Hammarskjold: Have Troops, Will Travel

The Congo was doomed to explode. western journalists and diplomats watched in dismay as Indepen-DANCE called down a dark orgy of rape and pillage. Yet the West, which had hectored Belgium for its colonialism and urged speedy freedom for the unready Congo, was paralyzed by the chaotic realization of its demands. The anti-colonialists had nothing at hand to fill the vacuum, and so the problem of the Congo passed by default to the boneyard of Western diplomacy, the United Nations.

If the West was caught with its plans down, UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, characteristically, was not. The cool Swede had foreseen that Black Africa might become a ward of the United Nations, and had planned accordingly. When a call for assistance from the Congo’s parliament was bucked from Washington to UN headquarters, he used his authority under Article 99 of the UN Charter to summon the Security Council into emergency session. From the beginning, the intervention that followed was a Hammarskjold operation.

RW

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Richard Whalen

The Congo was doomed to explode. western journalists and diplomats watched in dismay as Indepen-DANCE called down a dark orgy of rape and pillage. Yet the West, which had hectored Belgium for its colonialism and urged speedy freedom for the unready Congo, was paralyzed by the chaotic realization of its demands. The anti-colonialists had nothing at hand to fill the vacuum, and so the problem of the Congo passed by default to the boneyard of Western diplomacy, the United Nations.

If the West was caught with its plans down, UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, characteristically, was not. The cool Swede had foreseen that Black Africa might become a ward of the United Nations, and had planned accordingly. When a call for assistance from the Congo’s parliament was bucked from Washington to UN headquarters, he used his authority under Article 99 of the UN Charter to summon the Security Council into emergency session. From the beginning, the intervention that followed was a Hammarskjold operation.