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3 14/54: Reel 3, Track 2, Page 1 DR. OPPENHEIMER: Would it be absurd to ask the question whether the system of regional and topical alliances which have been built up hasn't taken so much of the reality of international affairs--taker up so much of the reality of international affairs-that it would be worth re-arguing what the func- tions of something like the United Nations might be. NATO certainly has a substantial and intelligible quality that the UN doesn't have. MR. ACHESON: What would you say its utility is now, if you are striking a balance? We 've talked about some of the reasons why it isn't useful. Is the fact that it brings us together with the Soviet group useful or not? I should think it was not terribly useful. DR. OPPENHSIMER: Well, it was useful for George to see Malik, but that perhaps could have been arranged without the United Nations. MR. NITZE (?): I wouldn't say that that was the prime use. I should say the prime use NAMAN is having an official group which can register a moral consensus. $ and Certainly at the time of the Korean invasion-this was just of immense US importance, to have an official group which could render a moral consensus. MR. JESSUP: And along that same line it seems to me that if you do, or when you do, have showdowns with the Soviet Union, at that point you would always want to rally this moral consensus. If you didn't have the UN, through which you were working toward that, it would be extremely difficult ad hoc to create that. And I think in lesser proportion and in less critical moments you've got some of the same thing. It's an easier way, really, to do some of the business which involves people all around all the countries than it is to do it on a purely voluntary MR. NITZE: I was much impressed with a remark that John Dickey made a little while ago when he was describing a speech he had to give out in San Francisco or Los Angeles to a very hostile audience about the UN. And the argument that he advanced was that, after Pearl Harbor, the first thing that the generals insisted upon with Mr. Rossevelt was that we get busy, that the