Felixberto Serrano

When, in the afternoon of 30 September 1954 [484th meeting], the representative of the Soviet Union, Mr. Vyshinsky, appeared before the General Assembly, he must have noticed that almost all representatives from the sixty member States of the United Nations were in attendance. The advance notice that he was to speak that day had bestirred the Assembly into unusual activity. What, may I ask, must have been the cause of this unusual interest and anxiety over what he had to say? A war-weary world, still bleeding from the wounds of the last global conflict and fearful of the fast-gathering clouds that hang over the surface of the earth, focused its rapt attention on the Soviet representative, hoping against hope that, against the background of so much political cynicism in the past, some words might drop from his lips which might blaze the way to the peace of mankind.

As he glided from one point to another, however, it became increasingly evident that he was following the old mould and the usual pattern of Soviet propaganda. Beyond his proposal for the solution of the problem of atomic and hydrogen weapons—the nature, extent and motive of which yet remain to be seen—he radiated no ray of hope, cut no new pathway to peace, and suggested no new method of approach or even a revised formula for solution of those problems upon which there have been long-standing deadlocks. On the other hand, he emitted fire and gall against the United Nations for its unwillingness to sanction a wrong and for its refusal to recognize the fruits of unlawful acts; he deplored its failure to meet effectively the problems of international peace and security attributable mainly to Russia's own intransigence; and he denounced collective systems of self-defence dictated purely by the supreme requirement of self-preservation and brought about under the compulsion of relentless acts of subversion and aggressive incursions of predatory neighbours. The representative of the Soviet Union holds nothing but contempt for the efforts of the United Nations to maintain world peace and security. By its repeated failures, said the Soviet representative, the United Nations has been prejudicing its international authority.

I do not propose to make here a detailed review of the achievements of this world Organization in the domain of peace, human freedom and social progress, to all of which the Soviet Union is a witness and rarely, if ever, a participant or contributor. Through direct action, mediation, or the exertion of its moral influence, the United Nations avoided unlawful interference in the internal affairs of Iran in 1946; it eliminated what was called "the annoying presence" of British and French troops in Lebanon and Syria in the same year; it protected Greece from further Communist incursions in 1947; it brought armistice to Palestine and independence to Indonesia; it averted the spectacle of bloodshed in Kashmir; and it halted the forces of aggression in Korea. We owe it to the constitutional elasticity of the Charter, supplemented by wise statesmanship, that the United Nations was able to overcome its organic weakness, and through the "Uniting for Peace" resolution [377 (V)], it succeeded in utilizing and applying its collective forces to halt aggression in Korea.

In addition, this Organization adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is certainly consoling that in this atomic age, while man, in his evil genius, has sought to unleash those cosmic forces which threaten him with total extinction, he yet labours—while he lives—to clothe life with honour and dignity and surround it with conditions and circumstances essential to its fulfilment. Lastly, the United Nations has brought the promise of a more abundant life to millions of benighted people who have long languished in darkness and poverty before the birth of the international trusteeship system. He must be a confirmed cynic indeed who cannot find satisfaction in these substantial achievements of the United Nations during its brief existence of nine years.

The United Nations certainly has not lived up to all our hopes and expectations. But it is a human institution and, like all human institutions, it must proceed by a process of trial and error. On the other hand, if the United Nations had failed where it should have succeeded—if it was unable to deal effectively with breaches of the peace or threats to international security—it must be borne in mind that the behaviour of the Soviet Union in some of its principal organs lies at the root of such failures. It is, indeed, most painful that condemnation of the failings of the United Nations should have proceeded from a source mostly, if not wholly, responsible for them.

When the founding fathers of the United Nations devised the system of permanent membership with the right of veto for the five Powers in the Security Council, it was in the happy anticipation that these big Powers would act with unanimity in meeting every problem of breach of the peace or threat to international security. None ever suspected that the Soviet Union—which shared with the other four big Powers both the burdens and the glory of a common victory in the last World War—would, in the task of building thereafter the peace of the world, block almost every effort of its former allies in the solution of the security problems of mankind. The record of the Security Council discloses that, to proposed solutions to many a vital problem of peace, the Soviet Union has invariably applied its veto power. Indeed, it has used the veto no less than sixty times, thereby reducing that organ, which was entrusted with the primary responsibility of maintaining international peace and security, to almost complete paralysis.

