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General Andrew G. L. McNaughton
Canada and the United Nations
Ottawa is less than three hours from Lake Success by air, just overnight
by train. And the route from Canada’s capital to the headquarters of the a
United Nations is a well-travelled one, for the United Nations is very much
Canada’s business.
From the days of the San Francisco conference at which the charter was
drafted and signed, the United Nations has been the most important vehicle
of Canadian foreign policy. And even the failure, owing to the Soviet non-
cooperation, to create a system of universal security has not lessened Canada’s
belief in world organization. One of the nations largely instrumental in
bringing into being the North Atlantic Treaty, Canada nevertheless believes
that the pact is at best a supplementary and interim security measure.
In the long run, the United Nations must be made the strongest safeguard
against war, the best guarantee of world peace. If it is to be made to work, the
United Nations must be taken seriously. Canada is taking the United Nations
seriously.
Canada’s role in the United Nations has been important for a number of
reasons. Canada is economically and politically the strongest of the middle
powers. Its voice commands respect. Moreover, because it is a middle
power and not a great power it has no overwhelming temptation to place
considerations of national strategy before the broader claims of international
order and justice. Like many of the smaller nations Canada sees its national
security resting ultimately in a secure international order. Again, Canada, one
of the world’s great trading nations, has a special concern in all measures aimed |
at developing international economic cooperation.
During the war, Canadian scientists shared with American and British
scientists the responsibility for developing atomic energy for war purposes,
and Canada is rich in uranium resources. It was natural, therefore, that
Canada should be represented on the United Nations Atomic Energy Com-
mission, set up to develop an international scheme for the control of atomic
energy. On the Commission Canada’s General McNaughton played an
important part in the preparation of the three reports that embodied the
international control plan which finally was endorsed by an overwhelming
majority at the Paris session of the General Assembly. The plan had been
vetoed in Security Council by the Soviet Union but no other scheme has been
produced which would give the same guarantees against the misuse of atomic
power for military purposes and ensure its use for peaceful ends.
In January, 1948, Canada took its place on the Security Council. Besides
atomic energy and disarmament a number of critical issues were before the
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