# COMMENTARY

## ATOMIC FORCE AND FOREIGN POLICY

*Can the "New Pacifism" Insure Peace?*

HANS J. MORGENTHAU

THE actions and pronouncements of the government of the United States since the great international crises of November 1956, the British White Paper on defense of April 4, 1957, and the private warnings addressed by Bulganin to the British and French governments in the fall of 1956, all agree on one point: rejection of the use of force, except in self-defense, as an instrument of national policy. When Bulganin wrote to Eden on September 11, 1956, that "it is no longer possible to threaten and brandish weapons . . . any military measures directed against sovereignty and territorial integrity . . . can end only in failure"; when he wrote to Mollet on the same date that "in the age of atomic weap-

ons, one must not threaten to use arms or brandish arms," he anticipated Eisenhower's statement of November 1: "I, as your President am proud—and I trust that you are proud—that the United States declared it-self against the use of force in, not one, but both of these cases [Egypt and Hungary]." The British White Paper draws the practi-cal conclusion from these statements by asking for a military establishment which is geared to preventing wars rather than fighting them.

What the Kellogg-Briand Pact envisaged in 1929 as a legal obligation and a moral postulate appears to have become reality in 1957. Swords are to be beaten, it is true, into guided missiles rather than plough-shares, yet the result still appears as the achievement of the Biblical vision of eternal peace. Contemporary Western society, pro-foundly pacifist except in the face of patent provocation, is easily tempted to ac-cept this conclusion without examination, especially since not accepting it would neces-sitate a great moral and intellectual effort without promising to produce so clear-cut and satisfying a result. However, the popu-larity of the argument that war is no longer possible calls for, rather than allows us to dispense with, a critical analysis of its logic and assumptions.

The new pacifism, as expressed in the

"Atomic warfare is impossible—it is suicide for all concerned," we say nervously, and yet the U.S. and now Great Britain too are stripping their conventional defense establishments so as to make it impossible for them to fight anything but an atomic war. Or if not fight, HANS J. MORGENTHAU warns, capitulate. Professor Morgenthau, director of the Center for the Study of American Foreign Policy at the University of Chicago as well as Visiting Professor at Colum-bia and Yale, is the author of such works as *The H-Bomb* (1950), *In Defense of the Na-tional Interest* (1951), and *Scientific Man vs. Power Politics* (1946). Readers will recall his article, "The Revolution in U.S. Foreign Policy" in our February issue.

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COMMENTARY

consensus of our quotations, differs funda-
mentally from the traditional pacifism of
which the Kellogg-Briand Pact is the most
notable modern manifestation. Traditional
pacifism, aside from its moral revulsion from
violence, argued that any war was an irra-
tional way of settling international disputes.
War does not solve anything. War does not
pay. Nobody has ever won a war. War is
the "Great Illusion." "There never was,"
Benjamin Franklin wrote to Josiah Quincy
on September 17, 1773, "a good war or a
bad peace."

Nevertheless, while statesmen paid lip
service to the pacifist arguments against
war, especially in the inter-war period, their
actions belied their protestations. War con-
tinued to be regarded, as it had been
throughout history, as a rational instrument
of national policies. Statesmen contin-
uously weighed the advantages and risks
of employing the peaceful means of diplo-
matic pressure and negotiation against
those of the threat and use of force. They
might be mistaken in choosing force if they
could obtain their goals by peaceful means
or if they lost the war. Yet even then their
choice was a rational one because the risks
they took were not out of proportion to the
objectives sought. By and large, statesmen
acted like gamblers who commit only as
much of their resources as they can af-
ford to lose. If they win, the gain justifies
the risk taken; if they lose, the loss sets
them back—but not necessarily beyond pos-
sible recovery. Even the Second World War
conformed to this pattern: the risks taken
were commensurate with the objectives
sought.

THE feasibility of all-out atomic war has completely destroyed this rational relation between force and foreign policy. All-out atomic war, being an instrument of universal destruction, obliterates not only the traditional distinction between victor and vanquished, but also the material objective of the war itself. In the pre-atomic age, it would have been perfectly rational for the United States to go to war in order to

liberate the nations of Eastern Europe, pro-
vided that liberation had a sufficiently high
priority among American national objec-
tives, and American power appeared suf-
ficiently strong in relation to the opposing
power to have a chance of success. In the
atomic age, however, the United States has
emphatically ruled out the use of force to
liberate the satellite countries; she was
afraid, rightly or wrongly, that the threat
of force in Eastern Europe might lead to
all-out atomic war. The Soviet Union has
for the very same reasons denied herself the
use of force with regard to Western Eu-
rope, which cannot be defended against the
Red Army. In the Korean war, both sides
refrained from committing, qualitatively and
quantitatively, more than a fraction of their
resources and from exploiting their strategic
opportunities to the full and thus granted
"privileged sanctuaries" to each other, fear-
ful as each was lest one provoke the other
into an all-out atomic war.

All-out atomic war, no longer being con-
sidered an instrument of national policy, has
taken on a function which is novel at least
in its exclusiveness. Traditional force is an
instrument for breaking the will of the op-
ponent, either through successful defense or
attack; it is in the effectiveness of its phy-
sical application that its primary func-
tion lies. But the primary function of all-out
atomic force lies in making its physical ap-
plication superfluous by deterring the pros-
pective opponent from using it. While tradi-
tional force operates psychologically through
the intermediary of actual physical employ-
ment, all-out atomic force has a psychological
function pure and simple. The prospec-
tive opponents are kept constantly aware
of the inevitability of their own destruc-
tion should they resort to all-out atomic force,
and this awareness prevents them from re-
sorting to it.

