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already run through a wide and increasing range of matters which have not
yet been fully dealt with by international or supra-national action -- for
example, diseases of men, and of the animals and crops on which they de-
pend, safety on the sea and in the air; problems arising from nuclear energy.

This last group of problems is currently before the public in a distorted
form. Most public discussion is concerned with the effects of testing hydro-
gen bombs. It has not concerned itself with dangers connected with the
peaceful uses of nuclear energy, for example, disposal of radioactive wastes,
or hazards which would be created if a nuclear power plant got out of control
and "ran away." There are differences of opinion among informed observers
concerning dangers inherent in tests of nuclear weapons at the present level;
but they are all extremely concerned with the problems arising from the peace-
ful uses of nuclear energy in populated areas. The nature of these problems
requires for solution some sort of international control. American objectives
in the field of international economy thus are rather more specific than vague
hopes of world prosperity. Also growing pressure of affairs is forcing their
crystallization. Survival of the United States, for example, requires a situ-
ation in which she has access to materials and products not found within
her own borders. Even more important, conditions outside the United States
should be such that no nation or group of nations shall feel that they cannot
survive without seizing the resources of productivity of another country. The
dynamic factors in American population growth will intensify this factor as

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years go by. Taken in connection with the determination to preserve American
values and with the realization that conditions and cultures differ in various
regions, the task of working toward international order is at once essential
and immense. To achieve a tolerable result assumes an immense amount of
sub-structure which can only be achieved internationally. There has to be
the right to exchange, by trade or otherwise. There has to be safe transport.
There has to be absence of interruption of the world highways. There has to
be viability, and little reproach for its fairness, in the processes of finance
and monetary exchange. There have to be minimum norms of conduct for
vast regions, and eventually over the entire civilized world. There has to be
continuing technical communication and cross-fertilization which increases
production adequate to meet the needs caused by increase in population, and
in addition which permits satisfying the "rising expectations" of the peoples
of a great part of the world whose more elementary wants have not yet been
met. There has to be at least a minimal protection from national hazards,
diseases, nuclear fall-out and allied dangers. There have to be common and
cooperative measures by which planes and ships can leave, travel, make port
in safety and regularity.

And there has to be that degree of financial organization which permits
trade or exchange to continue and expand -- this last, a problem for which the
United States in common with the rest of the world is groping for a solution.

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Whether as primary objective or as by-product, American policy has always envisioned the hope of a world in which armament is limited and the economic waste of it as well as the dangers inherent in armament, are reduced to a minimum.

As an objective and possibly even as an end in itself, there is the enduring American concept of free cultural access to all parts of the world. Many motives enter into this peculiarly emphatic continuing American desire. Some are negative: they stem from the feeling that enforced ignorance about any country, people or part of the world is inherently dangerous, and a threat to peace. More of them are positive. To be complete, a man should know a good deal about the world in which he is born and in which he lives and whose most distant activities affect him. We have discovered that cultures, including our own, are richer when they are constantly fertilized by ideas and experiences originating elsewhere: equally, possibility of our contribution is lessened by ideas and information which cannot be transmitted. At base is a solid realization that, to the extent that knowledge and information is denied any individual, the "freedom" of that individual is correspondingly constricted. Steady establishment and enlargement of channels of communication widening cultural exchange has been one determinant of American policy practically from the beginning of the history of the United States.

IV

<u>American Capabilities</u>

What are the capabilities of the United States for moving in the di-
rection of these objectives?

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Capabilities begin with those of the United States as a nation; these
can be mobilized by national action.

They are multiplied by a co-efficient: the ability of the United States
as a nation to induce common or cooperative action outside American boundaries.

