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Position Papers. The Senate made it very clear, in the U.N. Participation Act of 1945, that the nation's U.N. delegate is not supposed to decide questions of policy. The U.S. delegation, says the law, "shall, at all times, act in accordance with the instructions of the President, transmitted by the Secretary of State."
Lodge's instructions flow from the State Department's Bureau of International Organization Affairs, headed by Assistant Secretary Francis O. Wilcox. For any U.N. question that can be foreseen, the Wilcox Bureau prepares "position papers," checks them out with other federal agencies concerned—Defense Department, Atomic Energy Commission, etc. After approval by Dulles and Eisenhower, a position paper becomes a statement of U.S. policy. In keeping with this written policy, Wilcox & Co. draft explicit instructions; if they call for introduction of a U.S. resolution, a draft is included.
But Lodge is no mere technician carrying out instructions. As a member of the Cabinet and a respected adviser of both the President and the Secretary of State, Lodge has a big hand in the shaping of policy. Furthermore, he can, and frequently does, get his instructions changed. He often tells Dulles—or in Dulles' absence, Wilcox—that the course decided upon in Washington is likely to stir reactions or encounter obstacles that the State Department had failed to take into account. Usually Lodge wins his point. Sometimes the "instructions". he gets from Washington are verbatim playbacks of what he wrote out himself. And there are also times when "things happen too fast to rely on specific instructions."
Separate'Tables. In carrying out his instructions,'Lodge does an effective job of arguing the U.S. case,'both in open debate and in the incessant lobbying that goes on at the U.N. between debates. He proved his mettle as a tactician early in his U.N. career when he had to defend the unpopular U.S. proposal for a "two-sided" (no neutrals) Korean peace conference instead of the "roundtable" (neutrals present) conference urged by Britain, backed by the Soviet bloc. A round-table conference, said Lodge, would resemble an old-fashioned Mother Hubbard dress, "covering everything and touching nothing." At the Political Committee showdown on the British resolution, Lodge lost 21 to 27, but the voting made clear that the British could not scrape up the two-thirds majority needed in the General Assembly, and the round-table plan got no farther. Once Lodge won that defensive battle, the rest was easy: the Assembly passed the U.S. two-sides plan 43 to 5.
Lodge has a perfect record of winning the big ones in the U.N. He won overwhelming U.N. endorsement of U.S. disarmament proposals despite fierce Soviet opposition. In 1954 he got a lopsided majority for a U.S. resolution to 1) condemn Red China for refusing to free 15 captured U.S. airmen, and 2) send Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold to China on a mission that eventually secured the air men's freedom. After the Soviet Union crushed the Hungarian revolt in 1956, Lodge mustered 55 votes for condemnation, even though the British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt had badly blurred the issue.