It is worth noting that in the pre-atomic
age the threat and the counter-threat of
force could always be, and frequently were,
put to the test of actual performance, and
either the threat or the counter-threat was
then proved to be empty. In the atomic age,

503

the very purpose of threat and counter-
threat is to prevent the test of actual per-
formance from taking place. The appear-
ance of possessing both the ability and the
resolution to make good threat and counter-
threat becomes, then, of paramount import-
ance as a condition for the success of mutual
deterrence.

The nature of this condition, it will be
noted, is political rather than military. For
what is essential is the *appearance* of possess-
ing the ability and resolution to make good
threat and counter-threat, not the reality of
such possession. In order to make mutual de-
terrence work, two nations need only to
create the mutual belief that they are
willing and able to destroy each other in all-
out atomic war. As long as this belief
exists, it is irrelevant whether or not the
reality corresponds to it. In other words, the
mechanics of mutual deterrence require
an element of bluff, either real or suspect.

At this point, the mechanics of mutual
deterrence raise a most serious political
dilemma. No nation can afford to yield to
a threat of all-out atomic war that is only
a bluff; nor can it afford to stand up to a
threat that turns out not to be a bluff. Mis-
calculation is bound to be fatal either to the
interests of the nation concerned, if it yields
to the bluff, or to its existence, if it stands
up to an atomic threat that is not a bluff.
And the trouble is that a nation cannot
determine when the other side is bluffing
without the test of actual performance—a
test which it is the very purpose of mutual
deterrence to avoid.

Is there any issue at all, short of self-
defense, for the sake of which either the
United States or the Soviet Union would
be willing to blow up the world? Is the So-
viet Union justified in believing that the
United States will really blow up the world
in defense of Western Europe? Was the
United States correct in assuming in Nov-
ember 1956 that the Soviet Union would
be willing to blow up the world in defense
of Hungary? And would the Soviet Union
in November 1956 really have taken the
chance of an all-out atomic war by sending

volunteers to the Middle East and attack-
ing Great Britain and France in defense
of Egypt?

The philosophy of mutual deterrence
answers these questions in the negative.
For it assumes that no nation will resort
to all-out atomic war on any conceivable is-
sue short of all-out atomic attack against
itself; that is, no nation will ever start an
all-out atomic war, hence all-out atomic war
has really become "impossible."* However,
neither the United States nor the Soviet
Union has pretended to act on that assump-
tion. The United States has refrained from
certain actions because she feared the Soviet
Union might reply to them with all-out
atomic war, and the Soviet Union has
threatened certain actions which at least
implied the possibility of all-out atomic war.
Thus the pacifist confidence of the official
pronouncements is belied by the—positive
or negative—concern with all-out atomic
war reflected in official actions.

THE new pacifism, consistent within itself but not with the political attitudes of governments insofar as all-out atomic war is concerned, raises another fundamental problem for the day-to-day conduct of foreign policy without providing a satisfactory answer. It proposes to eliminate the use of force of any kind by the same means it has thus far successfully employed in staving off all-out atomic war: deterrence.

The deterrence to be exercised against
the use of force which falls short of all-out
atomic war and may be called conventional,
is supposed to be "graduated," that is, com-
mensurate with the force threatened. The
use of force is to be prevented by the threat
of counterforce sufficient to deter the pros-
pective user. But is graduated deterrence
with conventional force likely to operate
with the same degree of reliability which
has thus far enabled all-out atomic deter-
rence to prevent all-out atomic war?

That the certainty of complete atomic

*I have examined this philosophy in detail
in the *Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists*, January
1956.

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COMMENTARY

destruction constitutes an absolute deter-
rent to all but madmen stands to reason. But
what are the conventional weapons in the
arsenal of the Western powers by which
they hope to deter prospective opponents
from using conventional force? They are
two: a rudimentary conventional military
establishment partially armed with tactical
atomic weapons, and what has been called
"moral suasion."

The unilateral partial disarmament of the
Western nations as regards conventional
forces, coupled with their primary reliance
upon tactical atomic weapons, casts doubt
on the feasibility of graduated deterrence.
It does so for two reasons.

FIRST of all, tactical atomic weapons are
obviously not of the same broad, well-
nigh universal applicability as are bullets,
shells, and bombs. In street fighting, guer-
rilla war, and night operations in jungles and
mountains—to mention only a few contin-
gencies—atomic weapons may be of little if
any avail. To the degree that atomic wea-
pons are recognized by the nation to be
deterred as being blunt weapons or wea-
pons impossible to use at all under the cir-
cumstances, the nation that threatens their
use will be considered to be bluffing, and the
threat will not deter.

Furthermore, and most importantly, the
element of bluff, actual or suspect, is bound
to figure much more prominently here
than with respect to the all-out atomic
deterrent. What tactical atomic weapons
can do in actual warfare is still largely
a matter of conjecture. No nation will light-
ly employ such an untried weapon, especial-
ly in view of the choices before it should
tactical atomic weapons prove to be inef-
fective.

