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Show ilLi 1 i A fc ieltinJ lite JeadfineJ 1 Both Congress and the United Nations have at least one thing in common at the moment. They are both in recess. And if some U.S. congressmen feet at times that the U.N. intrudes upon U.S. sovereignty, it will appear to be the other way around when Congress Con-gress returns this month and concerns con-cerns itself with the U.N. in a way that it has rarely done before. be-fore. Congressmen, angered by repeated re-peated U.N. failures to act toward to-ward the Communist world as it does against the Western "colonialist" powers, are determined deter-mined to seek fullscale investigations investiga-tions of the U.N.'s policy in the Congo and Katanga and of the U.S. financial commitment to the U.N. Moreover, where in the past, congressional critics of the U.N. have tempered their criticism of the U.N. in the realization that it still enjoyed the people's confidence, confi-dence, they now know that they would be riding a politically popular tide of skepticism. The U.N. is under attack in a way that it has not been in the 16 years since its founding in 1945. And worse, the U.N. is being be-ing freely, sarcastically and disturbingly dis-turbingly compared to the old League of Nations, for its failure to pacify the Congo, its attack on pro-Western Katanga, its failure even to vote censure of India for its seizure of the three Portuguese Portu-guese enclaves and for its disinterest dis-interest in Indonesian threats to seize Dutch New Guinea. The U.N. crisis over the new aggressiveness of the underdeveloped underdevel-oped nations, the Congo jumble, Berlin "crisis" and Asian turmoil is disturbingly similar to the 1936 atmosphere that doomed the League of Nations. Sukarno. The polls show that most Americans still back the U.N. in contrast to those who had lost faith in the League. But the number of those Americans urging urg-ing the U.S. to abandon the United Nations is also growing. All of this comes in sharp contrast con-trast to the flush of postwar "One Worldism" in 1945, in which the United Nations was almost universally hailed as "Humanity's Hope," which in many ways it still is. But the U.N. has only hurt itself it-self and its peacemaking capacity by its failures as did the League. The U.N.'s utter failure to act during the Hungarian revolt was probably the most critical turning turn-ing point in its history. Since then, the U.N.'s few successes have been outweighed by its shortcomings and failures. Its present "crisis of confidence," following even Nehru's disdain for the U.N. and the U.N.'s failure to cope with an insulting Khrushchev Khru-shchev have dealt hard blows to its prestige. In the past, the U.S. has based much of its foreign policy on the U.N. cornerstone. The thwarted Cuban invasion, in which President Presi-dent Kennedy proclaimed a hemispheric "go-it-alone" policy may have been a U.S. turning poniintit ailuekth-shrdiaetloun point in its ties to the U.N. ,Since then, the Kennedy Administration's Ad-ministration's Chester Bowles has even declared that we will follow a "go-it-alone" policy in the Congo and Southeast Asia if the U.N. cannot prevent a Communist ascendancy there. We will continue to work through the U.N. wherever possible, pos-sible, but not rely on it. The US will continue to woo and hope to win the "Neutralists," but will be prepared to use military mili-tary force, wherever it is felt necessary, as the "Neutralists themselves have now done. The U S will continue efforts to keep the U.N. solvent by underwriting U.N. Bonds. We will strive to have an effective voice in the U.N., which is a chief reason why President Kennedy wanted Adlai Stevenson to shun the Illinois Illi-nois Senate race to stay on as U S. Ambassador to the U.N. But the U.S. is also determined to become more self-reliant, develop de-velop more freedom of action in world affairs, increase its own military readiness and strengthen strength-en NATO, CENTO, SEATO and the other alliances. Congress will be a key to all of this. The Common Market West European economic bloc is becoming the key to NATO as well as overall allied global strategy stra-tegy Our economic ties to such countries as Japan are cornerstones corner-stones of our mutual military links. The League fell apart over Japan's unpunished invasion of China, just as all Asia is again aflame. The U.N. has taken absolutely ab-solutely no meaningful action against Red China's brutal oppression op-pression of Tibet. The crisis in Laos is virtually ignored by the U.N. The U.N. has done nothing to stem the danger of another Korean War in South Vietnam. Nehru's violent abandonment of non-violence in seizing the Portuguese Por-tuguese enclaves exposed the U.N.'s helplessness. Indonesia's Sukarno threatens to use violence vio-lence against the Dutch with impunity. im-punity. In Europe, the old League fell apart over its failure to halt Hitler's Germany, just as the U.N. has failed to liberate enslaved en-slaved East Europe, provide Central Cen-tral European security against aggression and as it has evaded action from the very beginning on the whole German problem and Khrushchev's threat to Berlin. Ber-lin. But it was the League's utter This strategy of strengthening our military ties economically will also be what Congress will be voting for or against when it acts on President Kennedy's controversial con-troversial trade policies, which he has made a first order of business. Tariff-cutting may or may not be the answer. But a statesmanlike, intelligent, constructive con-structive approach is essential. failure to prevent Mussolini s aggression ag-gression against Ethiopia that hastened its complete collapse a full four years before the Second Sec-ond World War, just as the U.N. is on the verge of collapse in the Congo, unable to bring freedom and justice to Angola, end racial oppression in South Africa, pacify paci-fy the Arab-Israeli crisis, or terminate ter-minate the Algerian rebellion. President John F. Kennedy, who as a perceptive Harvard youth, saw what was happening to the League, must now be grimly grim-ly aware of the fatefull parallels that can be drawn between Mus-solnii's Mus-solnii's African aggressions and the crisis in the Congo, between Hitler's Central Eupropean aggressions ag-gressions and Khrushchev's Berlin Ber-lin threat and between Japan's aggressiveness in Asia and those by Red China's Mao, Nehru and |