The Role of Law in World Politics

Abstract

On June 14, 1946, Mr. Bernard Baruch in presenting the United States Atomic Energy Proposals to the United Nations said: "We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead." He added: "We must elect World Peace or World Destruction." Today, less than three years later, it appears that mankind may have chosen death and destruction. From the perspectives of all people who prefer a democratic world order, with freedoms and with peaceful procedures as the primary instruments of social change, the proposals of the United States were most generous. The testimony of the best qualified experts is, furthermore, that these proposals would have brought the peoples of the world the greatest security against violence, aggression, and war that is technically possible. Though accepted and even demanded by an overwhelming majority of nations, these proposals were rejected by the small group of men who rule Russia and its satellites, and who view the world process as a fight to the death between two competing systems.