These choices are three, all of them unsatisfactory in different ways. The nation can accept defeat and give up the fight. Or it can continue fighting with non-atomic conventional armed forces, running the risk of its unpreparedness in this respect. Or it can resort to ever more powerful atomic weapons until in the end it finds itself face to

face with that unacceptable contingency
which all its policies were intended to obvi-
ate: all-out atomic war. We should not have
to remind ourselves, though the prevailing
complacency makes it necessary to do so, that
these uncertainties and risks are magnified by
the possibility that the nation to be deterred
may also be provided with atomic weapons,
tactical and strategic. In other words, "gradu-
ated deterrence" is a two-way street.

That under such conditions a nation
would follow up its threat with actual
atomic warfare, however limited initially,
is possible but certainly cannot be taken
for granted. Yet to the degree in which it
is not taken for granted by the nation to
be deterred, the threat must lose its deter-
rent effect. The Secretary of State of the
United States has let it be known that he
takes pride in his "brinkmanship," which
three times—in Korea, Indochina, and For-
mosa—led him to the brink of war but not
over it. Regardless of the actual historical
circumstances under which the use of force
was here averted, there can be little doubt
that "brinkmanship" cannot be practiced
indefinitely without challenge, and that
must be even more true of what might be
called "open brinkmanship, openly arrived
at"—that is, "brinkmanship" whose deter-
rent effect is counteracted by retrospective
boasts as well as by the official rhetoric of
pacifism. Sooner or later someone will want
to know whether the statesman approach-
ing the brink is serious or bluffing, whether
he will jump or pull back. Then the alter-
native will be war, or peace by appease-
ment. Let us not forget that Germany at-
tacked Belgium in 1914 and Poland in 1939
on the assumption that Great Britain was
bluffing and would not fight, an assumption
derived primarily from Great Britain's
reputation for pacifism.

However, the new pacifism claims to
provide still another alternative to the alter-
native of war or appeasement: "moral sua-
sion." Little need be said to show that
"moral suasion" is a euphemism for im-
potence. There are only two ways in which
men, acting for themselves or for their na-

505

tion, can be dissuaded from taking a certain course of action: the promise of benefits and the threat of disadvantages. No man has ever been thus dissuaded by abstract references to the moral law or by entreaties to be good. Religions have had to rely upon promises of heaven and threats of hell in order to influence the behavior of their adherents. More particularly, a statesman who has resolved to use force in support of a certain policy cannot be expected to yield to "moral suasion" unless it is backed up by promises or threats.

The dilemma that confronts the Western world today as it contemplates the use of force is only partly the consequence of the unacceptable horror of all-out atomic war. In good part, too, it is the consequence of the "new look" of Western military policy. For what makes it so difficult for the West to contemplate the use of force is its own tendency, created by its new military policy, to identify force with atomic force. Yet the use of atomic force, however narrowly circumscribed by the initial intent, entails the enormous and unbearable risk that it may develop, imperceptibly but ineluctably, into the use of all-out atomic force.

The nations of the Western world could have avoided this dilemma if they had continued to maintain a non-atomic military establishment sufficient to support their foreign policies. They have said that they

cannot afford to maintain two military establishments—one designed to deter all-out atomic war, the other to wage non-atomic conventional war. To say this is tantamount to saying that—in contrast to the Soviet Union which continues to support two military establishments—the richest, politically and technologically most advanced, and still most powerful combination of nations on earth cannot afford to protect their interests without running the risk of universal destruction. Which is another way of saying that they cannot protect their interests at all, insofar as that protection requires the use of force.

The truth is that financially, economically, and technologically, they can well afford two military establishments. What their leaders think they cannot afford is the political courage to demand of their peoples the sacrifices necessary to protect and promote their national interests under the condition of atomic peace. In a word: the deficit is political and moral, not economic and financial.

With the decision to scrap traditional military establishments and arm its remnants with atomic weapons, the Western world may well have passed the point of no return. At the end of the road that the new pacifism has begun to travel there may indeed lie peace, either the peace of appeasement and ultimate surrender or else the peace of Babylon and Carthage—the peace of total destruction.

# WHO SHALL BE OUR DOCTORS?

## *A Critical Shortage Lies Ahead*

### LAWRENCE BLOOMGARDEN

IF YOU enter an American hospital tomorrow, the chances are better than one in four that the resident physician who admits you will be a foreigner. Of the 22,000 resident doctors in American hospitals today, 8,000 are foreigners here on temporary visas. Hospital administrators now advertise regularly in foreign medical journals and send representatives abroad to recruit doctors. Even so, many thousands of hospital positions remain unfilled, and this year between 5,000 and 6,000 doctors are expected from outside the country. But this is only one of the many serious consequences of the present shortage of physicians in the United States.

According to a recent report of the President's Commission on the Health Needs of the Nation, this country needs at least 25,000 more doctors than it now has. Instead of graduating 7,000 doctors a year as we do at present, we should graduate 10,000 if we mean to keep the gap between need and supply from growing even larger.

Dr. Willard C. Rappleye, dean of Columbia University's medical school, considers the present influx of doctors from abroad "reminiscent of the diploma mill era of fifty years ago," since most of these doctors come

from schools that are not approved by the Council on Medical Education of the American Medical Association. The majority of state medical boards consider graduates of unapproved foreign schools ineligible for licensing examinations. But neither a medical board license nor graduation from an approved domestic or foreign medical school is a necessary requirement for a resident physician at an American hospital.

