Draft Chapter IV - Overall Report

November 21, 1957

# CHAPTER IV
## THE NATURE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CHALLENGE

### I

Sheltered by two oceans, absorbed in the internal conquest of its vast spaces, fortunate in the historical epoch in which it developed, the United States has never truly conceived of its international relations as an essential part of its national life. What have been to other nations matters of the most immediate and unmistakable importance for national continuity -- such as the security of borders, the making and shifting of alliances, the pressures of external markets -- have been taken for granted in the United States or considered as the result of shortsighted rivalry ahead. To us foreign events have always taken place at a certain remove, and foreign policy has been conducted with the serene conviction that whereas mistakes might be costly, they were not a matter of life and death.

Thus until the end of World War II we believed that the extent of our foreign commitments was entirely up to us. We tended to confuse the security of the oceans, patrolled by the British navy, with a "normal" pattern of international life. We took for granted the existence of other powers, more exposed to the vicissitudes of international change, who would serve us as outposts, identifying for us in plenty of time those international changes of potential danger, and holding the line while we assessed the meaning of events and mobilized our resources. Our foreign policy, with few exceptions, was defensive: our foreign objective was largely a desire to be left in our fortunate isolation.

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These fundamental premises of our international attitude have been shattered since the end of the Second World War. We have suddenly awakened to find the oceans shrunk, the independent outposts of nations no longer attuned to the sensitiveness of our interests, and the delaying of function of overseas allies no longer a reality. A nuclear age does not offer a period of respite following the identification of a threat, during which a parrying strength may be leisurely mustered. An electronic age, does not allow the closeted consideration of ideas which radiate with the explosive speed of light. The world has closed in on us, physically and intellectually.

Shaken by these changes, reluctant to admit the end of our valued insulation from the "outer" world, our reaction to the changed scheme of things has understandably been confused. At times we have risen to great heights of responsibility -- all the greater because they were so unprecedented; at other times we have failed to assume even a minimal share of our moral or material obligations. We have often swung between an excess of alarm and an insufficiency of concern. Our conduct has smacked of improvisation; if it has been elevated by good purposes, it has been made inconsistent by a lack of clear insight.

To a very great extent this quality of unsureness, of mingled vexation and resignation which has marked our foreign policy, is the natural consequence of our repeated but unsuccessful attempts to find a *modus vivendi* with the Soviet Union. At first eager to see in our World War II ally a government

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of good intentions and mutual concerns, we have been progressively disil-
lusioned about both the means and the ends of the Soviet government. The
result has been to identify the intransigence of the Soviet Union as the sole
source of the world's contemporary malaise. Much of American thinking about
the world, and not a little of its behavior, is based on the premise that if the
Soviet Union were somehow miraculously to be transformed -- if it overnight
became a democratic community -- that our international problems would be at
an end. It is this assumption that we must discard. That the Soviet threat
gives an urgency to world problems is as unmistakable as that its power con-
stitutes a major world concern. But the Soviet threat -- which we shall discuss
in our next chapter -- may obscure an even more basic fact which we must come
to see and accept. This is that many, if not most, of the problems of the inter-
national order would be with us even if the Soviet Union did not exist. We
are living through a revolution, which in its scope, its opportunities, and its
perils is without parallel in history. It is the nature of this revolutionary
transformation of our times which we must understand if we are to meet it with
an understanding of its aspirations, and a positive contribution to its destina-
tion.

II

To those who must live through them, revolutionary periods are, as
the word literally implies, a time of turning over. Violence and bloodshed,
assaults upon established ways of life and thought, calculated and sometimes

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even wanton destructiveness seem to characterize them. It is only to a later
generation that revolutions take on a different aspect, and that beneath the
surface turmoil can be seen the ultimate motive force of an idea or an ideal.

The revolutionary period through which we live is such a time. In
many quarters of the globe all that can be seen is restlessness, impatience,
a rejection of traditional ways and a fervid, and sometimes fanatical, search
for new ones. Yet in our time, too, an idea and an ideal can be discerned
below the surface disturbances. It is an idea and an ideal which has been
aptly epitomized as The Revolution of Rising Expectations. No one can at-
tempt to set world developments into historical perspective without under-
standing what this term means.

Until the nineteenth century, mankind accepted the view that poverty
and want were no more to be questioned than illness and death. In the
pyramid of each society some would be born to wealth or station or power;
a very few might rise there. But for the mass of mankind, a man's station
was fixed by tradition; the vast majority could hope at best for subsistence.

