UNITED NATIONS—In the China vote in the United Nations all the ambiguities and uncertainties of America as power broker were painfully evident. It is a role that shames the America that once stood before the world as the last best hope on earth.
To play the power game you must play for keeps and not threaten to pick up the marbles if you lose. The loud threats coming out of Washington to cut down the U.N. are the childish reaction of a loser frustrated because he did not get his way. It is symptomatic of a developing and dangerous trend toward retreat and seclusion.
The power game as played in the U.N. has reduced that unwieldy body to virtual impotence. In the warlike confrontation between Indian and Pakistan, a crisis of far greater magnitude than China, the U.N. sits silent and helpless. American policy suffers from a similar drift—approaching paralysis.
The sequence of trial and inertia is highly significant of the state not alone of the U.N. But of the big-power world. In July Secretary General U Thant sent a letter to the Security Council pointing to the growing likelihood of conflict between the two states—one Moslem, the other largely Hindu. Up to this writing no permanent member of the council has responded.
In the three following months Thant's warning has been shown to be a modest understatement. A war of shelling and guerrilla skirmish is already a fact on the border between India and East Pakistan. The seeds of growth to a full-scale conflict are in this irregular beginning.
The flood of refugees from East Pakistan into India is on a scale never before seen. The figure of 9,000,000, with a continuing flow of 20,000 to 30,000 a day, is accepted by those with good reason to know. It is a weight that India, oppressed by poverty and over-population, simply cannot endure.
I talked with a distinguished specialist in refugee matters just returned from Dacca and Chittagong in East Pakistan and the refugee camps in India. While he cannot speak for attribution, the report he gives of the scenes of despair he witnessed makes the news accounts pale by comparison. This documented with photographs of children at the point of death from starvation and disease that are more harrowing than the horrors of Biafra.
What then is to be done? No one here is this bankrupt organization is courageous enough to come out with the obvious short-term answer: feeding and medical help on a scale not yet contemplated. With arrears running into many millions, including debts owed by certain of the big powers, where the money might come from is another matter.
For the long term the refugees must go back to their homes across the Pakistan border. But, with martial law and an underground civil war, this looks impossible, short of the kind of intervention implying at least a degree of unity among the non-Communist and Communist powers. A week ago Thant, now a lame duck since his term expires at the year's end, sent a direct appeal to both India and Pakistan. Thus far there has been no response.
The impediments are great. India clings to a pretense that outside aid in any volume is unnecessary. President Yahya Khan of Pakistan trumpets the Moslem cause, with overtones of a religious war forcing out all Hindus. This is an echo of the fearful slaughter that followed British withdrawal in 1947 and the partition of the subcontinent into two states.
Whether an India-Pakistan war would mean a big power confrontation is conjecture. Despite all the billions in military and economic aid the United States has poured in, Pakistan today regards China as her best friend. Pakistan voted against the United States on the China issue. The Soviet Union has been drawing closer to India with military and other aid on a substantial scale. With relations already frayed to a breaking point between the two Communist giants war on the sub-continent could put them on a collision course.