What makes the whole situation bitterly ironic is that there are and have been more than enough American college students fully qualified for a medical education, and eager for one, for whom there just isn't any room in our medical schools. Shortage of trained manpower in other fields usually reflects a lack of qualified applicants. We would graduate more engineers and more science teachers if more young people were both willing and qualified to pursue these careers. But it is only because we fail to provide enough facilities to train the number of doctors we need that we are reduced to the anomalous expedient of recruiting special-purpose doctors from abroad who, more often than not, happen to be unqualified by our own standards.

In other countries, anyone with the necessary qualifications can study medicine. In the United States, not everyone able to meet the requirements can do so. In each of the past twenty-five years at least two qualified candidates have presented themselves for each place at a medical school. Only a few years ago, between three and four qualified students were competing for each place—which is a state of affairs we are likely to face again in the near future. True, this situation has permitted American medical schools to be selective to a degree unparalleled elsewhere. But this advantage has

Four years ago, in our issue of January 1953, LAWRENCE BLOOMGARDEN reported on "Medical School Quotas and National Health." Now he brings us up to date on the current situation in medical education, noting considerable improvement alongside looming problems. Mr. Bloomgarden, who is on the staff of the National Affairs Department of the American Jewish Committee, is a graduate of Syracuse University and holds a law degree from New York University. An authority on the social aspects of the medical profession, he served as case consultant to the Physicians Committee of the National Refugee Service.

506

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THE
YALE REVIEW

VOL. XLVI • PUBLISHED IN JUNE 1957 • No. 4

THE PARADOXES OF NATIONALISM

BY HANS J. MORGENTHAU

THE Western world faces in the universal triumph of nationalism some extraordinary paradoxes, pregnant with tragic irony. These paradoxes test its political imagination; they challenge its moral judgment; they put in jeopardy not only its own existence, but the survival of civilized life on this planet. Yet it was not the enemy of the West and of civilization that gave the idea of nationalism to the world. That idea, together with Marxism, is the last great original contribution the West has made to the political thought and practice of the world. What has become a threat to civilization, the West has claimed as a condition of civilized life. What has become a source of political anarchy and oppression, the West has offered as the principle of political order and freedom. With what has become a mockery of political morality, the West set out to establish political justice throughout the world.

The idea of nationalism, both in its historic origins and in the political functions it has performed, is intimately connected with the idea of freedom and shares the latter's ambiguity. Nationalism as a political phenomenon must be understood as the aspiration for two freedoms, one collective, the other individual: the freedom of a nation from domination by another nation and the freedom of the individual to join the nation of his choice.

482

THE YALE REVIEW

As the aspiration of a collectivity to be free, nationalism originated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from the struggles of the territorial state against its two enemies, one—the feudal order—resisting it, as it were, from below; the other—the imperial power—from above. Both, defeated in the dynastic and religious wars of the age, proved to be incapable of exerting the functions of government in the territories claimed by the territorial princes who, in turn, were able to impose their rule upon the feudal lords and free themselves from the rule of the emperor. Thus the territorial state emerged in the political form of dynastic sovereignty, the monarch being the highest secular authority within his territory.

Dynastic sovereignty found its philosophic justification in its ability to defend the territory under its control against enemies from without and disorder from within. Bodin in the sixteenth century and Leibniz in the eighteenth justified the absolute monarchy in these terms. It remained unchallenged both in theory and practice as long as it met this test in actual performance. Yet when in 1791 the King of France appeared to be plotting with foreign monarchs against his country, the absolute monarchy failed the test as defender of the nation and its territory. First in practice and then in theory, the nation itself was called upon to defend its freedom. Thus nationalism as the collective expression of a nation's political identity was born.

That birth coincided with, and was really an integral part of, the triumph of individual liberty within France. The absolute monarchy was destroyed because it had betrayed the nation abroad and oppressed the individual at home. It left the stage of history as a defeated enemy of both individual and collective freedom. Individual freedom was taken as a pre-condition of national freedom and the latter, in turn, was regarded as a mere extension of the former to the international scene. The political and legal principles, originally formulated to support and guarantee the freedom of the individual, were applied to the nation. The nation came to be regarded as a kind of collective personality with peculiar characteristics and

PARADOXES OF NATIONALISM

483

inalienable rights of its own; and the typically liberal antithesis between individual freedom and feudalistic oppression was transferred to the nation where it was duplicated in the hostility between the national aspirations and the feudal state. The nation should be free from oppression, both from within and from without. Free nations had only one enemy, and he was common to all of them: the dynastic oppressor of their freedom, individual and collective.

Given these assumptions, there could be no enmity among free nations who were united in a solidarity of individual and collective self-interest against the enemies of anybody's freedom. The popular will should decide how and by whom the people were to be governed, and the determination of the state to which a people was to belong was part of this decision. Thus the principle of national self-determination fulfills the postulates of both democracy and nationalism.