In the late eighteenth century the inevitability of this social order
was challenged and with it the validity of the political systems which main-
tained it. The philosophers of the American Revolution proclaimed the doc-
trine of political equality and of the inalienable right of _all_ men to life,
liberty and happiness. The French Revolution followed a decade later with
its clarion call of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. During the next century most

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nations of the Western World (with the notable exception of Russia) embraced these principles and revised their structures of government to encompass them.

The concept of equality was not, however, extended to economics. On the contrary, the economic life of society was considered to be outside the sphere of governmental action. The advocates of political reform saw their task in sweeping away the old mercantile system, which regulated enterprise by government charter. It was thought that the absence of political restraint would automatically produce economic well-being and that "the greatest good for the greatest number," would naturally emerge. Liberty was thus not a product of free enterprise; rather free enterprise was the product of liberty.

A generation later this line of thought was under attack and within another century it was in retreat. It was not a far step from the assertion of political equality to the doctrine that political equality without economic well-being was meaningless. The conviction grew that when there existed excessive disparities of wealth, the underprivileged groups would be unable to make any real use of their right of political participation. In their extreme Marxist form these views maintained that equality was illusory unless personal property was eliminated. Private enterprise was asserted to be a buttress of *economic* oppression just as royalist and feudal institutions had been instruments of *political* oppression.

Political philosophy had thus come full cycle: it had begun by postulating political liberty as a means of freeing economic energy, and it had concluded by asserting that the economic "liberty," in the sense of freedom from

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economic oppression, was a necessary condition for the preservation of
political liberty.

This doctrine might have remained only a matter of interest to philos-
ophers but for three factors: the growing productivity made possible by the
industrial and technological revolution, the great depression of the 1930s,
and the impact of two World Wars. Without these the new philosophy would
have been an idea, with them it became a potential reality.

The importance of the industrial revolution in giving substance to these
ideas is obvious. For all its initial rigors and inequities, by the turn of the
century, the industrial revolution had brought into view the technical possibility
of a more or less general well-being. The notion that industrialization could
first end extremes of want, and then bring about a general condition of near-
affluence became increasingly plausible. The "revolution of rising expecta-
tions" became a political reality because it became an economic possibility.

The economic possibility was translated into an economic urgency
by a second event: the great depression of the 1930s. Under its impact and
under the pressures of their electorates, practically every government was
forced to intervene into the economic life of its people. A minimum of
economic performance had to be guaranteed if their own continuance in office
was to be assured; and frequently this minimum of performance meant an im-
provement in the lot of the least favored strata of the economy.

And finally the movement toward economic improvement was given its
great impetus by the advent of two World Wars. Modern war is socialized

November 21, 1957

almost by necessity: its productive effort requires a substantial degree of government control and coordination. At the same time the suffering it entails can be sustained only by bright hopes for the post-war world. The greater the deprivation, the higher will be the expectations. Thus both the exigencies of economics and the necessities of social psychology tended further to advance the pressure for a massive planned movement toward human betterment.

As a result, at the end of World War II there was virtually not a government which was not actually engaged in an effort to meet the universal demand for better living conditions. In the United States, where aspirations were least frustrated, the revolution was felt at its weakest -- although it was unmistakably evident in such concerns as legislation for full employment, pensions, veterans education, and a renewed impulse toward racial equality, But in other nations, where the gap between reality and aspiration was larger, these aspirations took on increasingly revolutionary overtones. They swept in a labor government in Britain, and enforced new social programs in France, Germany and Italy. And in yet more frustrated countries the aspirations simply exploded. Such nations as China and Indonesia, Egypt and India are still wracked by their throes.

Thus the revolution of rising expectations has become a dominant current of contemporary affairs. Conditions accepted for centuries have come to seem intolerable. Change has been demanded -- within the existing social framework if possible, through a new social framework if necessary.

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This revolution of rising expectations is not a phenomenon from which America can stand aloof. It is peculiarly a challenge to some of the deepest American values. It was produced in the first place by the liberal doctrines of the West of which we were ourselves a product and an example. It was made possible by a system of industry which we have developed to its highest point. The challenge now is to demonstrate that expectations have not been raised in vain; that the aspirations of men may be satisfied in economics without denying them in politics; and that a great common task can evoke great common concerns.

III

This will be a staggering task. For the economic demands of the un-
developed countries are formidable in magnitude and complex beyond mere
size. Eventually what the aspiring nations need is an increase of national
product of the order of ten, twenty, or a hundred fold. But this enormous rise
in output must take place in a setting where the bare prerequisites of an indus-
trial system are often lacking: not only in terms of steel mills and rail lines
and ports, but as an absence of a trained labor force, and adequate market
system, a class of production-minded entrepreneurs. Further, the undeveloped
countries, despite their appetite for growth, usually do not have a digestive
capacity for large immediate doses of capital. An indulgence in too quick a
pace of economic expansion will burst the frail bonds of their economic systems
and cause growth to run amok as wild inflation.

