[L]

I - Report

October 3, 1957

I - 26

Russia, or of Great Britain, or enter negotiations for some sort of economic pact by which they may enter an international process of exchange. Where the system is more complex (for example, in Western Europe) new devices and institutions are sought, of which the European Coal and Steel Community is the most novel, the most spectacular and perhaps most likely to become a norm or a nucleus for greater arrangements. The list of devices runs all the way from systems of trade agreements (as in the case of the United States) and "common markets" as in Europe and now proposed for Latin America, to new international entities: communities of specialized function.

Imperial organization which supplied the old framework has, we have noted, broken down. The number of juridicial nation-states has vastly increased. Substitute for empire has to be found at least in the two fields of defense and economics. So while there is apparently the greatest push for nation-statehood in modern times, there is an equally deep current of desire, if not positive demand for, new arrangements looking toward a regrouping in economic and military fields.

We do not yet know whether these groupings can pause in regional combinations, or whether there is no half-way house between nation-states so combined and a world community of states -- this last carrying a solid danger that it will impinge too greatly for acceptance on classic ideas of "sovereignty." The United States has thus far committed itself to the proposition that, in the economic field, its objective is world-wide arrangement,

[LC]

I - Report

October 3, 1957

I - 27

and it proposes to accept no regional economic arrangements for itself at least. Plainly this is partly nostalgia: the hope is for an open trade balance like that which the British Empire maintained during the nineteenth century. Yet few would be bold enough to predict that the nineteenth century comparative stability of convertible currencies and its comparative equilibrium in balance of trade, can be restored. Meanwhile, groups of new, passionate "nationalist" nation-states, without realizing their illogic, passionately urge (without realization of the corresponding obligations entailed) world-wide stabilization of prices, regional or world-wide banking available for credit, capital-sharing plans and a whole range of other non-nationalist (in fact, counter-nationalist) arrangements and institutions to assist them in realizing the potential of the twentieth century.

This, not the least turbulent of the deep currents, is also one of the currents which seems to hold within it possibilities of hope. As between abstraction and reality, international life tends to impose reality. The forces can perhaps gradually be canalized, offering a measure of gradual progress towards the objectives which the United States likes to hold as its own and likes to believe are objectives for a peaceful world as well.

* * *

This review does not purport to deal with all of the currents. That would be impossible. It is suggested, however, that these are the principal

I - Report
October 3, 1957

I - 28

tides energizing international political action through which -- or with which
-- or on which -- American policy must steer its course.

I - Report

October 3, 1957

- 29 -

CHAPTER II

AMERICAN CAPACITIES IN A WORLD OF CONFLICT

I

THE AMERICAN AFFIRMATION

Amid the deep currents, the United States "is"; that is to say, she
is a political force-in-being.

This is the first and most important element in any study treating of American foreign policy. The United States is not merely a nation, but a present, existing, polarizing and dynamic force exerting intended influence and unintended gravitational pull or repulsion beyond her borders, moving (by historical standards) with great speed and huge mass. The American whole, in international equation, is more than the sum of its various parts, economic, military, technical and intellectual. This force can not be described merely as an aggregate of economic productivity, or of fire power, or of organizational and social inventiveness; it is also animated by a high consensus of agreement within the country based on moral, political and psychological principles.
Though these have never reached simple statement, and certainly are not embodied in dogma, and are matter of continuous discussion, debate and evolution, they have organized American life, and they determine the general direction of American action. The United States is consequently, for better or worse, a philosophical force backed by tremendous power. This, rarely

[L]

I - Report

October 3, 1957

II - 30

recognized in the United States itself, is the salient fact in American relations practically everywhere throughout the world.

This force inspires varying emotions in other countries: admiration, hostility, hope, fear, bafflement. The United States is not merely a powerful nation among ninety-odd sovereign states; she is also a symbol. Few peoples with even fragmentary knowledge of her and however hostile, do not desire in some respects to be like her; few, if any, peoples do not believe that their destiny is in some way linked, or that their lives will be affected in greater or less degree, by American action or refusal to act.

Practically all countries desire industrial development comparable to that of the United States; many would like to find a method of securing an equivalent wide distribution of wealth and prosperity. The image of American life exerts powerful attraction even to countries which do not admit, or even reject, the individualist and humanist premises upon which the image was constructed. Because American power has twice proved decisive in world conflict there is realization that American willingness to use or to withdraw it can change political situations in great areas. This realization exists even in avowedly antagonistic countries, notably the Soviet Union. There is almost passionate interest in American structure and development. In result the dynamism of the United States is inescapable. An American government can not change this situation.

This synthesis of America is not capable of rapid change. All American history contributed to its formation; the synthesis continues to evolve as new

[LC]

I - Report

October 3, 1957

II - 31

elements of ideas, resources and spiritual insight are added, and as component
elements within it change, deteriorate or disintegrate. In foreign affairs, the
United States and its representatives, military, diplomatic or economic,
necessarily must work with the resultant force. If possible they may also
attempt to estimate its continuing development and may base policy on their
appreciation of what America will be in the nearer or more distant future.