The practical political consequences of this new philosophy of nationalism, merging the ideas of individual and collective liberty, were immediate and striking. The Decree of Armed Propaganda of November 12, 1792, proclaimed: "The National Convention declares in the name of the French nation that it shall accord fraternity and aid to all peoples who want to recover their liberty, and charges the executive power with giving to the generals the orders necessary to bring aid to those peoples and to defend the citizens who are or might be persecuted for the cause of liberty." Napoleon conquered Europe in the name of this principle, destroying in the process more than two hundred dynastic sovereignies which were incapable of effective defense and disqualified from ruling in the name of their subjects.

In the struggle, dominating the better part of the nineteenth century, for the national unification of Germany and Italy and the national liberation of the Balkan nations from Turkish rule, the causes of national unity and freedom from oppression merged, for the liberal champions of nationalism as well as for their dynastic enemies. While the German liberals cried, "Through unity to liberty," Mazzini's flag of 1831 bore on

484 THE YALE REVIEW

one side the words, "Unity and Independence," on the other "Liberty, Equality, Humanity." Metternich's policies, on the other hand, were opposed to the national movements as a manifestation of democratic tendencies. The foreign policy of Napoleon III, who favored the national movements because he saw, according to his Foreign Minister, "a real equilibrium only in the satisfied wishes of the nations of Europe," was ironically called "the diplomacy of universal suffrage."

The First World War seemed to confirm, rather than deny, the assumptions and expectations of nationalism; for was it not caused by the unfulfilled aspirations of the nationalities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Thus the Western alliance fought the war in the name of national self-determination, and Germany turned the same weapon against Russia. The result was a peace settlement that reflected to a very high degree the principle of national self-determination. Austria-Hungary and Western Russia were dissolved into their national components, and the new frontiers of Germany followed in good measure the will of the populations concerned, which was either obvious, as in Alsace-Lorraine, or was determined by internationally supervised plebiscites, as in Silesia.

Yet that triumph of the principles of nationalism did not bring a viable order to Central and Eastern Europe. Nor did it bring justice to the populations concerned; it rather made the oppressors and oppressed exchange their roles. Thus what appeared at the time as the consummation of the expectations of nineteenth-century nationalism—peace, order, and justice built on the satisfaction of national aspirations—turned into its first great moral and political crisis. That crisis revealed the insufficient, self-contradictory, and self-defeating nature of nationalism as the exclusive principle of international order and justice and its inevitable subordination in fact, and requisite subordination in theory, to an overriding political system.

Nationalism, taken by itself, is both in logic and experience a principle of disintegration and fragmentation, which is

PARADOXES OF NATIONALISM

485

prevented from issuing in anarchy not by its own logic but by
the political power which either puts a halt to its realization
at a certain point, as did the peace settlement of 1919, or else
uses it for its purposes up to a certain point, as did the unifiers
of Germany and Italy in the nineteenth century. There are no
inherent limits to the application of the principles of national-
ism. If the peoples of Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia could
invoke these principles against Turkey, why could not the
people of Macedonia invoke them against Bulgaria, Greece,
and Serbia? If it was right for the Czechs and Slovaks to free
themselves in the name of nationalism from Austrian rule, it
could not be wrong for the Slovaks and Sudeten Germans to
free themselves from Czech rule in the name of the self-
same principle. Poland, the very moment she had recovered
her national identity from Austrian, German, and Russian
rule, felt she had to defend it against the German, Ukrainian,
and White Russian minorities within her borders, comprising
one-third of her total population. Thus yesterday's oppressed
cannot help becoming the oppressors of today because they are
afraid lest they be again oppressed tomorrow. Hence, the
process of national liberation must stop at some point, and that
point is determined not by the logic of nationalism, but by the
configurations of interest and power between the rulers and the
ruled and between competing nations.

This paradox of B invoking the principles of nationalism
against A and denying them to C—both for the sake of his own
survival—is accentuated by the practical impossibility of
applying these principles consistently to mixed populations.
The individual's rights to his property and pursuit of happi-
ness become incompatible with his right to choose his govern-
ment according to his national preferences when he is a
member of a minority which is inextricably intermingled with
the majority controlling the government. Not being able to
enjoy both rights simultaneously, he must sacrifice one or the
other. The treaties for the protection of minorities, to which
Bulgaria, Montenegro, Rumania, and Serbia were subjected
in 1878 and Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Rumania in 1919,

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THE YALE REVIEW

tried to mitigate the dilemma by protecting certain minorities
in the enjoyment of a free national life at least in certain fields,
such as language, schools, religion.

However, such attempts were largely frustrated by the fact,
which constitutes the second manifestation of the crisis of
nationalism in the interwar period, that the conflicts between
the new national states and their minorities were more inti-
mately interwoven than ever before with the international
conflicts among the new nation states and the great powers.
This had always been the case within certain limits; Russia,
for instance, had always supported the Balkan nations against
Turkey and the Czechs and Serbs against Austria-Hungary.
Yet as in the interwar period the new nation states competed
with each other for power and were at the same time the pawns
of the great powers in their struggle for hegemony, the na-
tional minorities became to an ever increasing extent, as it were,
sub-pawns whose aspirations and grievances the contestants
used to strengthen themselves and their friends and weaken
their enemies.