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Yet these tremendous economic obstacles are perhaps less dangerous than the social and political problems of growth. Because the gap between reality and newly-raised anticipations of the future is greatest in the poorest nations, the government of an un-industrialized country typically finds itself astride a tiger. Having risen to power on the unleashed aspirations of the people, its leaders dare not slow down the pace of advance to the point where aspiration will turn to despondency or fanaticism. Hence they seek to achieve in the mere space of a generation or two a course of evolution which took two centuries in the Western world.

As a result of their enforced need to make haste -- and because they lack the social and economic foundations of a capitalist economy -- many of the new nations have turned to state capitalism or socialism as their basic form of economic organization. But essentially their dilemma lodges in the fact that *whatever* economic institutions are used -- those of free or public enterprise -- one cannot make much haste. The path of growth is a slow and tortuous one, undermined by population growth, hampered by bottlenecks of every kind, including not least those of trained personnel. The ascent of an underdeveloped nation's march, even under the best of conditions, is apt to be so slow that it is unnoticeable to the tired and disillusioned marchers. Its social climate thus hovers at the edge of an explosive unrest.

And so the temptation is great to stake all on one desperate effort. This may take the form of the Communist panacea which promises the millennium at the price of a liberty which means little to people who have never enjoyed it.

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Or it may tempt irresponsible or merely shortsighted leaders to seek escape from their dilemmas at home in adventures in the foreign field. Or yet again, the very precariousness of their situation may encourage struggling countries to ask for economic aid as their right, while spurning all conditions and safeguards to aid as an invasion of their national dignity. By asking for aid without assuming any reciprocal responsibility international relations can be demoralized.

Hence it is dangerous for us to assume that industrialization will automatically solve the problem of political stability, and that economic well-being of necessity will produce a democratic form of government. The experience of the Marshall Plan is deceptive with respect to the relationship between the two. In Europe the political upheaval had been accomplished; the institutions of democracy had developed over centuries; the bureaucracies were competent; the national consciousness was well-developed. The danger to existing institutions was the incommensurability between economic reality and the hopes of society. An improvement in economic conditions by allaying dissatisfactions was certain to have a stabilizing effect. It did not transform the social order; it simply improved the conditions of life. Where the political framework is not at issue, economic remedies can prove highly effective.

The situation is more complicated in the case of many of the newly independent nations. Here an institutional framework within which economic change can be accomplished is lacking. As a result three upheavals are taking place simultaneously: a revolt against the remnants of feudalism; a

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quest for political and administrative cohesion; and an attempt to raise the
level of economic welfare and education of the mass of the population. In
this situation economic progress, to the extent that it achieves the aim of
transforming the structure of society, will also produce political instability,
at least initially. As industrialization erodes the foundations of feudal rule,
the nature of the institutions which will replace it becomes of crucial impor-
tance. As the economy expands, it will require an increasing supply of talent.
The education and beliefs of this group will determine the fate of their countries.
The Communists have recognized this fact. They promise economic progress
only *after* the overthrow of the existing political institutions. They insist that
a political change must precede the economic one, meanwhile concentrating on
winning the allegiance of the relatively small group of trained personnel.

Thus the challenge of the revolution of rising expectations is political
and spiritual even more than economic. Unless we can assist in the creation
of institutions which embody respect for human dignity, economic advance may
produce a Frankenstein which crushes freedom. Unless we succeed in demon-
strating the relevance of democratic beliefs to the aspirations of peoples in
the throes of social change our economic progress may succeed in refining the
tools of slavery. It would be paradoxical if Communism which claims that
the economic structure of society determines all other aspects of social life
were to emerge as the apostle of the primacy of political and psychological
factors while the West, despite its religious and moral tradition, were to
stake everything on economics.

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IV

The world wide social revolution would be formidable by itself.

It receives particular urgency because of the explosive increase of the world's population. Ever since 1650 the world's population has been increasing at an ever accelerating rate, both absolutely and in terms of percentage increase. From 1940 to 1954, for example, the annual percentage increase was over twice the rate of the period between 1850 and 1900, and one and a half times the rate of between 1900 and 1950. Since the base of the population is ever larger, the rising percentage increase involves huge absolute increments. In the short space of 34 years (1920 to 1954) the absolute number _added_ was greater than the entire world population of 1750.

