>>Valley Patriot>>
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A Different View of History
Jeffrey Ryan
(in
the print edition of the Valley Patriot Mr. Ryan was
misidentified as Jeffrey Hart, we apologize for the
error)
 I was intrigued to read the
historical inaccuracies published in this paper under the
byline of my colleague, Mr. D.J. Deeb.
While I applaud Mr. Deeb’s courage of convictions, I
am concerned that The Valley Patriot would publish an
epistle that contained blatant misinformation. For one
thing, it is entirely untrue that the United Nations is a
“vision of global socialism.” The concept of
collective security on which the UN is based has its
historical origin in events that long precede its
founding in 1945.
While one could argue that the Delian League of Ancient
Greece was the first UN prototype, most scholars of
diplomatic history credit the writings of a Dutch
humanist who lived in the seventeenth century as the
inspiration for today’s United Nations. Hugo de
Groot, also known as Grotius, wrote in On the Law of War
and Peace in 1625 as the Thirty Years War was beginning
to ravage the European landscape. Grotius was a witness
to the horrors of that military cataclysm, which killed
off at least one third of the population of Germany and
left most of central Europe in unimaginable desolation.
The Dutchman’s book made a proposal for nations to
work together to prevent such a scourge from ever
punishing the continent again and laid the groundwork for
what, in the twentieth century, would be called
Collective Security.
Clearly no socialist, Hugo de Groot was a high-minded
scholar who offered a vision of a world without massacre,
depredation, and torture. His ideas were partially
adopted by the European powers to rein in the conquests
of Louis XIV, and the theme of Balance of Power that
Grotius so wisely articulated would later be embraced by
most modern nation states.
The Balance of Power collapsed in 1914 when European
governments discarded it and marched to war in the name
of honor and national pride. The end result was the most
ghastly destruction and mass death in the annals of
civilization up until that time. Most of the old dynastic
empires lay in ruins, having been laid waste by
slaughter, economic devastation and popular revolution.
After that so-called Great War, Woodrow Wilson, an avowed
anti-socialist, proposed the League of Nations as an
institution that would prevent another catastrophe
similar to the disaster of 1914. Obviously, the League
failed, but the Allies who crushed the fascists and Nazis
agreed that further attempts must be made to prevent
another world war, one that could conceivably
exter-minate this noble experiment called hu-manity. Mr.
Deeb mentions Alger Hiss as the key operator behind the
UN’s creation. While he was indeed the convener of
the first UN conference at San Francisco in the spring of
1945, his role in the actual plan-ning of the
organization was minimal at best.
His subsequent trial for perjury after he denied the
spurious spy charges of Whittaker Chambers was a mockery
of justice; Hiss has been exonerated of wrongdoing by any
historian of merit. After the opening of the long-secret
Soviet archives after the fall of communism, not one iota
of evidence was ever uncovered to corroborate the charges
against Hiss.
To this day, all of the so-called evidence against him
traces back to the delusional hysteric Whittaker
Chambers. Ann Coulter stills proclaims Hiss to be guilty,
but my colleague Mr. Deeb is much too intelligent and
perspicacious to fall for her amateurish drivel and
sub-standard scholarship.
Mr. Deeb correctly points to several world crises in
which the UN failed to stop in the past six decades. The
United Nations is far from perfect. What Mr. Deeb does
not mention, however, is the indisputable fact that it
has been effective in preventing a major world war
between and among the superpowers since its founding in
1945. He lists an array of proxy wars in the former
colonial world that erupted in spite of the United
Nations. He is certainly correct that the
anti-imperialist revolutions in such places as Vietnam
were not stopped by the collective security model.
There was one crisis he mentioned, however, that is worth
considering. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was
resolved by several factors, forces, and human
personalities; there is not sufficient space to analyze
all of them here. It is important to recall, however,
that United States UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson’s
confrontation with Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin was
one of the pivotal moments in that frightening and
nervewracking thirteen days. Stevenson’s dramatic
exposure of Soviet duplicity before the entire Secrity
Council was a serious morale blow to Khrushchev’s
regime and helped a great deal in forcing the Russians to
withdraw their missiles from San Cristobal without a
Third World War. Perhaps they would have backed down
anyway, but the fact is that the United Nations served a
crucial forum for the great powers to resolve their
differences peacefully.
As the Cuban Missile Crisis is often referred to as the
closest the planet ever came to nuclear annhilation, this
episode shows that, in reality, the United Nations saved
the world. We, therefore, owe that maligned organization
along the East River a profound debt of gratitude. Rather
than calling to knock down this noble institution as Mr.
Deeb would suggest, we would do better to work to help it
succeed in its worthy goals.
All nations must do this because, as President Kennedy
observed after the Missile Crisis of 1962, “in the
final analysis, our most basic common link, is that we
all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same
air, we all cherish our children’s futures, and we
are all mortal.”
Jeffrey R. Ryan, Ph.D. is a teacher
at the Department of History at Reading Memorial High
School. He is also a faculty advisor for Amnesty
International, faculty advisor, Young Democrats,
Massachusetts Teacher of the Year 2003, One of 100 Best
Irish Americans of 2004, Irish America Magazine, Chair,
Peace and Justice Committee, Episcopal Diocese of
Massachusetts, Steering Committee, Massachusetts
Coalition to Save Darfur.
*Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The December, 2006
Edition of the Valley Patriot
The Valley Patriot is a Monthly
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All Contents (C) 2006, Valley Patriot, Inc.
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