All of Central and Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the
Mediterranean became the stage for continuous interconnected
and overlapping rivalries and conflicts: Poland vs. Lithuania,
Czechoslovakia vs. Poland, Hungary vs. Rumania, Bulgaria
vs. Greece, Italy vs. Yugoslavia, Germany vs. Poland, and,
overshadowing them all, the decline of France, the rise of
Germany, the indecision of Britain, and the ever-present threat
of the Soviet Union. The instability which from 1878 to 1914
had been confined to the Balkans, always threatening and in
the end destroying the peace of Europe, now extended to all
of Central and Eastern Europe, for the same causes and with
the same results. As the fragmentation of the European part
of the Turkish Empire into its national components brought
forth the "Balkanization" of the Balkans, so did the frag-
mentation of the Austro-Hungarian and the Western part of
the Russian Empires lead to the Balkanization of that part of
Europe. And while the First World War arose from the
threat of Serb nationalism to Austria-Hungary, the Second

PARADOXES OF NATIONALISM

487

World War became inevitable when Germany succeeded in using the German minority to destroy Czechoslovakia and was started on the pretext that the German minority needed protection against the government of Poland.

Nationalism, far from creating a juster and more viable international order, became the great disruptive and anarchical force of the interwar period. Into the severed members of the empires it shattered, nationalism poured the same passions which, first, as lust for power had created these empires and, then, as aspiration for freedom had destroyed them. The endemic disorder thus created cried out for a "new order," which only the strong could make and maintain. Germany and Russia, the new empire builders, saw their opportunity, and in a series of swift and effective strokes, starting in 1938 and ending in 1941, they seized the new nation states of Central and Eastern Europe, endeavoring to melt them down into new structures of empire.

It is another of the paradoxes of nationalism that its defeat on the eve of the Second World War was achieved in the name of the same principle which brought it victory in the aftermath of the First: national self-determination. Germany justified its use of the German minorities of Czechoslovakia and Poland for the destruction of these nation states with the same principle of national self-determination with which before the Czech, Slovak, and Polish nationalities had justified their attack upon, and destruction of, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Yet while the words were the same, the passions behind them and the philosophy which roused and justified them were different not only in degree but in kind. The nationalism with which Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union set out to conquer the world has only the name in common with the nationalism of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth.

The libertarian goals of the older nationalism were the rightful possession of all nations who wanted to be free; the world had room for as many nationalisms as there were nations that wanted to establish or preserve a state of their own. The

488

THE YALE REVIEW

international conflicts growing out of this nationalism were of
two kinds: conflicts between a nationality and an alien master
and conflicts between different nations over the delimitation
of their respective boundaries. The issue at stake was either
the application of the principles of nationalism or else its
interpretation.

The new nationalism has only one thing in common with the
old: the nation is the ultimate point of reference for political
loyalties and actions. But here the similarity ends. For the old
nationalism, the nation is the ultimate goal of political action,
the end point of the political development beyond which there
are other nationalisms with similar and equally justifiable
goals. For the new nationalism, the nation is but the starting
point of a universal mission whose ultimate goal reaches to
the confines of the political world. While the old nationalism
seeks one nation in one state and nothing else, the new one
claims for one nation and one state the right to impose its own
values and standards of action upon all the other nations.

The new nationalism is in truth a political religion, a na-
tionalistic universalism which identifies the standards and
goals of a particular nation with the principles that govern
the universe. The few remaining nations of the first rank no
longer oppose each other within a framework of shared beliefs
and common values which impose effective limitations upon
the means and ends of their policies. Rather they oppose each
other now as the standard-bearers of moral systems, each of
them of national origin and each of them claiming to provide
universal moral standards which all the other nations ought
to accept. The moral code of one nation flings the challenge
of its universal claim into the face of another, which reciproc-
cates in kind.

This transformation of nationalism was foreshadowed by
the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War. The Na-
poleonic Wars were fought in the name of particular principles
claiming universal validity: here the principles of the French
Revolution, there the principle of legitimacy. For the West,
the First World War transformed itself with the intervention

E.C.S.

PARADOXES OF NATIONALISM

489

of the United States into a crusade "to make the world safe for democracy." "It is our inestimable privilege," said Woodrow Wilson in his Fourth-of-July speech of 1918, "to concert with men out of every nation who shall make not only the liberties of America secure but the liberties of every other people as well." A few months after the democratic crusade had got underway, in October, 1917, the foundations were laid in Russia for another moral and political structure that, while accepted by only a fraction of humanity, also claimed to provide the common roof under which all humankind would eventually live together in justice and in peace.

This well-nigh universal commitment to the principles of nationalism revealed a profound difference between the attitude of the Western democracies and that of their totalitarian enemies. That difference was to have far-reaching moral and political consequences. The West had come to see in the principles of nationalism the revelation of universal truth to be lived up to regardless of political consequences. Totalitarianism looked at those principles as political tools to be used if their use promised results, to be discarded otherwise. Hitler did not hesitate to sacrifice the Germans of Northern Italy for the friendship of Mussolini by transferring the majority of them to Germany. The nationalities policy of the Soviet Union, while committed in theory to national autonomy, has been at the service of the political and economic interests of the central government which, as the instrument of "democratic centralism," has manipulated, controlled, and destroyed their national life without regard to principles of any kind.