The national capabilities of the United States (like all capabilities) fall
into two classes: the potential and the developed capabilities. We must deal
primarily with the latter. Both in World War I and in World War II the developed
capabilities, economic as well as military, were vastly increased, just as the
capabilities of the Soviet Union under stress of revolutionary urge, were in-
creased to enormous range. Unquestionably under stress of emotional con-
viction, the United States could develop immensely greater capabilities than
she ordinarily disposes of -- perhaps greater than those she has ever disposed
of. But the interest of the United States is chiefly individual and internal: she
will not, as a rule, convert herself into a nation of world-conquering mission-
aries or propagandists or even (primarily) into a world economic agency save
under pressure of great emergency, or under the drive of some philosophical or
religious motivation, which rarely occurs. (One of the significant facts in
American history is that, as perhaps the first great modern experiment in
republican democracy, she did not undertake to carry her new form of organiza-
tion to other countries. This is in great contrast to the drive of the French Revo-
lution to stimulate similar revolutions elsewhere in the world, and of Communist
Russia to bring about acceptance of her dogma on a world-wide scale.) In the

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main, though it has potential capability for doing both, the United States has
rather consciously refused either to attempt creation of an empire, or to prose-
lyte.

Renunciation of empire and unwillingness to assume the classic
"missions" which the imperial systems claimed to fulfill does not nevertheless
discharge the United States from its obligation. As noted, it is the polarizing
force irrespective of its desire. Its developed capabilities are already so
great, and enter so deeply into the stratum of life of other countries, that they
cannot be safely cut down. Exercise of leadership is therefore not matter of
choice: it cannot be avoided. The task is to use it for the achievement of
American objectives, and this is likely to mean the increase of developed
American capabilities for that purpose.

Primarily, then, we are estimating the capabilities which America has
readily at hand, plus the accretion capable of being mobilized (save in emer-
gency) without undue interruption of, or burden upon, her ordinary domestic
life, or sacrifice of her constitutive values.

IV (a)

The Tensile Strength of American Internal Life

Though not ordinarily reckoned as a "capability" in foreign affairs, the
relative invulnerability of the American governmental and social structure must
be reckoned an asset.

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For one thing, this influences the policy and actions of all foreign countries in any situation in which the United States is a factor. With the possible exception of the more fanatical Communists, the assumption is general that the United States as a governmental, social and economic entity cannot be seriously upset by anything short of huge-scale military action. Even Communist enemies of the United States place their hope in the theory that American capitalism will eventually involve itself (and with it the structure of the United States) in a self-destroying crisis; but the more competent Soviet economists (notably Varga) have come to doubt this. In the community of nations foreign countries may be hostile to the United States; or they may seek detachment ("neutrality") with respect to it. Or they may seek cooperation. But nobody expects the United States to change fundamentally, and certainly nobody expects her to break up, except perhaps as a result of a wholly cataclysmic nuclear war. This is an element of stability in a turbulent world-scene.

Probably no other country in the world (with the possible exception of Great Britain and the English-speaking members of the British Commonwealth; perhaps Scandinavia) commands this acceptance, though because of their comparatively weaker military position, they conceivably might (if parted from the American sphere) be dealt with through war without incurring staggering risks involved in war with the United States.

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IV (b)

Economic Capabilities

The overall productive capacity of the United States -- in manufacturing, America with six percent of the population produces about 45% of all world manufacture -- has become a commonplace in international discussion. Deployment of this capability, however, can be effective in a number of ways.

(a) America as Buyer

Probably the greatest single capability is that least realized in America itself: the power to influence events because of the fact that the United States can buy a great range of products; and because her productivity is great enough and varied enough so that the seller can command a great range of products needed or desired by him. Access to the American market is a highly desired prize for great areas of the earth.

The United States has rarely made use of market access as a tool in international relations as, for example, the Nazis did prior to World War II and as the Soviet Union is doing today. In minor aspects (purchase of copper from Chile, prorating access to the American market among the sugar producing countries), American policy has from time to time used this capability as a means of relieving the economy of other countries, and occasionally of stabilizing political situations. In peacetime as a rule, however, the buying power of the United States has not been used as an instrument of policy, and she has thus far rejected it in principle.

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(b) America as Relief Agency

The productivity of the United States does permit the United States to give away, in one form or another, and on a non-commercial basis, limited but substantial portions of its output. At the close of World War II it undertook to do this on a substantial scale; perhaps the first time in history that any country has ever adopted such a policy. This was frankly international welfare work and intended to be such. Its original rationale was an attempt to repair part of the damage caused by war in various parts of the world and directly to relieve some degree of human misery caused by conditions caused by war, and assumed to be temporary.

