U.N. MARKS 50TH ANNIVERSARY WITH UNCERTAIN FUTURE

This past week marked the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. Founded in 1945, the establishment of the UN, even before V-J day, still two months off, represented the fondest hopes of well-intentioned internationalists who sought a means to resolve mankind's disputes short of war. It was one in a series of bold, enlightened, bi-partian, internationalist moves by the administration of President Harry Truman, who had ascended to the office just a few months earlier on the death of President Franklin Roosevelt.

Recent world history had been grim beyond measure. The 31 years between the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the end of World War II saw the rise of totalitarian states. Those same years had also seen the catastrophe of total war visited upon untold millions, including millions of innocent civilians. No century had ever been as bloody as the 20th. Surely an international organization devoted to discussion, debate, communication and where necessary, armed, collective security would be preferable to the rule of brute force. As Winston Churchill had phrased the issue, "Jaw, jaw is better than war, war.'

How has the reality of 50 years' experience measured up to the hopes of UN founders? Well, as with most human affairs, the UN has always been a decidedly mixed bag.

From the start it was hobbled by difficult realities. As one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, the former Soviet Union could veto significant UN action from the get-go. Recall in 1950 that it was only because the Soviet ambassador had stormed out of a security council meeting that the remaining members were able to push through a resolution authorizing armed, collective UN action in defense of South Korea. This early success was made all too rare when the Soviets didn't repeat that mistake.

The UN's darkest days may have been during the 1970s, what some have called, like the 1930s before it, a "low, dishonest decade." It was during this period that the great British historian Paul Johnson wrote scathingly of the UN:

"... the United Nations, which in a non-violent world might be a useful forum in which genuine difficulties could be resolved by argument and negotiation, has become a kind of Roman arena, in which the advanced nations of the West are hunted, in the expiation of largely imaginary crims, past, present and to come. Or to vary the metaphor, we can use the expression of the former American ambassador to the UN, Daniel Moynihan: `The inmates have taken over the lunatic asylum.' In a world where real distinctions are derided, knowledge assassinated and the most fundamental principles of civilization assaulted, we must not be surprised to find that the United Nations ... should have become the World Theatre of the Absurd, a global madhouse where lunatic falsehood reigns and the voices of the sane can scarcely be heard above the revolutionary and racist din. Heart of Darkness, indeed!"

Largely owing to forthright American leadership, the UN emerged from this trough of despond. The 1980s not only saw the end of international communism and the collapse of the Soviet empire, they ushered in a period when armed, collective action by the UN can at least possibly be worthwhile. Here, the leadership of President George Bush and the UN-led coalition that whipped Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War of 1990-'91 is the model.

Subsequent UN failures from Somalia to Bosnia and beyond have brought Americans to renewed wondering about the UN's role. The American people have no enthusiam for UN adventurism around the world where our vital interests are not at stake. We are not willing to send our sons to fight and die under blue-helmeted, foreign UN commanders.

At 50, the UN remains a mixed bag: Too useful, at its best moments, to abandon; too exasperating, at its worst, to be the object of much hope in a world still governed by the brutal realities of power. We'll probably just muddle on, much as we have the last 50 years, during which there have been no world wars. If the UN can claim some credit for that fact, then exasperating as it is, it may have been worthy of its founders' dreams.