Dec 18, 2019 2 min read

Christian Science Monitor

It is hard to recall a year in which the United Nations made less impression on world thinking than that just ending. The 24th session of the General Assembly has now come and gone, having wielded almost no influence on world events and without having taken up, in any effectively decisive manner, any major problem.

Those who, like this newspaper, strongly believe in the need for such a world organization, must hope that next year’s 25th anniversary celebrations will impel the United Nations into greater activity and effectiveness. The problems to be solved, the needs to be met, the understanding to be fostered, the tensions to be exercised are as great as ever. We are sure also that the world as a whole still looks upon the world body as today’s most visible token of international cooperation and progress.

Clearly, though, the moment has come for stocktaking. Why has the United Nations’ influence waned? What can best be done to greaten its effectiveness? Two obvious steps commend themselves immediately.

The first is for the earth’s largest, mightiest and most economically powerful lands to make better use of the world body in their myriad activities. They should call upon its its agencies, seek its advice and even defer to its counsel more often. A pattern has arisen whereby the United States deals with the world’s most urgent problems primarily on a second or third level and usually as a kind of interested onlooker. This was not the original intention, and ways must be found to bring the world body back into first line, active participation in earth’s sorest problems and biggest challenges.

The second thing required is for the smaller nations to bring a higher order of statesmanship and a more realistic outlook to the world body. It is understandable that many of these smaller lands feel angered and frustrated over the way in which the larger countries seem to ignore the farmer’s views and feelings. But their own contribution to the world’s deliberative body has too often been petty, one-sided and even pointless.