To this the "Marshall Plan" theory was presently added a second conception: American resources, freely given, could be used to assist certain peoples, especially in underdeveloped areas, seeking to establish themselves and their institutions on a somewhat higher base than that which prevailed before. This conception has not been well worked out. There are questions as to how it can be done and indeed whether it can be done at all, though good temporary use of the method has been made in certain situations, as for instance, that of contemporary Bolivia, Southern Korea, Vietnam. The sheer novelty of the experience necessarily entailed the gradual understanding of the profound problems involved in such a method. Commercial exchange, exported capital, or direct assistance to a military ally had occurred in history as had occasional grants of relief to countries going through disaster. (The

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famine relief given to Soviet Russia through the Hoover Mission is a famous example.) But almost no precedent exists for a nation consciously endeavoring to present resources to others for the purpose of building and perhaps reorganizing their basic economy. Some of the problems appear which are presented by private philanthropy and which themselves have not been fully solved. The striking fact is that for perhaps the first time a nation has appeared with the resources and capacity, and also the willingness to make available, freely, some parts of its resources to assist other peoples and nations in self-development, and to wrestle with the psychological, philosophical and economic enigmas involved in the process. A new capability in international affairs has thus been uncovered.

The United States has no monopoly on this capability: Great Britain has it in less degree and has used it in one form or another; but in actual and potential mass and weight, the American capability is vastly greater. Its usefulness and extent depends, however, as much on intellectual as on economic capacity: more is involved than making credits available or agreeing to supply certain bodies of material.

(c) America as Capital Exporter

Again, because of its productivity, the United States has the capacity for exporting capital.

Capital can be exported as a gift, as frank international generosity. But such export is nomially carried on as a matter of international "investment."

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In some degree the United States is economically able to lay down capital goods, or money with which capital goods can be bought, and thus assist in providing other countries with a portion of the capital equipment needed by them to maintain their population or to increase their own productivity, without demanding repayment. The difference between generosity and "investment" is chiefly that, in the first case, no return is required or expected, and responsibility for the handling of the ensuing capital development is chiefly in the hands of the governments of the giving and receiving nations.

The conventional requirement of interest or of profit on loans, commercial or governmental, engages part of the foreign profit created to return to the United States; and the objects and handling of the capital are principally determined by the investing group.

Both of these are great instruments for affecting events. Unfortunately, relatively little is known about the use of foreign capital, received either as gift or as loan. The ability of a country to make modern use of capital, either "given away" or lent, assumes a high degree of industrial development.

Further, use of capital by any foreign people is in substantial measure a resultant of its own culture and cultural process. Capital is used by a people in terms of processes and operations which that people understands; it cannot merely be transplanted. Three successive American attempts have been made to use capital in the development of Haiti. Two of them left little more than monuments to the fact that those particular American -type capital developments

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were meaningless to a Haitian society. There is evidence to suggest that, had
the United States furnished the High Dam for General Nasser, the result might
have been equally unimpressive.

Yet there are unquestionably situations in which transfer of capital to
other countries has been fertile and productive, *provided* there has existed
adequate understanding of the social process, methods and needs of the re-
cipient people. Capital development must fit their culture, not ours; it must
correspond to (or provide) a degree of technical education and of social disci-
pline, capable of effecting and maintaining the resultant construction and
making it useful.

Capital export as private investment has one distinct advantage in
this respect. The American private investor wishing to put capital to work
abroad and to reap a return spends immense amount of time studying the
probable result, which will be achieved, the actual wants or needs to be
met and the technique of conducting the operation so that it will produce,
distribute, and pay out. This is another and rather crude way of saying that
the private investor has a powerful motive for doing a more thorough job
than governments of investigating conditions and meeting them, and of running
the operation well. A disadvantage is that private capital thereupon enters
the social and cultural system of the country of investment, confronting it
with foreigners and foreign influence so that in absence of a high degree of ad-
justment, the recipient country may react in fear or hostility. A further

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disadvantage lies in the fact that, in a disturbed international situation, private capital rarely is willing to take a high degree of risk -- that is, to go abroad at all. Or perhaps to expend a great deal of time on a problem despite the urgent necessity of the country seeking capital where risk is high or profit moderate. Every effort was made to induce American private capital to develop a steel industry in Brazil, without success; the United States government eventually invested the capital and the enterprise, in Brazilian terms, has been extremely successful.