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If the present rate of growth is maintained the world's population will increase by a third in the next generation or by one billion. In another century it will have doubled; in two hundred years it will have multiplied five times to about 15 billion. All indications are, moreover, that the present rate of increase is accelerating. If the trend of the past half century is projected into the future, the world's population will double in the next generation, quadruple in a century and in two hundred years will reach the fantastic total of 191 billion or forty times its present size.

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The problem is made frighteningly acute by the fact that the rate of increase is greatest in the underdeveloped countries, where it is most difficult to assimilate increases in population. Advances in public health, which have produced a startling drop of the mortality rate while the birth rate remains relatively constant, account for this phenomenon. Its consequences are enormous. When industrialization began in Europe and the Western Hemisphere the relation of population to resources was much more favorable. In the New World, there existed and still exist virgin lands so that increases in population led to the settlement of new lands and the development of natural resources. In Europe the greatest increase in population occurred after industrialization had widened the economic base. In what is now considered the "advanced" part of the globe, industrialization and population growth therefore tended to reinforce each other.

It is different, however, in most of the currently underdeveloped regions, with the exception of Latin America. The contemporary agrarian nation is more populous in relation to resources than was the case in Western Europe in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century or in North America at any time. The enormous increments of population are thus being added to already large numbers. It is therefore extremely difficult to raise national income to keep pace with population growth, much less to improve the standard of living. If the population is increasing at the rate of 2 to 3 per cent a year, even a rate of annual savings of 10 - 15 per cent will probably do no more than maintain per capita income. Thus many under-

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developed countries will have to grow very rapidly simply to stay even. To improve the standard of living may require savings on the order of 20 to 25 per cent. Such a rate of savings is unattainable for most countries where the population pressure is most severe. At the same time these are also precisely the areas where rabid nationalism produces either a reluctance to accept foreign assistance or creates conditions which tend to discourage it.

The slower economic progress, the greater is political instability: a condition which in turn is fostered by another aspect of a rapidly growing population -- the predominance of youth in the population. In Algeria, for example, the age group between 10 and 24 represents 86 per cent of the population and in Egypt 65 per cent, while in the United States it is 38 per cent and in France 32 per cent. Since all governments are seeking to raise the educational levels of the masses the inevitable result is that dissatisfaction becomes more articulate and more organized.

Another consequence of the increasing pressure of population on resources is the intensification of rivalries between ethnic groups. Modern nations seldom contain populations that are uniform with respect to language, religion, race or customs; and these disparate elements seldom have equal social status and rarely are growing in numbers at the same rate. The Negroes and Indians in South Africa are increasing faster than the Europeans, and the Afrikaners faster than the English; the Indians in Fiji are multiplying more rapidly than the native Fijians; the Chinese in Malaya at a faster rate than the Malayans.

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As nationalism becomes more intense, the existence of these minorities comes to seem increasingly intolerable. They can be used as scapegoats for domestic frustrations; and when their ranks extend across international boundaries they are readily accused of lack of loyalty to the state in which they reside. When the minority problem becomes international it tends to exacerbate all tensions, while the solution most current today - the creation of new national states - rarely removes even the minority problem. New states seldom contain *all* of the ethnic group for whom they come into being or exclude *all* other groups. The paradoxical result of the creation of many new ethnic states has been to multiply minority conflicts.

The more desperate the domestic population pressure, the more irresistible will be the temptation to divert attention to international problems. Nationalism is the one sentiment strong enough to justify sacrifice and to turn men's minds from their deprivations. Militarism may seem an easy way out for countries with rapidly growing populations and chronic unemployment. A man in uniform is no more costly -- perhaps less so -- than one in a beggar's costume. If it suits some industrial power to furnish arms for the use of superabundant manpower, the leaders of overcrowded and impoverished nations will be able to make a tense international situation even more explosive.

No assessment of the contemporary scene can ignore this mushrooming increase of population. It is one of the most tremendous forces churning the world. Generations will pass before an eventual equilibrium, brought about

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by social policy or by the sheer limits of nature, will balance growing populations and available resources. Meanwhile the population explosion will continue to a large extent to destroy or frustrate the explosion of aspirations.

It would be idle to pretend that this all-important problem is amenable to United States action. Perhaps the sobering lesson which it holds out for us -- a lesson very foreign to our temperament -- is that some of the most fundamentally disturbing problems of the contemporary world are beyond our power to control. If we are to face the challenge of the great international transformation with realistic hopes for what national action can accomplish, it is wise to have a prior understanding of what cannot be done.

