinion were represented. The Committee's purpose was to study and possibly to elaborate certain of those principles. The Committee debated much and agreed on little. But on one point, it reached swift and unanimous agreement: that all states, and not only all members of the United Nations, are bound to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Nonrecognition of the statehood of a political entity was held not to affect the international application of this cardinal rule of general international law.

But at this same meeting in Mexico City, Czechoslovakia, with the warm support of the Soviet Union and some other members, proposed formally another exemption from the limitations on use of force. Their proposal stated that:

The prohibition of the use of force shall not affect self-defense of nations against colonial domination in the exercise of the right of self-determination.

The United States is all for selfdefense. We are against colonial domination-we led the way in throwing it off. We have long favored self-determination, in practice as well as in words-indeed, we favor it for the entire world, including the

32 See American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1964, p. 293.

peoples behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains. But we could not accept the Czech proposal. And we were pleased that the Special Committee found the Czech proposal unacceptable.

The primary reason why we opposed that attempt to rewrite the charter-apart from the inadmissibility of rewriting the charter at all by such means-was that we knew the meaning behind the words. We knew that, like so many statements from such sources, it used upsidedown language-that it would in effect authorize a state to wage war, to use force internationally, as long as it claimed it was doing so to "liberate" somebody from "colonial domination." In short, the Czech resolution proposed to give to socalled "wars of national liberation" the same exemption from the limitation on the use of force which the charter accords to defense against aggression.

What is a "war of national liberation"? It is, in essence, any war which furthers the Communist world revolution-what, in broader terms, the Communists have long referred to as a "just" war. The term "war of national liberation" is used not only to denote armed insurrection by people still under colonial rule there are not many of those left outside the Communist world. It is used to denote any effort led by Communists to overthrow by force any non-Communist government.

Thus the war in South Viet-Nam is called a "war of national liberation." And those who would overthrow various other non-Communist governments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are called the "forces of national liberation."

Nobody in his right mind would deny that Venezuela is not only a truly independent nation but that it has a government chosen in a free election. But the leaders of the Communist insurgency in Venezuela are described as leaders of a fight for "national liberation"-not only by themselves and by Castro and the Chinese Communists but by the Soviet Communists.

A recent editorial in Pravda spoke of the "peoples of Latin America marching firmly along the path of struggle for their national

46

independence" and said, ... the upsurge of the national liberation movement in Latin American countries has been to a great extent a result of the activities of Communist parties." It added:

The Soviet people have regarded and still regard it as their sacred duty to give support to the peoples fighting for their independence. True to their international duty the Soviet people have been and will remain on the side of the Latin American patriots.

In Communist doctrine and practice, a non-Communist government may be labeled and denounced as "colonialist," "reactionary," or a "puppet," and any state so labeled by the Communists automatically becomes fair game-while Communist intervention by force in nonCommunist states is justified as "self-defense" or part of the "struggle against colonial domination." "Self-determination" seems to mean that any Communist nation can determine by itself that any non-Communist state is a victim of colonialist domination and therefore a justifiable target for a "war of liberation."

As the risks of overt aggression, whether nuclear or with conventional forces, have become increasingly evident, the Communists have put increasing stress on the "war of national liberation." The Chinese Communists have been more milltant in language and behavior than the Soviet Communists. But the Soviet Communist leadership also has consistently proclaimed its commitment in principle to support wars of national liberation. This commitment was reaffirmed as recently as Monday of this week by Mr. Kosygin [Aleksai N. Kosygin, Chairman of the U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers].33

International law does not restrict internal revolution within a state or revolution against colonial authority. But international law does restrict what third powers may lawfully do in support of insurrection. It is these restrictions which are challenged by the doctrine, and violated by the practice, of "wars of liberation."

It is plain that acceptance of the doctrine of "wars of liberation"

23 This statement was made on Apr. 19 at a Mongolian-Soviet friendship meeting in the Kremlin. (Soviet News, Apr. 20, 1965.)

would amount to scuttling the modern international law of peace which the charter prescribes. And acceptance of the practice of "wars of liberation," as defined by the Communists, would mean the breakdown of peace itself.

Document I-7

Address by the President (Johnson) Before the Cook County Democratic Party, Chicago, June 3, 1965 (Excerpts) 34

"The American People Want No Part of Appeasement or of Any Aggression"

In this city of Chicago, 28 years ago, a President of these United States then described the condition of the world in these words:

Without a declaration of war and without warning or justification of any kind, civilians, Including vast numbers of women and children, are being ruthlessly murdered. . . . ships are being attacked without cause or notice. Nations are fomenting and taking sides in civil warfare in nations that have never done them any harm. . . . Innocent peoples, innocent nations are being cruelly sacrificed to a greed for power and supremacy which is devoid of all sense of justice and humane considerations.

The world did not heed the vision or the wisdom of Franklin D. Roosevelt when he called upon all peaceloving nations to join together to quarantine the aggressors. And those who loved peace above all else lost their peace and all else.

That history need not-and that history must not be allowed to repeat itself full course again in our time.

The peace of mankind must not, and will not, be lost again.

If similarities are many between the worlds of 1937 and 1965, the differences are far more numerous.

34 Substantive portion of the address in the Department of State Bulletin, June 21, 1965, pp. 986-989.

36 Address by President Roosevelt at Chicago, Oct. 5, 1937-the "quarantine" speech; text in Samuel I. Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt: 1937 Vol., The Constitution Prevails, pp. 406-411.

The peace-loving nations are not weak now as they were then, not lacking in will now as they were then. Educated in the adversity of a great war, tested in the trial of continuing danger, united in the face of ever-present peril, the peace-loving peoples have built strength in the 1960's that they never had in the 1930's.