The United States government has never fairly undertaken adequately to estimate its capacity for capital export, or to plan its foreign capital operations, or to integrate the capital investments it was prepared to carry on through government, with capital export operations carried on by private investors.

It is at least possible that capital available for export by the United States in the next period of years will be rather less than that which was available, or apparently so, during the previous decade. The Marxian conception that capital would accumulate in certain countries and then would force its way into foreign markets by war, if need be, is being decisively contradicted by the fact: the American increase in productivity and standard of living and in population is apparently likely to demand much more capital than had been expected. It is thus becoming problematic whether there will be a great deal of American capital available for export save where the

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investment is directly integrated with an internal American need. Even so, the American capability in this field is considerable, and greater than that of any other country, and its efficacy can unquestionably be enhanced by effective and systematic use. Probably new methods and new vehicles will be needed; again, brains are as essential as money.

(d) <u>American Export of Technical Processes</u>

The United States has a capability, (though perhaps less than popu-
larly supposed), to export American technology. A major limiting factor is
the surprisingly small number of Americans who are skilled in dealing with
other cultures than their own. A technological process, to be meaningful
in another country, must be intergrated into that country's own cultural dy-
namics. Some countries (for example, Japan) are extremely skilled in adapt-
ing foreign technological knowledge to their own system; but this is on the
whole exceptional. In other countries there is no reservoir of men trained
to grasp and adapt technical process. In general the United States produces
surprisingly few men equipped to communicate technology meaningfully to
other countries.

Communication indeed requires at the outset a sound judgment of
the respective capacity of the recipient country. It is ridiculous, for example,
to transmit the machine methods of agriculture to populations who have not yet
learned to work with the more highly developed hand tools. Equally there is
danger in under-estimating the capability of a population. Areas which handle

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their local problems on a barter basis find difficulty in dealing with develop-
ments, such as electric power, whose product must be currently paid for in
cash. Arnold Toynbee's generalization that the integration of capital methods
from one culture to another draws after it much of the culture from which the
capital came has proved sound. Transfer capital, where it is not made to a
cultural base able to use that capital, must be accompanied by the business
of building a sufficient base. Some countries desiring to import capital know
that this is implied and desire to develop the necessary base. But others
would like the result of the process without the substratum of habits and
customs without which the capital cannot usefully be employed. Many cultures
are now experiencing the early phases of the nineteenth century industrial
revolution: both in Chile and in Brazil there are steel and electrical industries,
as is the case in India, and as was the case in the Soviet Union which im-
ported technicians on a large scale in the decade from 1920 to 1930. Tech-
nical "know-how" and its handling is unquestionably a part of the capability
of the United States in foreign matters; but it can be over-rated.

IV (c)

Intellectual Capabilities

The capacity of the United States to influence events by communicating
her intellectual product in all fields is probably greater and also more thoroughly
misunderstood, than any other single capacity. There has been almost

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insatiable world-wide desire to know what the United States was writing, thinking and doing. In part this is a tribute to American stability and American power. Surprisingly, the interest is probably greater at the moment in the countries bordering on the Soviet Union than perhaps anywhere else. This is true despite the fact that the more organized attempts to "sell America" through information programs and the like have no easily demonstrable results: some even doubt whether they have had great success. Yet throughout the world, Soviet Russia included, there appears to be a general feeling that the United States somehow has the secret of something, and that it might be discovered by closer contact with American intellectual life.

The communication which has taken place and does take place is rendered difficult by reason of the fact that America has little crystallized dogma and wants none; and that few attempts are made to generalize American philosophical, political and economic theory. A Communist can tell you what the Soviet Union is all about and lay down a shelf full of books which explain it. A pluralist system like the United States attempts no explanation; the completest showing we can make is the content of our statistics (in this field the United States probably is ahead of most of the world). But in the field of intellectual life, the United States can only offer a congerie of books and other intellectual output, reflecting no clear overriding philosophical pattern. The United States cannot (under its theory of government) "organize" an intellectual product, either for internal purposes or for purposes of export. Yet, over the years it is probable steady communication of American thought will prove