The United Nations as the Venue for Space Cooperation?

The United States had in a variety of formal and informal settings tried to engage the Soviet Union in space cooperation in the 1959-1960 period, without success.7 One possible arena for early space cooperation was the United Nations. A 1959 Soviet-sponsored General Assembly resolution had called for setting up a United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and for convening a United Nations Conference on space mat – ters.8 But the Soviet Union had refused to accept the proposed structure of the new committee, and thus there had been no progress on space matters made within the United Nations by January 1961. Following up on President

Kennedy’s call for space cooperation in the State of the Union Address, Secretary of State Dean Rusk in a February 2 memorandum suggested that talks be opened between the U. S. ambassador to the United Nations, twice – defeated presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, and his Soviet counterpart, with the aim of moving forward on establishing the committee and conven­ing the conference. These steps, said Rusk, would make the United Nations “the logical place to discuss the types of cooperative outer space proposals included in your State of the Union Message.”9

After several weeks of discussion within the White House on how best to follow up the president’s speech initiatives, McGeorge Bundy replied to Secretary Rusk on February 28. Bundy suggested that in the four weeks since Rusk had sent his memorandum to the president, “events in the United Nations, and in particular the Soviet Union’s attitude toward that organiza­tion, have raised a question over here as to whether we really want to take active steps in that particular forum on this particular issue, with the Soviet Union, at this time.” Bundy’s feeling was “that the President would be reluc­tant to see us move in this direction now.” Bundy noted that the White House and the State Department had in the time since Rusk’s memorandum “agreed that Jerry Wiesner should be asked to take the lead in planning on the general problem of relations with the Soviet Union in this and other scientific fields.”10