Advisory Committee on Problems of Foreign Relations

The Advisory Committee on Problems of Foreign Relations was a committee created by Secretary of State Cordell Hull on December 27 1939, to examine "overseas war measures." It came about after Leo Pasvolsky, Hull's assistant, wrote a memorandum urging such a committee concerned with "problems of peace and reconstruction" that would review fundamental principles of a "desirable world order." It was the first of many such committees that Hull would create, reorganize, rename or abolish. Successors included the Division of Special Research and the Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy.

Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles was chairman of the fifteen member committee, which included several people from outside the state department. Pasvolsky headed the economics subcommittee. The committee came up with tentative ideas about a world organization, reviving some aspects of the League of Nations design. The sketch included an "Executive Council" and a "General Assembly" with different powers, but the League's principle of unanimity was to be replaced by some type of majority rule. The organization was envisioned to be based on nine regional blocs represented in the assembly, and with an independent police force. When the phony war in Europe became a real one, the committee was sidelined.

References

• Hilderbrand, Robert C. (1990). Dumbarton Oaks: The Origins of the United Nations and the Search for Postwar Security. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-1894-1.
• Schlesinger, Stephen E. (2004). Act of Creation: the Founding of the United Nations: A Story of Superpowers, Secret Agents, Wartime Allies and Enemies, and Their Quest for a Peaceful World. Cambridge, MA: Westview, Perseus Books Group. pp. 35–36. ISBN 0-8133-3275-3.