That strength has one unmistakable meaning. For aggression there is no prize. At the end of the road of conquest, the only sure reward is sure ruin.

For 20 years we have applied what Abraham Lincoln said would be the great lesson of peace:

teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war. . . .

But there are other differences, too, between 1937 and tonight in 1965. The people of Communist countries are somewhat wiser too. While their leaders have chosen to close a curtain about them to keep out knowledge of the free world's peaceful intention, the people of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe really know, above all other peoples on this earth, what the cost and the catastrophe is to their homeland of 20th-century warfare.

The men and women of Russia, the men and women of all the nations of Eastern Europe, I believe, want peace and want the taste of its sweet fruits. And none want them to have peace more than do we, the people of the United States of America.

Between the great powers of East and West, there is no history of conflict on the battlefields of the past. Between the people of the Soviet Union and the people of the United States, there has been friendship and there can be greater understanding.

The common interests of the peoples of Russia and the peoples of the United States are many, and this I would say to the people of the Soviet Union tonight: There is no American interest in conflict with the Soviet people anywhere. And no true Soviet interest is going to be served by the support of aggression or subversion anywhere in the world. We of the United States of America

stand ready tonight as always to go with you onto the fields of peace, to plow new furrows, to plant new seed, to tend new growth, so that we and so that all mankind may some day share together a new and a bountiful harvest of happiness and hope on this earth.

Jefferson said of Americans: "Peace is our passion." And I say to you here in Chicago tonight-peace is our passion still.

In this Union and this hemisphere, in every region of this world, in every forum of nations, the United States is working for peace, and that work will never cease.

But as I have spoken to Communist countries, let me also tonight speak to the free world. I carry in my pocket, and I often read to those who visit the White House, some wise words that were written by a man of peace, the late Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammerskjold. The words are these:

The qualities that peace requires are those which I feel and believe that we all need today-perseverance and patience, a firm grip on realities, careful but imaginative planning, a clear awareness of the dangers-but also of the fact that fate is what we make it.

In the 1930's we made our fate not by what we did but what we Americans failed to do. We propelled ourselves and all mankind toward tragedy, not by decisiveness but by vacillation, not by determination and resolution but by hesitancy and irresolution, not by action but by inaction.

The failure of free men in the 1930's was not of the sword but of the soul. And there just must be no such failure in the 1960's.

So let us not delude ourselves again by the belief that peace can be secured by submissiveness or peace can be extended by expediency. Let us not adopt again the arrogance that peace is less important to the peoples of less important countries because they are distant or different from our own. Let us not return again to the impulsiveness which accepts as safe every promise of peace from the enemies of peace and rejects as dangerous every proposal for strength from its friends.

Persevering and patient, firmly gripping realities, proceeding in clear awareness of the dangers, let us proceed with the careful but the imaginative planning that is necessary to assure peace and justice and progress for all the peoples of the earth.

This is the course that we of the United States have chosen. And this is the course that we shall faithfully hold, for we believe that this course leads to peace in the world.

Let me make it clear to all here and all listening in other parts of the world that the United States seeks dominion over no people. Everywhere in the world we, the United States, seek decency for all.

Out among the earth's peoples Americans are working tonight as few peoples have ever worked before to bring learning and light, and health and housing, and hope to the family of man. Food from our fields is feeding 100 million people, including 70 million children. Medicine from our laboratories is saving the lives of many millions more, and I dare say there is not one citizen present here tonight who would have their country conduct its course otherwise.

George Washington once told us that we would have one option: "Whether to be respectable and prosperous or contemptible and miserable as a nation."

Today we are prosperous, as the able Senator [Paul] Douglas told you, more prosperous than any other nation in all the history of man. We have enjoyed 51 consecutive months of economic expansion-the longest ever known in any peacetime and the end is not yet in sight. Our people are happy. They are prospering. They are moving on and on and on, and upward. Just last year the number of families living on less than $3,000 income decreased by 18 percent and the number of families with more than $10,000 income per year increased by 22 percent.

But I must remind you that money is no measure of the moral force at work among Americans today. For we are committed by a broad and a broadening consensus to bringing brightness into lives where darkness dwells. We are committed to open

ing beauty to lives that are closed over by ugliness and guaranteeing the rights that God gave them to those man had forgotten.

The consensus within America tonight is a consensus of courage, and let none abroad believe that this consensus stops at the water's edge. For there is in our beloved America a consensus, a strong and a deep and an abiding majority consensus, that the world shall not walk again the road to darkness that led mankind into the valley of war 30 years ago.

The united will of the American people is itself the ultimate and the most profound difference between 1937 and 1965, and let neither friends of peace or foes underestimate the meaning of that unity. The American people want to be a part of no war. But the American people want no part of appeasement or of any aggression.

38

Let me say this to you: A man does what he must in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures-and that is the basis of all human morality.

Those words are not mine. They were written by the man whose great steps I follow-John Fitzgerald Kennedy. But I would want you to know that it is that spirit which guides me in all that I do.

For men, as for nations, the way of the peacemaker is never an easy way.

While all men hate war, they too often hate still more the discipline and the duty and the demands of acting to preserve the peace that they love. I am certain that this generation of Americans is willing to accept demands that are stern in order to enjoy a world that is safe.

For we know as all men must know wherever they live that, after losing peace twice in this century, mankind just must not lose that peace again, and it is the united will of all the people of our beloved America that it shall not be lost.

36 At this point of his address, President Johnson announced that he was ordering the withdrawal of all U.S. Marines in the Dominican Republic; see post, docs. X-16 et seq.