Justice to any American administration and to the groups official or
unofficial who guide or influence its actions requires recognition of one fact:

they can only dispose of the resources, use the capacities and cope
with the fact of this existing United States with its limitations as well as its
unquestioned and in some respects its unequalled strengths. "Leadership"
consists in presently making the most of her present resources and capacities,
and energizing the intellectual and political forces which make for their
continuing growth.

This is the base on which any American study of American position and
possibilities of American action must rest.

II

AMERICAN OBJECTIVES

There is an "American consensus" upon certain objectives in world
relations. These objectives are, actually, dimly outlined pictures of an
ideal America, and of an ideal world in which America would like to move.

I - Report

October 3, 1957

II - 32

The two are interdependent, because in the present generation there appears to be a consensus of understanding that progress toward an ideal United States is not likely to be capable of achievement except in a world itself moving (however slowly) towards an ideal state. In both cases, clearly, this ideal picture both of America and of the world is slowly but constantly developing and constantly changing. Presumably the book will never be closed. There is no static conception now, and there is common agreement that the conception should never be static. Each successive phase will open new phases of possibility, of evaluation, of possibility for greater achievement. The "objectives" referred to here are not dogma: they are the present phase of hopeful thinking.

Obviously this "public Consensus" is discernible only in its most general outlines. There is infinite difference and controversy in detail and application. Little in the United States is susceptible of the rigid formulations contained, for example, in the Communist statements, nor in the crystallized formulae which were prevalent in large parts of Europe until the Renaissance and the Reformation. But the consensus is no less real, it is capable of statement in broad outline, and a present statement of it seems essential if the United States is to make itself understood in a world which must at least partially understand her and which she in greater measure than before, must comprehend.

[L]

I - Report

October 3, 1957

II (a) - 33

The Survival of the United States

The United States, like most nations, is resolved to survive as a
national, cultural entity. This self-evident statement is a common ground
which she has with practically every independent nation. It needs restatement
chiefly because the bases of nationalism have changed, are changing, and are
requiring new formulations in world affairs; and incidentally because another
center of polarizing power, the Soviet Union, overtly at least, advocates doc-
trine which (in effect) contemplates that no self-directed nation-state (with
the possible exception of the Soviet Union) shall continue to exist except in
name.

A notable phenomenon of the twentieth century, noted above, has been
the disintegration of the traditional structure of empire and of many nation-
states. The social organization and governmental structure of the United States,
despite the relative youth of the country, is one of the oldest in the world.
The drama of its continuity and strength, in a century of disintegration, has
been heightened by the Communist movement with its claim to universal validity
and its assertion that all structures other than its own are historically fated
to fall in a world-wide revolution.

Survival and the will to survive under substantially present institutions
thus becomes a premise deserving statement.

[L]

I - Report

October 3, 1957

II (b) - 34

# The Development of an Ideal Nation

The United States has continually thought of itself as a country in which individuals and their self-realization were the principal concern of society; but that an individual could only realize himself to the highest by being of service to his kindred, his community and his fellow man. The conception was in origin religious. In early American history, it was Protestant, since historically America in its formative period was a great child of the Reformation. Men, Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, were

> "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Consensus on this has not changed. Change has occurred in the conceptions of life and what it includes of liberty, and what this implies; and of the pursuit of happiness, and what this means. Enlargement has been steady in these respects and still continues. The objective of achieving an ideal America is still that of maintaining and developing a country in which men and women have more abundant life, greater capacity to use liberty -- which implies growing respect for the rights and liberties of others, and a better equipment, material, intellectual and spiritual to seek happiness. Government exists to forward these needs; its laws, rules and adjustments are constantly subject to criticism and review, and only justified as they do forward these needs.

[LC]

I - Report

October 3, 1957

II - 35

Every life thus becomes precious; the totality of the achievements of individuals is the stuff of which America is made and for the present at least will continue to be made.

No dogma of mechanical or social method has ever been crystallized in the United States, nor is there likelihood that it will be crystallized. Such dogma as exists relates to the protection of the dignity and achievements of individuals and to the proposition that government is the servant, not the master, of the governed. Most of this is contained in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States. Even this has never crystallized, the quality of protection has changed and in most respects has been enlarged, decade by decade.

And there has been consensus that the individual justifies himself before his country, his kind and his Creator, as much by what he does for his fellows as for himself. The moral of the seventeenth century Protestant, John Donne,

"No man is an Iland, intire of itself; every man is a peeece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind ..."

has been consciously or unconsciously a controlling conception for so large a number of Americans that her greatest institutions have been reared on it.

The present outline of an ideal America continues to include this conception of interdependence and of a mutual, controlling individual duty between man