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V

The result of all these pressures has been the disintegration of the international system which dominated world affairs almost till the outbreak of World War II. At the turn of the century, thirteen empires ruled the Old World; the new world was a nascent community of nations protected by the Monroe Doctrine and by the British fleet. The posture of the Western Hemisphere with respect to the conflicts of the European powers was neutrality -- which is another way of saying that the Western Hemisphere felt itself either protected by the existing balance of power or considered the European disputes peripheral to its security. The neutrality of the Western Hemisphere -- as of many regions today -- depended on the existence of an equilibrium maintained by other states.

This equilibrium reflected the shifting alliances and counter-alliances of the thirteen European empires. It was based on the assumption that no power or group of powers would be permitted to become strong enough to dominate the others; it required a nation which was not itself part of any alliance to act as the stabilizer by throwing its weight to whichever side appeared at the moment to be weaker. It was not a system which took into account the impatient aspirations of a century in flux. Its motivation was stability, not great achievement. It was not aimed at producing world-wide social justice. But it did bring about a century without major war and an atmosphere in which gradual reform could take place both within the European

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empires and in their overseas possessions. The balance of power saw to it that most transformations were relatively minor; they did not threaten or seem to threaten the survival of the states comprising the international system.

The imperial systems for all their moral failings did provide order, administration and arrangements for economic exchange.

These arrangements began to break down in 1914. The first World War led to the collapse of the German, Austrian, Turkish and Russian empires. The Chinese empire, long decaying, was already in the throes of the revolution of Sun Yat-sen. The following twenty years witnessed the Russian revolution in the Soviet Union, and the Nazi-Fascist revolutions in Germany and Italy. In 1939 these precipitated World War II; and within ten years of the end of World War II most of the remaining imperialist system dissolved. Japan's ended with her defeat in 1945. The Netherlands and France were unable to resume the colonies they had lost to Japanese armies. Great Britain saw fit to withdraw from much of her empire. Indo-China, Morocco and Tunisia split away from France, while the fate of Algeria is still in doubt. Portions of the old imperial systems still remain: Britain has large holdings in Africa and a tenuous foothold in the Middle East; Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands likewise have overseas possessions. But the system of empires as means of maintaining world order, arranging world economics and settling international disputes ceased to be valid for all practical purposes in 1946.

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The movement which brought about this upheaval was of a paradoxical nature: it was the doctrines of nationalism and liberalism introduced into the colonial areas by the imperial states themselves.

In their first appearance, the colonial powers typically displaced an existing ruling group in a population in which the majority neither enjoyed nor expected direct participation in government. This enabled such small numbers of Europeans to establish their rule over vast dominions and millions of people. Yet the "imperial" powers were not content with simply replacing a feudal upper class. They brought with them the twin doctrines of rational administration and popular participation in government -- doctrines which in time had to prove inconsistent with their own continued rule. The rationalization of administration led to the consolidation of many areas for the first time in their history: India had known only nominal control for centuries before the appearance of the British, and Indonesia was nothing but a geographic expression until the Dutch found it more efficient to administer the conglomeration of its islands as a unit. At the same time the colonial powers trained a group of indigenous leaders in their universities where they absorbed the ideals of the right to self-government, human dignity and economic advancement which had been the rallying points for the European Enlightenment.

Thus while colonialism exacted a human and political toll, it also represented one of the greatest conversions in history. As the ideals of the British, French and American revolutions became diffused, partly through the

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very spread of colonialism, the seeds were sown for the destruction of colonialism itself. The more successful the teachings of the colonial powers, the more untenable grew their position. Almost without exception, the leaders of independence movements fought their rulers not in terms of an alternative set of beliefs; they asked them to live up to their own principles. They did not seek to overthrow the political system of the West but to enter it.

The disintegration of the international system of the nineteenth century is thus fraught with promise and with peril. Its promise resides in the community of values which inspired it. This gives the basis for hope of future collaboration. Its danger resides in the fact that anti-colonialism, so heroic while in opposition against foreign rule, may become an end in itself; that the patterns of rejection so important in the struggle against outside dominion may not find a positive outlet.

This problem is all the more difficult because in many areas anti-colonialism is the only and at any rate the easiest means of achieving national identity. Many new nations possess neither a common language nor a common culture. Their only common experience is the former colonial rule. As a result national boundaries tend to follow the frontiers of empire and so do national resentments. The less the internal cohesion, the more virulent anti-colonialism tends to be. As a result, not every expression of dissatisfaction reflects a real grievance. Often it derives from inward insecurity, from a drawing of strength in the present from an embattled past.

