Conversations in a mansion: designing the UN

UN Chronicle, Sept, 1994 by Harold Fruchtbaum

Using a gavel made of wood from the USS Constitution, the American warship of 1797 known as "Old Ironsides", United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull rapped the inaugural meeting of the Dumbarton Oaks Conversations to order. The high-level civilian and military representatives of the Soviet Union (USSR), the United Kingdom and the United States had gathered on 21 August 1944 in the mid-morning cool of Dumbarton Oaks, a Washington D. C. mansion set in gardens amidst a landscaped park, to begin informal discussions about detailed proposals to establish a general international organization for maintaining peace and security following the Second World War.

Built in 1801 and expanded after 1920 to house the owner's collections of art and books, Dumbarton Oaks had been given to Harvard University in 1940 for use as a research library and museum. The estate provided the seclusion and tranquillity in war-driven Washington that the scheduled Conversations needed.

Speaking for United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and himself, Mr. Hull welcomed the representatives and said: "It is our task here to help lay the foundations upon which, after victory, peace, freedom, and a growing prosperity may be built:" The success or failure of the proposed institution "will depend upon the degree to which the participating nations are willing to exercise self-restraint and assume the responsibilities of joint action in support of the basic purposes of the organization". Similar views were expressed by the leaders of the Soviet and British delegations, Ambassador Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko and Sir Alexander Cadogan, respectively.

During the previous months, the momentum of the Allied armed forces on all war fronts made it imperative that decisions be taken toward fulfilling the commitment of China, the United Kingdom, the United States and the USSR in the Moscow Declaration of Four Nations on General Security of 30 October 1943 to found such an organization "at the earliest practicable date". The liberation of city after city in Europe and the scale of devastation underscored the need to plan for the postwar era. Discussions and the exchange of working papers among American, British and Soviet officials early in 1944 quickened the process. Concern about the design of the postwar world was also expressed by the Governments-in-exile of Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway.

By the end of May 1944, procedural arrangements for the Dumbarton Oaks Conversations were under way. Committees of experts in the United States Department of State, building on more than three years of earlier study, worked for several months drafting the tentative proposals that became the working paper of the Conversations.

Since the Soviet Union was not officially at war in the Far East, and given the reports of its strained relations with China, delicate negotiations brought agreement that Conversations would take place in two phases. The United Kingdom and the United States would first meet with the Soviet Union and then with China. Phase one from 21 August until 28 September was immediately followed by phase two from 29 September to 7 October.

The "Proposals for the Establishment of a General International Organization"--the agreed recommendations of the four delegations--were made public on 9 October. With refinements and additions, the Proposals would serve as the basis for discussions at the San Francisco Conference, which began on 25 April 1945 and ended two months later with the signing of the UN Charter on 26 June. Nevertheless, the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals left a number of open questions, such as territorial trusteeship, which had received little discussion, and voting in the Security Council, a vexing issue at the Conversations. These and other matters, including the organization's initial membership and the drafting of the statute for the international Court of Justice, remained, but in the heady atmosphere of victory and the promise of peace and postwar cooperation, all seemed achievable.