Yet when totalitarianism turned the principles of nationalism against the West, the West stood morally and intellectually disarmed. The totalitarian arguments being its own, it could not answer them. The West had welcomed the victory of national self-determination in the aftermath of the First World War on moral and political grounds, and it found itself now incapable, when Hitler used the German minority for the destruction of Czechoslovakia, of defending its interests against its principles. It even lent a helping hand to its defeat and con-

490

THE YALE REVIEW

gratulated itself upon its moral consistency. "Self-determination, the professed principle of the Treaty of Versailles, has been invoked by Herr Hitler against its written text, and his appeal has been allowed," wrote the London "Times" on September 28, 1938, commenting upon the Munich settlement.

The Second World War and the Cold War following it have both qualitatively and quantitatively magnified the paradoxes of nationalism which the interwar period had brought to the fore, and they have added a new one which has made nationalism altogether obsolete as a principle of political organization. The new fact that has created that new paradox is the feasibility of all-out atomic war.

The justification of the nation state, as of all political organization, is its ability to perform the functions for the sake of which political organization exists. The most elementary of these functions is the common defense of the life of the citizens and of the values of the civilization in which they live. A political organization which is no longer able to defend these values and even puts them in jeopardy must yield, either through peaceful transformation or violent destruction, to one capable of that defense. Thus, under the impact of the invention of gunpowder and of the first industrial revolution, the feudal order had to yield to the dynastic and the nation state. Under the technological conditions of the pre-atomic age, the stronger nation states could, as it were, erect a wall behind which their citizens could live secure and the weak nation states were similarly protected by the operation of the balance of power which added the resources of the strong to those of the weak. Thus under normal conditions no nation state was able to make more than marginal inroads upon the life and civilization of its neighbors.

The feasibility of all-out atomic war has completely destroyed this protective function of the nation state. No nation state is capable of protecting its citizens and its civilization against an all-out atomic attack. Its safety rests solely in preventing such an attack from taking place. While in the pre-

PARADOXES OF NATIONALISM

491

atomic age a nation state could count upon its physical ability to defend itself, in the atomic age it must rely upon its psychological ability to deter those who are physically able to destroy it. The prospective enemy must be induced to refrain from attacking; once he attacks, the victim is doomed.

This psychological mechanism of deterrence operates only on the condition that the prospective atomic aggressor is clearly identified beforehand, that is, that no more than two nations are capable of waging all-out atomic war; for it is only on this condition that deterrence operates with automatic certainty. Today, the Soviet Union knows that if it should attack the United States with atomic weapons, the United States would destroy it, and vice versa; that certainty deters both. Yet the time is close at hand when other nations will have the weapons with which to wage all-out atomic war. When that time has come, nations will have lost even the preventive capacity of psychological deterrence, which they still possess today. For the United States, if then attacked with atomic weapons, will no longer be able to identify the aggressor with certainty and, hence, deter the prospective aggressor with the certainty of retaliation. When this historic moment comes—as it surely must if the present trend is not reversed— the nation state will connote not life and civilization, but anarchy and universal destruction.

It is in the shadow of this grim reality and grimmer prospect that the inherent paradoxes of nationalism have taken on a novel urgency, threatening to overwhelm the remnants of international order. Balkanization, demoralization, and barbarization on a world-wide scale are the result.

The age which has seen the nation state become obsolete witnesses the emergence of a multitude of new states fashioned from the fragments of the colonial empires. The number of sovereign states has approximately doubled since the First World War. Many of these new states would not have been viable political, military, and economic entities even in the heyday of the nation state, deficient as they are in the essential prerequisites of nationhood. They could not have fed, admin-

492

THE YALE REVIEW

istered, and defended themselves then, nor can they now. The disorder and threats to peace which the dissolution, first, of the Turkish and, then, of the Austro-Hungarian and Western part of the Russian Empires brought in its wake is being spread, in the name of nationalism, to ever wider areas of Africa and Asia. In our age, even the infinitely stronger nation states of Europe are no longer viable political, military, and economic entities, but must submit either to the support or the conquest of the two remaining nations of the first rank, which are significantly not nation states in the traditional sense but continental states. The tragedy of Hungary and the collapse of the British and French intervention in Egypt in November, 1956, have demonstrated in different ways both the continuing emotional strength of national aspirations and the political and military weakness of the nation state. Is it then reasonable to expect that these new nations, some of them so artificial as to be even lacking the ethnic and historic foundations of nationhood, will be able to create a viable order among themselves and with their more powerful neighbors?

Only two alternatives appear to be in store for them, perhaps one following the other: Balkanization and a new colonialism. The rivalries which have beset the successor states to the European empires have already appeared among them. Some of the former colonies would like to have colonies of their own. The natural resources of some continue to make them attractive as colonies for stronger nations who need these resources. Their weakness, necessitating continuous support from stronger nations, predestines them as pawns in the power struggles of the latter. Their attractiveness, coupled with weakness, is thus a standing invitation to conquest, conquest by one or the other of them or else from the outside. In any event, the disorder which is taking the place of the old order of empire is likely to call forth, as it did before in Europe, a new order which will be again an order of empire.

It is ironic—and perhaps inevitable—that the great nations of the West should actively promote and support this Balkanization of much of the world, and it is equally ironic—and certainly not inevitable—that they should applaud it. For

PARADOXES OF NATIONALISM

493

while they may have no choice but to give up their empires,
they cannot afford to look with indifference, let alone with sat-
isfaction, upon the prospect that disorder and violence, ex-
ploited by Communism, will spread over ever wider areas of
the globe. Here we encounter on a world-wide scale and in
the form of anti-colonialism that moral perversion which made
Great Britain congratulate herself upon having helped Hitler
to destroy Czechoslovakia in the name of nationalism.