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But the past does not haunt the newly independent states alone. It is a factor as well in the travails of the formerly colonial powers in their efforts to adjust to positions of altered influence. It is a painful and difficult task for them to realize that events can no longer be commanded, that the center of influence has moved to other parts of their globe. It requires psychological adjustments even more demanding than economic adaptations. Considering the magnitude of the task what is remarkable is not how little has been accomplished, but how much. Since the end of World War II -- nations have achieved independence, all from formerly colonial rule. And Western Europe, at first hesitantly but recently with ever increasing speed, has sought to compensate by strengthening its own internal relationships for a decline of its influence overseas.

Still a generation impatient to throw off colonial rule measures attainment not in terms of past successes but in terms of what remains to be done. Each successful revolution exacerbates the tensions in the areas still remaining under foreign rule. In the process it poses painful dilemmas for American policy. Our whole tradition impels us in the direction of supporting the effort to achieve independence. But our cultural and historical ties make us reluctant to offend our European allies. Moreover, however much we may sympathize with anti-colonial aspirations, we cannot be indifferent to the possibility that the struggle for freedom may produce another tyranny imperiling not only the area affected but all the rest of humanity. The ideal solution would be,

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of course, to exert our influence to remove irritations and to chart a course
which bases cooperation on harmony and responsibility instead of on domination.
But the ideal mean between former imperial pretension, international stability,
and the aspiration to freedom may not always be easy to find and, in some
situations, impossible to implement. We must then be prepared to maintain
the international equilibrium -- not indeed to perpetuate colonial rule, but to
give time for a task of political and economic construction which will make the
further severance of colonies not a threat, but a reinforcement of world liberty.

The classic balance of power had many failings, but it maintained the
peace and national dignity. In extending the area of justice we must not make
the mistake of throwing out the equilibrium with the injustice. We must not
forget that neither we nor any other power will be able to realize our aspirations
unless all can live in safety.

VI

The tremendous events to which we have hitherto paid attention -- the
revolution of rising aspirations, the population explosion, the breakdown of
the nineteenth century balance of power -- are some of the terrible problems
which would beset us even if the Soviet Union were, as it never wearies of
claiming to be, "a peace-loving nation." The manner in which the Soviet
utilizes these problems is a matter we shall reserve to our next chapter. Yet
however fundamentally disturbing our present catalogue of world problems may

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be, we should still fail to appreciate their full complexity and gravity if
we did not mention one additional cause of danger.

This is the whirlwind nature of international communication. In
former days, relations between states took place largely as the formal
dialogues of diplomatic conversation, and were conducted in the privacy
of embassies and ministries. The people were informed later, if at all,
of discussions which affected the fate of their nation and, among the
underdeveloped nations at least, very few of the underlying populations
knew or cared to know about the results.

The nature of modern communications and the rise of mass education
has effectively ended this method of international discourse. Today communi-
cations are addressed to the people at large, and foreign policy announcements
are phrased for their public impact more often than for their private content.
Far from being deprived of information, the masses of the world are flooded
with it, while the beginning of mass education gives rise to the illusion that
the problems themselves are simple and capable of solution at a single stroke.

Thus the careful and precise adjustments which may be needed to walk
the tightrope of international politics are made all the more difficult. Each
national and international move must be calculated not in terms of its impact
on the immediate issues, but its interpretation to the credulous, wishful eyes
of the world. In this battle of stereotypes, slogans, and polemics, the
advantage is to the side which is less scrupulous of human dignity, less

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respectful of rationality, less constrained by its own ability to question and self-criticize. If in the long run, the voice of reason is that which commands men's minds, in the immediate battle the voice of unreason may be that which moves their hearts.

It may be that the early phases of national independence are particularly vulnerable in this respect. The impetus of a revolution tends to derive from a confluence of negative motives. The positive part of a revolutionary program is usually identified with the end of a status quo; the overthrow of the existing order is too easily taken as a short-cut to the millenium. But when the established system has been eliminated the cohesiveness of the revolutionary movement often disappears as well. Then there can be observed nostalgia for the period of struggle when purposes were clear and issues seemingly unambiguous. Then, too, small groups with an explicit sense of direction often achieve control over vast populations: this was the case in the French Revolution; it has also occurred in the Communist Empire. And, however ephemeral these phenomena may prove to be, they can cause vast transformations during their period of strength.

Thus it may be that the availability of information transcends the willingness or the ability to comprehend it. The beginning of mass education in many areas may give rise to the illusion not only that all problems are simple but also that they are easily understood. The challenge raised by the modern means of transmitting information is therefore infinitely more subtle

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than simply making facts available or seeking agreement to a given line of action. It will prove more important to raise the *general* level of understanding than to achieve approval of this or that policy; more meaningful to help develop a feeling for the complexity of situations than to interpret any given crisis; more crucial to project a concern for the spiritual travail of peoples all over the world than to prescribe simple remedies.

