NATO and the Warsaw Pact: Intrabloc Conflicts

2 Colonialism and the Atlantic Alliance

25 At first blush, the topic of colonialism might seem out of place in a consideration of the Atlantic alliance. After all, the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty’s sole reference to colonial territories is article 6’s inclusion of “the Algerian Departments of France” under the alliance’s military umbrella.1 In addition, colonies (or non-self-governing territories) were not a main or even tertiary impetus behind the alliance’s founding. Yet colonialism was an important subject for the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), many of which constituted the world’s leading colonial powers.2 This chapter, which deals with colonial questions during 1945–1963 within the framework of the Anglo-American relationship, seeks to fill a gap in the scholarship on this important but heretofore relatively unexplored topic.3 Rather than addressing colonial issues within overall diplomatic relations between Great Britain and the United States, however, it will explore Anglo-American positions on questions pertaining to non-self-governing territories at the United Nations and relate those positions to the Atlantic alliance itself. Unlike the North Atlantic Treaty, the UN Charter contains specific and plentiful language regarding colonies and non-self-governing territories. In fact, chapter XI, titled“DeclarationRegardingNon-Self-GoverningTerritories,”isdevotedexclusively to that topic, laying out in two relatively brief but important articles the responsibilities of administering nations and setting forth the hope of eventual self-government for nations that did not yet possess it. Article 73 affirmed that the interests of the non-self-governing territories were “paramount” and instructed the administering powers to foster “political, economic, social, and educational development” in their colonies. To ensure that such development was in fact being advanced, section (e) 2 Colonialism and the Atlantic Alliance Anglo-American Perspectives at the United Nations, 1945–1963 Mary Ann Heiss 26 Nato and the warsaw pact of article 73 called upon the administering powers to “transmit regularly to the Secretary-General . . . statistical and other information of a technical nature relating to economic, social, and educational conditions in the territories for which they are responsible.”4 Significantly, no provision was made for the transmission of information on political conditions or progress toward self-government. Although the administering states had no quibble with the directive to provide the secretary-general with information on their colonies, they objected vociferously to the General Assembly’s creation in 1946 of the Ad Hoc Committee on Information from Non-Self-Governing Territories.5 This committee, to consist of one member from each of the eight administering nations and an equal number of nonadministering states, was empowered to examine and discuss the information that article 73(e) required the administering states to transmit to the secretarygeneral .6 After its establishment in 1946, the committee was renewed annually until 1949 and then given three-year terms in 1949, 1952, 1955, and 1958.7 Its creation and subsequent institutionalization signaled quite clearly that anticolonialism would be an important issue for the General Assembly and demonstrated the gradual emergence there of an anticolonial bloc, composed in large part by the 1950s and 1960s of countries themselves formerly classified as non-self-governing. The committee took its responsibility seriously. In addition to pressing for expansion of the types of information on the non-self-governing territories provided to the secretary general, the committee pushed successfully for the right to hear petitioners from those territories and to send fact-finding delegations directly to them. It also issued unrelenting calls for the administering states to set firm timetables for decolonization of their remaining territories. TheGeneralAssembly’santicolonialcrusadeadvancedfurtherinDecember1960 with passage of Resolution 1514 (XV) titled “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.” Approved with eighty-nine affirmative votes, zero nays, and nine abstentions, including the United Kingdom and the United States, the resolution dramatically expanded the United Nations’ interests in theremainingcolonialterritories.Instrident,almostmessianic,language,itasserted, “Allpeopleshaveaninalienablerighttocompletefreedom,”“self-determination,”and “theexerciseoftheirsovereignty.”Itdenounced“armedactionorrepressivemeasures of all kinds” designed to thwart nationalistic ambitions, and in complete contravention to prevailing British (and American) thinking it declared that “inadequacy of political,economic,socialoreducationalpreparednessshouldneverserveasapretext for delaying independence.”8 Resolution 1514 (XV) amounted to a declaration of war on colonialism and a de facto promise of UN support for indigenous independence drives. Furthermore, the lopsided margin by which it was approved indicated that theworld’sremainingcolonialpowers—andtheirsupporters—faced anuphill battle where colonial issues were concerned at the United Nations. The culmination of UN anticolonialism came almost a year later, in November [18.219.189.247] Project MUSE (2024...