117 



that the United States supports "voluntary agreement to remove the 

 veto from all questions involving pacific settlements of international 

 disputes and situations, and from the admission of new members." 

 (These were areas most hindered by Soviet use of the veto in the Se- 

 curity Council.) However, consideration of the resolution may have 

 reinforced the U.S. position of maintaining its veto power over mat- 

 ters of enforcement, particularly those involving the use of armed 

 force. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee report stated : 



Some advocates of Charter revision contend that the veto 

 should be stripped from decisions involving enforcement ac- 

 tion and the use of armed forces by the Security Council. It 

 should be pointed out, however, that such a proposal would 

 be vigorously opposed by all the great powers, who remain 

 unwilling to permit their troops to be thrown into action 

 without their consent, and by many other members of the 

 United Nations as well. Moreover, it is significant that it is not 

 enforcement action in a single instance which has been blocked 

 by the veto. 159 



Through this resolution, the Senate helped to clarify U.S. policy on 

 enforcement in the United Nations, but these principles represented 

 a divergence from Baruch's position on atomic energy questions. 



The Vandenberg resolution also paved the way for the United States 

 to take an active part in engineering collective defense arrangements 

 such as NATO, under the terms of Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. The 

 fact that the United States sought this kind of vehicle to ensure its 

 security and that of its allies marked a recognition by the United 

 States of a need for alternatives to the Security Council in this regard. 

 As expressed in the UNAEC negotiations, the U.S. position on the 

 security arrangements of atomic energy control placed a great deal of 

 emphasis on the Security Council as the' principal organ to deal with 

 questions of this nature. However, this position toward the machinery 

 for security matters seemed to undergo a transition, as indicated by 

 subsequent U.S. participation in collective -defense arrangements. The 

 development of collective security arrangements may or may not rep- 

 resent a possible alternative which was neglected in the effort to set up 

 machinery for security under atomic energy control. But it may in- 

 dicate a general trend which was casting the Security Council in a dif- 

 ferent role from that which seemed to govern the atomic energy 

 proposals. And as involvement of the Security Council demanded, 

 resolution of the question of how the veto would be used, the emphasis 

 on that body may have contributed to the failure of the negotiations. 



Given the existing political conditions at the time, it would be diffi- 

 cult in retrospect to determine whether a change of one or several fac- 

 tors or developments might have altered the results of the negotiations. 

 The complexity of the relationships among science, technology, and 

 diplomacy is abundantly illustrated through an examination of these 

 first efforts to control atomic energy. It is clear, from the perspective 

 of this study, that elements of both the diplomatic and technological 

 aspects of atomic energy contributed to the failure of the initial inter- 

 national efforts to control it. 



159 Ibid., p. 135. 