For centuries it was believed that tyranny was the result of ignorance.
The challenge to our age is to prevent tyranny as the result of an excess of
information.

VII

To contemplate the dangers and difficulties of our world is to risk a
mood of despair. The immense and brooding tensions, the irreparable heritage
of the past, the unmanageable momentum of the present -- all these can easily
lead to an attitude of pessimistic resignation. Hence it is well that we conclude
this sombre recital with one final trend of events which, while itself fraught with
difficulties, contains the glimpse of a better world. This is the vast movement
which is breaking down the national sovereignies on which the nineteenth
century world order was built.

For despite the manifold problems we have reviewed, the basic issue of
our time is less the internal organization of the various states than the basis on
which a world community will come into being. The consolidation of states is

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not an issue to be debated. It is a fact which is in process of accomplishment.
The only question which remains is whether this consolidation will be imposed,
or whether it will grow through shared efforts.

For no sovereign nation, no matter how powerful, no matter how homo-
geneous in ideas, culture or politics, can now perform the two functions which
traditionally have been the very essence of sovereign nationalism: military
self-defense and economic self-support. No country can by its own efforts
ensure the safety of its population. The speed and destructiveness of nuclear
weapons have eliminated any sanctuary areas. Whatever safety can be found
in the nuclear age consists of the widest possible grouping of powers.

Equally, no country, not even the largest, can meet the expectations
of its people by developing and using only its own resources. The prosperity
and well-being of each nation depends to a greater or lesser degree on partici-
pation in a complex of states whose economics complement each other. Where
the economic system is complex, new devices and institutions are sought,
ranging from trade agreements (as in the case of the United States) and "common
markets" (as in Europe) to entirely new organizations which are in effect
communities of specialized functions, such as the European Coal and Steel
Community. Where the economics are more rudimentary the interdependence of
nations has nevertheless been strikingly demonstrated. The most passionately
nationalistic states have been obliged to seek assistance from the United States
or Great Britain or the Soviet Union.

[LC]

November 21, 1957

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To be sure, alliances and even groupings of nations have existed in the past as well. These were, however, largely political in origin. The striking aspect of contemporary relationships is the degree to which technical and economic realities force a grouping of certain state activities into supra-national communities. France and Germany may be members of NATO, a defensive alliance of nation-states in the traditional sense. But segments of their economies, such as the production of coal and steel, find their way into a "community" whose capital is the tiny principality of Luxembourg and which exercises many of the functions formerly carried out on a national basis. Thus sovereignty appears as divisible; community of action may exist with respect to some functions and not with respect to others. This offers possibilities for cooperative efforts barely suspected in the nineteenth century.

Equally striking is the degree to which certain "private" activities have been internationalized. A considerable and essential part of the world's economic activities is carried on, and will continue to be carried on, by private (in the sense of non-statist) corporations. They perform a function which is essential to the life of many, and perhaps most, nations. In theory, the great international oil companies are "national" in the sense that the corporate form of the controlling parent in each case proceeds from a charter granted in a national state. Actually, the "nationalism" of the international corporation is so vividly modified by necessity that though it is still an element, it is only a part and increasingly not a controlling part of its motivation.

[Lc]

November 21, 1957

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The reason is not theory, much less altruism, but practical necessity.

It is well enough to say a given company is "American" or "British." But in order to be effective, the corporation must be able to compose diversities, adjust conflicts of interests, and to make its operation attractive for all the countries within the range of its interests. To be sure, the corporation is impelled in this direction by a form of selfishness. The point is that its "interest" is that the interest of Venezuela or Iraq shall be consulted and satisfied so that the operation goes on. One might even state that a corporation operating in several countries can not recognize the superior interest of one country as against another. "National interest," if unduly pushed, can create a situation in which the operation ceases or is imperiled. Neither the corporation nor the countries involved can afford the breakdown of the system.

Thus the "international" corporations are, in fact, a part of the process of segmenting various functions of nation-states, and regrouping them into functional aggregates no longer limited to the boundaries of any one country.

As a result there have come into being three kinds of consolidation of
sovereignties:

a - groupings between national states for a specific purpose such
   as common defense

b - groupings of functions of various nation-states for the purpose
   of discharging particular economic functions

c - groupings of non-statist organizations without benefit of
   sovereign action -- such as the international corporation.