Mr. Vyshinsky, speaking for his Government, decried the formation by the free countries of the world of regional arrangements for self-defence such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the South-East Asia Collective Defence Treaty, signed in the capital of my country last month. Deliberately ignoring their expressed objective of self-defence, he denounced these regional arrangements as instrumentalities of aggression and, therefore, calculated to augment rather than diminish the existing world tension. I do not propose to speak on behalf of the European Defence Community more than to say that in the common danger that faces the free countries of Europe and the United States, these nations realized that in the pooling of their military and economic resources alone could they find reasonable assurance of security for their freedom, political independence and territorial integrity. My Government is immediately concerned only with the new multilateral defence pact of which it is a signatory.

My country is weak, but it is not blind to the danger to its national existence; it is small, but not resigned to its present impotence. For a number of years it was racked by Communist subversion, which broke into open defiance of the constituted Government in 1946. The effective use of military force alone, strengthened by a humane and courageous leadership, brought it under control. On the other hand, my country saw Communist China fast rising to its full panoply of power in the mainland of Asia and exerting its gravitational force on the surrounding regions. It saw and was astounded by the unexpected Communist aggression in South Korea and had in fact contributed its own limited resources and a part of the flower of its youth to the collective forces of the United Nations to suppress such aggression. It heard the disquieting plea by Thailand for a probing team to ascertain Communist incursions along its borders. It saw the grim sign in Indo-China and the danger signs, no less grim, in the other regions of South-East Asia. Even now, it watches with dread the ominous clouds that hang over its tiny island-neighbour of Quemoy, wondering what time or destiny holds for it in the few hundred miles of water that lie between.

Still bleeding from Communist rebellion within, and sensing that it lies directly in the pathway of a relentless Communist expansion, my country has no other recourse than to seek union with countries similarly threatened. Weak and defenceless by itself, it must seek its salvation by forging ties of common defence with those whose freedom is menaced by a like peril. This is the justification of my Government for its participation in the South-East Asia defence pact recently concluded in my country, which has been the subject of vitriolic attacks by the Soviet Union representative and other representatives at the Assembly. Self-preservation is still the supreme law for nations as it is for individuals.

Objection has been voiced here by the representative of India to a statement in the Manila Treaty with respect to the treaty area extending beyond the actual boundaries of the participants in the treaty, upon the ground that, by fixing such a treaty area, the members of the Manila Pact have in effect indirectly attempted to trespass on the territory of other States, and that, as a matter of fact, it goes beyond the clear implications of legitimate collective self-defence provided for in Article 51 of the Charter.

I cannot see any validity in this contention. The representative of India should know that, if the eight participants in the Manila Pact saw fit to fix a treaty area beyond the actual boundaries of its members, the only purpose was to provide a measure of the degree of imminence of the danger of any external acts of aggression which may be committed, so far as the actual members are concerned; and, whenever it has been determined by the members of the treaty that there is an external act of aggression against any area beyond, but clearly near, the actual boundaries of any of its members, they shall then be justified in engaging in mutual consultations with each other for the purposes of legitimate collective self-defence. That was and could have been the only intention of the eight signatories of the Manila Pact.

But collective self-defence was not the sole concern of my Government. No less overriding was our solicitude for the right of peoples to determine their own destiny. We believe that humanity cannot remain half slave and half free, and that all governments must rest on the consent of the governed. To the credit of the eight signatories of the Manila Pact, they solemnly declared:

"... in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, they uphold the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and ... they will earnestly strive by every peaceful means to promote self-government and to secure the independence of all countries whose peoples desire it and are able to undertake its responsibilities."

It is my view that, if the principle of self-determination had not been upheld by the participating States to the Manila Pact, my Government would seriously have hesitated to give it the seal of its approval. It is for this reason that we consider the Pacific Charter, not only as a companion piece, but also as an integral part, of the defence agreement.

It may be asked: How can a country reasonably complain when, by its dangerous activities, it has compelled other countries to seek safety in the consolidation of their resources for common defence?

