Evening star., 1945-03-25
Big Nations Developing
Own BIocs Of Influence
Observer Sees Trend Toward
"Centering" of Power
By Omen L. Scott.

Dig powers, is more and more apparent.
This trend Is showing both in the polit-
ical and the economic fields.
Russia Is busy extending her sway In
Eastern Europe and later can be ex-
pected to show somewhat the same In
clination in the Far East. Great Britain
is seeking to cement more firmly the ties
with her empire and is striving to obtain
closer arrangements with the smaller
nations of Western Europe. The United
States is encouraging closer political and
economic ties among nations in this
hemisphere and intends, after the war,
to keep firm hold, directly or indirectly,
on strategic positions in the Pacific.
The trends now apparent are en-
couraged by the plan for a postwar world
organization agreed upon by President
Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and
Marshal Stain. This plan gives the five
big powers Of the world-United States,
Britain, Russia, France and China-the
power to veto any action taken by a
big power against little power or by
one little power against another little
power. u.s.
An almost inevitable result of an
arrangement of that kind is to promote
spheres of influence and blocs of nations.
For one thing, since all real power to
decide what is right or wrong is in the
hands of big power, the little nations
must feel it necessary to cuddle UP to
one or the other of the big powers.
Otherwise, at some time in the future
the big power might become irritated
by something little neighbor did and
might crack down. The big power then
could veto any action by the proposed
world organization.
Or, in the second place small nation
with designs on neighbor could assure
itself of support of its big power friend
and then act, assured that the big
friend would block any action by the
world peace machinery. Each little
nation will have reason to become q
satellite of big nation.
Then, too, in a third situation the
big power veto assures that any action
by world organization is likely to be
very slow and often might be held
up by power located in some remote
area. This means that even the big
powers, such as Russia, France and
Britain, are forced to seek alliances
outside the league in order to assure
prompt action in event of trouble. Such
set of alliances even now is taking
shape aimed at independent action
against Germany If she should get
strong again.
Thus, block arrangements and spheres
of influence are to be promoted, in all
probability by the new United Nations
organization. This is all too clear now
in the sphere being created by Russia.
The same trend Is even more obvious
In the economic field.
President Roosevelt hopes to float the
world to prosperity after the war on q
stream of dollars. He apparently ex-
poets that a promise of dollass will
induce Britain. Russia and France, for
example, to forsake nationlistie ven-
lures based upon their own economic
spheres.
Britain, however. Is insistent upon
a postwar system of empire preference
in trade. She also is insistent upon
retaining the basis for q system Of
currencies tied to the British pound.
Great Britain, despite lease-lend, is to
owe about s12,0Oo,OO0, 900 abroad after
this war and she feels that she must
be free to maintain exchange controls
and other controls while trying to work
out of her debtor position. Likewise,
she wishes to gain all of the advan-
tages that go with debtor position
when dealing with creditors who have
surpluses to sell.
Russia, of course, has a closed sys-
tenn of trade and will have after the
war. The state does all of the buying
and selling and there is no basis for
free exchange of the kind that the
United States processes to seek. Russia
of the nations in her sphere as closely
as possible to the Russian economy.
France intends to control her foreign
trade Latin American nations, in spite
of surface expressions of sympathy with
free trade, are planning to keep their
controls over exchange and their regu-
lations of imports The United States
is talking free trade for postwar but
this country is to have difficulty finding
enough goods and services to import to
cover the cost of goods and services
exported. Loans are planned on big
scale to cover up that problem for 20 or
80 years, If possible. One of the reasons
that other nations are planning to build
their own trade blocs is fear of COMPETE
ton from the United States with its vast
power to produce.
x y \
1t is notable that there Is far less
interest in Great Britain, France, and
Russia in plans for world political and
economic machinery than there is in the
United States. The British are deeply
interested in the fact that the United
States now is committed to political In
tervention in Europe, but their publica-
tions show relatively mild interest in
the proposed new United Nations polit-
ical league and in the various interna-
tional plans for stabilizing crrrencies,
creating world bank, regulating avia-
ton development and for other things.
There is more interest in working out
regional or empire arrangements.
All of this suggests that in spite of
talk of plans for world cooperation, the
real trend Is toward blocs and spheres
of influence, both political and economic.
The formula designed for centering all
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