Commentary: The Governance of International Affairs

Commentary The Governance of International Affairs Charles Yost International affairs have, since the beginning of recorded history, been conducted in large part in the most haphazard, capricious, and often destructivefashion. There have been periods when strong empiresRoman, Chinese, Indian, British-have for a time successfullyorganized and maintained stability throughout extensive territories; but even these empires have usually carried on their affairs with societiesaround their peripheries in at leastas capriciousand destructive a manner as have smaller political entities. These empires have, moreover, all sooner or later collapsed. Most of mankind has long recognized the need for some measure of security and predictability within the political entity it inhabits, and has often been willing to submit to oppressive tyranny for the sake of domestic law and order. But men and women have rarely been willing to insist that their own nation conform to any international rules or restraints that might limit its sovereignty, its right to pursue what it perceived as its national interests outside its borders exactly as it saw fit. Eminent jurists have been elaborating codes of "international law" for several centuries, but none of these has had more than the most marginal effect. Even the much more concerted and elaborate efforts, made under the shock of World Wars I and 11, to create international institutions capable of This essay is an edited version of a paper commissioned by the Aspen Institute for its Wye Paper series on critical contemporary issues in national and international governance. It represents a final accountingby Ambassador Yost of the issues to which he devotedhis distinguished professional life. Charles Woodruff Yost joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1930. During his more than 35 years there before retiring in 1971,Yost served as Ambassador to Laos, Syria, and Morocco, as minister to Paris, and as Deputy High Commissioner in Vienna. He was a member of the U.S. delegations at Dumbarton Oaks and the San Francisco Conference which founded the United Nations, and of the Potsdam Conference in 1945.In 1964, he was appointed Career Ambassador, the highest permanent rank in the foreign service, and named by Richard Nixon as Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations. Following his retirement from the Foreign Service, Ambassador Yost was a lecturer inforeign policy at the Columbia University School of International Affairs, and a syndicated columnist for a number of daily papers. Charles Yost was a Special Advisor to the Aspen Institute, and coordinator of the Institute's activities dealing with Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and China from 1974 untiZ his death on May 22, 1981. Copyright of the Aspen Institute for HumanisticStudies 1981. 207 lnternational Security I 208 enforcing law and order internationally have not so far fundamentally affected the governance of international affairs. Wars between nations are occurring as frequently as they ever did. Despite nuclear weapons looming in the background, there is little more reason today than in 1914 to feel assured that an unpremeditated international crisis, occurring almost anywhere in the world, might not escalate into a much wider general war. "So what?" one may ask. Men and women have somehow been getting along for 5,000 years, during which civilizationat various levels has coexisted with this parlous international situation. Despite it, they have made extraordinary progress, economically, politically, and culturally. We may not be quite the finest flower of civilization that we think we are, but there can be no question we have made vast strides in many respects, particularly in the past two or three centuries. Why should we not content ourselves with moving forward more or less as we have done during those centuries without worrying too much about better governing what has so long proved ungovernable -international affairs? Human history has from its beginning been a spectacle of turbulence, war, appalling problems rarely resolved but gradually receding into the background as new ones overshadowed them. In this perspective, the tragedies of our century are neither novel nor desperate. Civilization has triumphed over much worse catastrophes. The nineteenth century after 1815was exceptionally peaceful. But because there was innovation at work in so many fundamental ways, one saw unusual disruption of established order. The twentieth century dawned just...