Page 552 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

552 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Secretary-General, Security Council and General Assembly. In the military field the
control of the United States government was complete and exclusive; in the political
consultations between US, UN and some TCCs the contacts were more frequent, while
on occasions the UN made various recommendations. In the final analysis however, a
large range of political decisions was taken by the US government alone.
According to his book of memories, the Secretary-General Trygve Lie proposed, on 3
July 1950, to set up an ad hoc body, the Committee on Coordination for the Assistance of
Korea, which should be composed of the ROK and the TCCs. The Committee would be
tasked to coordinate at the highest level the whole UN action in the Asian peninsula and
to reinforce the legitimacy of the international action. This suggestion, which apparently
found the favour of some Member States, notably UK, France, and Norway (the country
5
of the first Secretary-General), was strongly rejected by the US.
General MacArthur clearly took the view that the Unified Command had been given
a mandate by the UN to run the campaign, and that it was not subject to day-to-day
direction from the UN.
During a hearing before the US Senate he stated: “my encounter with the United
Nations was largely nominal ... I had no direct connection with the United Nations
whatsoever”. 6
Once it was established that a subsidiary committee was unacceptable to the US, it
became inevitable that political control would effectively lie with the US government,
because there was no other UN organ suitable for the task of political directives. This
situation necessarily flowed from the Charter intention that collective UN action against
a particular state taken by the joint consent of the permanent members. Once the Soviet
Union returned to the Security Council, that organ became clearly incapable of discuss
7
it. The General Assembly contained representatives of all the Communist states, and
was in any event too cumbersome body for such task.
As said, the Secretary-General appointed a liaison officer to the UN Command and
the US made regular reports to the Security Council in accordance with paragraph 6
of UNSCR 84. The US used this practice to provide information, rather than to seek
political guidance.

Administrative and Military Control
The operational control for the action in Korea lay with the United States, in her
capacity of UN Command.
The proposal for a Unified Command was made in a joint United Kingdom and
France draft resolution to the Security Council. The resolution, which was adopted by
7 votes to nil, 3 abstentions and one member absent, provided at the point 3 and 4
respectively:
- Recommends that all Members providing military forces and other assistance

5 Trigve Lie, In the cause of peace: seven years with the United Nations, Macmillan, London, 1954;
6 Military Situation in the Far East, Hearings before the Senate Committee on Armed Forces and Foreign
st
nd
Relations, US Senate, 82 Congress, 1 Session, pt. 3, page 1937;
7 Bowett D. W., UN forces, a legal study, Praeger, New York, 1964, p. 41;