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71 Problems between the United Nations and NATO members continued to be a staple of the Cold War, with the Soviet bloc eager to complicate the relationship at every opportunity. The Anglo-French intervention in egypt in 1956 drove a schism in the alliance, with the United States and most of the smaller allies separating from their major partners. The Congo crisis of 1960 drove a wedge once again into the alliance, this time between the United States on one side and Belgium, encouraged by the British and French, on the other. Unlike Suez, the chasm between the allies caused by the Congo crisis was not as wide; and the UN’s creation of peacekeeping forces in both instances helped to bridge the gaps. The longer conflict in Southeast Asia that could be traced to the end of World War II came into focus in the mid-1960s. On this issue the United States was the party on the dock. Its allies, though alienated by the violence and worried about its impact on the alliance, expressed their dissent without having to cast votes in the UN Security Council or General Assembly. There was no UNeF or ONUC to provide a UN blanket to cover up the differences. The UN was a peripheral player in this long-drawn-out war. The penultimate act took place on March 8, 1973, when an international peace conference on Vietnam met in Paris. The UN secretary-general was invited to attend those meetings so that they could be held in his presence and recorded in the final act.1 But neither NATO nor the UN was to be seen, two years later, as the last Americans left Saigon under the gun of the victorious North Vietnamese. Yet the United Nations and its secretarygeneral , the Burmese diplomat U Thant, were always present, though behind the scenes. While the United States emerged as the offending party in this war, the Johnson administration was usually anxious to present its case before the world organization. 4 The Vietnam War, 1961–1965 NATO and the UN / 72 U Thant as Secretary-General Arguably, had hammarskjöld been in office in the mid-1960s the role of the United Nations in the Vietnam conflict might have been different. his prestige might have brought the belligerents to the peace table before 1973. But a counterfactual historian could also envision more divisions within the alliance if the secretary-general had pressed the United States for greater effort to end the war and urged NATO europe to distance itself from the senior ally. hammarskjöld had the personality and the energy to impress his stamp upon international disputes in a manner that his successor, the Burmese diplomat U Thant, was unable to do. Although U Thant may have judged the belligerent parties much the same way, there was a basic passivity, a reluctance to impose himself, that reflected a Buddhist temperament. he was a devout believer in the Teravada form of Buddhism, whose tenets emphasized both detachment and equanimity.2 These qualities were necessary in abundance when Thant assumed office. Soviet hostility to hammarskjöld over his policies in the Congo led the USSR after his untimely death in 1961 to support a troika, in which each bloc—NATO, the Warsaw Pact members, and the Asia-Africa alignment—would have a veto. U Thant and the new majority of emerging nations along with the United States and the West all opposed this scheme. For the new nations the General Assembly of the United Nations was their seat of power, and any effort to dilute its role was unacceptable to them. Given the newly empowered voices of the African-Asian bloc in the General Assembly, it was hardly surprising that hammarskjöld’s successor would be chosen from that group. No matter how unhappy the Soviets were with the assertiveness of his predecessor, they lacked the votes and the incentive to prevent an Asian from becoming secretary-general. Both NATO and the Warsaw powers had reasons to appease the new majority. had France and the Soviet Union not been opposed to Tunisia’s Mongi Slim, his moderating influence in the Congo crisis would have made him a perfect candidate. U Thant, then Burmese ambassador to the UN, favored his appointment. U Thant himself was an acceptable second choice. With experience as a teacher and lawyer in Burma, he was also an intimate of that country’s first prime minister, U Nu. As a diplomat he...

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