THE BERLIN BLOCKADE AND THE USE OF THE UNITED NATIONS.

UNITED States; BERLIN (Germany); GERMANY

This article focuses on the lifting of Russian harassments blockading access to Berlin, Germany, as of October 1971. In 1948, Russian harassments blockading access to the city were submitted to the Security Council of the United Nations by France, Great Britain and the U.S. as a threat to the peace within the meaning of Chapter VII of the Charter. In the spring of 1949 negotiations led to the lifting of the blockade but in 1959 the Soviets threatened to make a treaty with East Germany which, they claimed, would void the rights of the Western Allies. The Berlin crisis of 1961 was, perhaps the gravest East-West crisis of the postwar period. The U.S. by its advance commitment, and by its very submission of the Berlin dispute to the United Nations in 1948, had taken a risk that it would have to submit to an unsatisfactory solution. It is true that we had reliable and influential friends in the United Nations, but even our British and French allies might have pushed us into an uncomfortable corner. The Berlin dispute involved vital interests of the U.S. but there was no acceptable alternative to the United Nations. Apparently the Nixon Doctrine rests on the proposition that the role of the U.S. in world affairs is not that of the policeman of the world.