It has been said that the plan for the so-called defence of South-East Asia is built on the notion of enlisting some Asian countries in a scheme to carry out armed intervention, and that it was aimed at hiding the special interests of the colonizers who wish to dominate that area. The Soviet Union representative said [484th meeting, para. 90]: "It is ... a perfidious scheme to set one group of Asian peoples against another." 

The accusation is none too complimentary to the South-East Asian signatories of the Treaty. It considers them willing pawns of the Western Powers in the promotion of their alleged colonial interests. The historic struggle for freedom of these Asian countries, and the firm stand they have always taken against the continuance of colonialism on any relevant issue before the United Nations, are adequate guarantees that they will not be privy to any scheme of colonial advancement by any Western Power. On the other hand, the accusation flies in the face of the contemporaneous history of the Western participants to the defence agreement. My Government knows of no colonial interest which the United States has to promote in Asia. On the contrary, after a successful experiment in democracy in my country, which theretofore had no parallel in history, the United States voluntarily withdrew its sovereignty. The United Kingdom has similarly granted independence to India, Pakistan, Burma, and Ceylon. By virtue of the Indo-China truce, France has agreed to the holding of elections throughout Viet-Nam, Cambodia and Laos to permit their peoples to set up a government of their choice which would be, of course, a faithful expression of their right to self-determination. If any signatory has other remaining colonial possessions in South-East Asia, it is the hope of my Government and the other signatories to the treaty that, in pursuance of the solemn declarations of the Pacific Charter, it will take such progressive steps as are necessary for the eventual emancipation of those subject areas.

True, some South-East Asian countries have not for the present seen fit to join the defence agreement. It is the hope of my Government that, in God's appointed time, they will. They cherish identical freedoms with us. They recognize the existence of a common danger to those freedoms. Our differences lie only in the appraisal of the imminence of such danger and in the manner of combating it. We trust, however, that these differences will narrow with time, and it is in this confidence that the Manila Pact has left the door open to our other Asian neighbours.

Our attention has once again been called to the necessity for peaceful coexistence between the Soviet Union and the free countries of the world. We are again told that only by recognizing the reality and importance of peaceful coexistence among States of diverse social structures and political ideologies can we expect to normalize international relations and establish the peace of the world on an enduring basis.

On the face of it, the plea for peaceful coexistence made by the Soviet Union and the allied Communist countries is by no means unacceptable to the free world. The essence of democracy is freedom, which necessarily implies tolerance of opposing systems or of antagonistic political or economic thoughts. I am quite certain that there is no desire on the part of the democracies to impose their political or economic concepts and ways of life upon any unwilling people.

The unfolding pattern of international communism, however, has disclosed conclusively that peaceful coexistence has been foisted on us as a peace formula, not for the aims that the phrase implies, but as a weapon of subversion and the ultimate domination of the world. More accurately, peaceful coexistence is, to the Communists, a euphemism for cold war or a camouflage for incursions into free areas to undermine their political and economic structures. Fortunately, the Philippines, in common with a large number of the other free countries of the world, is keenly alive to the sinister implications of this deceptive formula for peace, and chooses to rest its security on firmer grounds.

There is, however, one comforting feature in the speech of the Soviet Union representative. I refer to the draft resolution which he proposed [A/2742 and Corr.1], entitled "Conclusion of an international convention (treaty) on the reduction of armaments and the prohibition of atomic, hydrogen and other weapons of mass destruction", calling for the establishment of an international control system for the observance of the convention, on the basis of the proposal made on 11 June 1954 by France and the United Kingdom [DC/53, annex 9]. My Government does not propose to express its views on the merits of the draft resolution. All that it hopes to see is the day when weapons of mass destruction shall be completely eliminated from the armaments of States and when the new discoveries of man's genius shall be made available, by common consent, for the advancement of his comfort and happiness. My Government wants to view the draft resolution as a happy indication that the Soviet Union has not utterly shut the door to the solution of an issue upon which hangs the fate of human civilization. We take it to mean that the Soviet Union shares with the free world the dreadful recognition that, with free use of atomic and hydrogen weapons, there is no more survival for the victor than for the vanquished in the total annihilation that will descend upon all.

Let me close with a friendly reminder that, in present as in past Soviet Union proposals, deeds—I say "deeds"—not words will be the ultimate test upon which the Soviet Union will be judged by an anxious world.