[LC]

November 21, 1957

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But these less than world-wide groupings do not exhaust either the thrust of human aspirations or the requirements imposed by modern technology. For only in a world community can some ideals be achieved or certain objectives realized. Twice within a generation the United States has been instrumental in bringing a world community into being: the League of Nations in 1919 (though we refused to join) and the United Nations in 1945. In both instances the impetus was largely idealistic: the belief that the interdependence of nations demonstrated in cataclysmic wars had to find an institutional expression; that peace, as the phrase went, was indivisible and could be achieved only by organizing the world community on its behalf.

Twice in a generation these hopes have not been fully realized and each time for the same reason: the institutions of a world community proved to be more inclusive than the community of shared aspirations. The emergence of revolutionary dictatorships in Germany, Italy and Russia in the 1920's and the pressures of Communist expansionism since the end of World War II have frustrated the high hopes initially held for the world organization. The existence of a group of powers avowing their design to overthrow the international system has tended to transform the United Nations into a forum for carrying our traditional diplomatic functions rather than into an expression of the consensus of humanity.

Moreover the intransigeance of the Communist states has tended to accentuate the gap between the constitution of the United Nations and what it

[1c]

Draft Chapter IV- Overall Report

November 21, 1957

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is in fact able to accomplish. For there are two groups of votes in the United Nations as there were before in the League of Nations: votes of opinion and votes of responsibility. When a small country votes, it expresses an opinion; when a large nation votes, it is expected to assume responsibility and to engage either its economy and if necessary its arms in giving effect to its views. It is not that "votes of opinion" are without significance or that the "votes of responsibility" of the larger powers occur in a vacuum. The opinion of humanity where it can be marshalled is of great consequence. Yet it can be no substitute for the resolution of the great powers. Against a major security threat, such as aggression backed or conducted by the Soviet Union and Communist China, the effectiveness of the United Nations will depend on the strength and purpose of the United States and its allies.

It is because the world organization has been hamstrung in many of its functions by the revolutionary schism between the Communist and the non-Communist world that regional groupings have assumed an increasingly important role and are likely to continue to do so. There is moreover no inconsistency between the two. The jump from a national to a world wide perspective may be too great to take at one fell swoop. As regions grow in cohesiveness and common purpose they will find it easier to cooperate with each other in even larger groupings and ultimately even on a world wide scale.

The United States has historically supported these groupings. It took the lead in forming the prototype of a regional organization, the Pan-American Union, and after World War II it systematically attempted to strengthen

November 21, 1957

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the American community of nations. Although American initiative led to the institution of the United Nations, we strove at the same time for the preservation of regional groups, and for Articles 51 and 52 in the United Nations Charter which gave them a juristic base. The European Coal and Steel Community, the work of Jean Monnet, stemmed from joint economic efforts (the European Coal and Steel Committee and the short-lived European Inland Transport Committee) called into being during World War II. The Marshall Plan created another frame for European economic union through the Organization of European Economic Cooperation (OEEC). At the same time American initiative led to the Bretton Woods agreements (world wide) from which came the World Bank and the International Monetary Exchange Fund.

At first, the United States in carrying out these initiatives thought of itself as primarily assisting others: it had not considered that they might be essential to its own purposes and development. Now, as the deeper currents impel us forward, the new groupings begin to assume an importance to the United States comparable to that which they hold toward other component countries. Action in them becomes less a diplomatic concert of jealousy preserved sovereignties and more the expression of organic necessities for all partners.

National interest and idealist hopes thus begin to converge. Plainly these new institutions require continuous and constant attention, and now become a first concern of American policy-makers, whether they are considering survival of the United States, or the achievement of regional plans, or the

[L]

November 21, 1957

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ultimate creation of an enduring world peace. The problem of world community thus falls into a great pattern; and solutions and institutions emerging also exhibit a design. The continuing gist of foreign developments is more than a tale, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The twentieth century almost unwittingly is attempting to replace the national systems of the nineteenth and seeking to do so on a higher basis where human ideals and the requirements of their well-being merge.

In doing so it must be impelled by positive motivations. An international order to be cohesive must be "legitimate" -- that is, it must reflect a community of shared aspirations. If we are motivated merely by a desire to prevent an expansion of the Soviet sphere we will always be on the defensive, we will always have to contest issues selected because they are of maximum embarrassment to us; we shall always convey an impression of spiritual uncertainty.

But while the motivation for our international effort must derive from our own dynamism, it would be foolhardy to ignore the twin perils adding a particular urgency to our efforts: the thrust of the Communist revolution and the threat of the atom. It is to these features of our international environment that we must now turn.