There was a time when the Western world looked upon
empire as a respectable and even a noble thing. The libertarian
standards and aspirations of the West itself gave empire a bad
name. It was Jeremy Bentham who as far back as 1793 wrote
a pamphlet with the title, "Emancipate Your Colonies." And
the United States, ever mindful of its colonial origins, has
throughout its history felt an emotional attachment to national
and anti-colonial movements, even though, if there were logic
in such historic analogies, its sympathies ought to be today not
with the Algerians but with the French *colons*, with the British
planters and not with the Malayans.

With characteristic philosophic consistency and lack of
political judgment, the West has applied the democratic prin-
ciples of freedom and equality to the international scene, trans-
forming them in the process from concrete political goals into
abstract moral postulates. Yet wherever democracy has suc-
ceeded within the nation state, it was imbedded in a structured
social order from which it received its vital strength and to
which, in turn, it imparted form and direction.

It is this Western dedication to national freedom, not as a
concrete political goal but as an eternal verity, which has made
the West morally and politically helpless in the face of the
anti-colonial onslaught of the age. When Japan swept through
Asia, carrying the banner of anti-colonialism before her, the
new colonialism supplanted the old with such immediacy and
undisguised exploitation and oppression as to provide a ready
target for the West's anti-colonial indignation. The anti-
colonialism of the Soviet Union, Communist China, and the
indigenous peoples of Africa and Asia is different and has had
a different effect upon the moral consciousness of the West.

494

THE YALE REVIEW

While it is for all of them a tool at the service of concrete
political goals, used and discarded especially by the Soviet
Union and Communist China as the occasion requires, its
immediate goal appears to be national liberation and nothing
more. What disorders will follow liberation and what new
colonialism will follow the disorders is a matter for long-term
concern, not for immediate political calculation. Furthermore,
the colonialism which the Soviet Union has practiced in
Europe since the end of the Second World War is geographically
far removed from Africa and Asia, protected from immediate
recognition by the "salt-water fallacy" which requires
a colony, to be recognized as such, to be separated from the
colonial power by some ocean. Finally, in Africa and Asia, as
in the European resistance during the Second World War,
Communism fights in the forefront of nationalism, making for
the time being little of the fact that its nationalism serves the
interests of China or the Soviet Union. Thus in a strange and
disquieting transformation, nationalism, the moral principle
of the West, becomes the most potent weapon in the arsenal of
its enemies, and disarmed before the triumph of its own ideal,
the West applauds its own destruction.

This confrontation of nationalism as an absolute moral
principle with nationalism as a tool of political power is novel
only in its world-wide dimensions and world-shaking results.
The contrast itself and the moral and political dilemma it
presents is as old as nationalism itself. The ideologues of the
French Revolution, the Frankfort Parliament of 1848, Mazzini,
and Wilson provided the ideas and the moral fervor;
Napoleon, Cavour, Bismarck, and Clemenceau fashioned the
political and military tools of victory, harnessing the libertarian
impulses of nationalism to the purposes of power, leaving
the ideologues behind approving or disillusioned, but in any
event in impotence. Yet nationalism, from the French Revolution
to the peace settlement of 1919—however bent to, and
distorted by, the purposes of power—never completely lost
sight of the individual and his freedom of choice. During that
period, nationalism retained its essential democratic orientation.
The ideal of "one nation, one state" was implemented by

PARADOXES OF NATIONALISM

495

the principle of national self-determination which postulated
the primacy of individual choice over the political interests of
governments. As a matter of principle, frontiers were to be
determined by the will of the people, not by considerations of
political and military expediency.

This order of priority has been reversed since the Second
World War. Not only do the interests of the state now take
precedence over the will of the people, but the people them-
selves—their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness—count for
nothing if they appear to stand in the way of the interests of
the state. No longer are national minorities to be protected
against the state; it is now the state which must be protected
against the minorities. The gulf that separates international
treaties for the protection of national minorities from the
deportation and extermination of national minorities and whole
nations also separates the old libertarian nationalism from the
totalitarian nationalism of the age. By whatever causes one
may explain this transformation—the political and military
use which great powers made of small nations and national
minorities in the interwar period and during the Second
World War, nationalistic universalism taking the place of the
pluralistic nationalism of the nineteenth century—its barbarous
consequences deny all that nationalism once stood for.

How different that world is from the world our fathers
thought they lived in! Nationalism, they thought, meant of
necessity freedom, civilization, and justice; we know now that
it can also mean slavery, barbarism, and death. Nationalism,
they thought, would bring of necessity peace and order to the
relations among nations; we know now that it has brought
us disorder and war and threatens us with universal destruc-
tion. When the experiences from which that knowledge derives
had still to be undergone, a very wise liberal voiced his dis-
illusionment and implied the remedy. "It may be said," wrote
John Morley in 1874,

that the very fate of these aspirations has had a blighting effect
on public enthusiasm and the capacity of feeling it. Not only have
most of them now been fulfilled, and so passed from aspiration to
actuality, but the results of their fulfilment have been so disappoint-

496

THE YALE REVIEW

ing as to make us wonder whether it is really worth while to pray, when to have our prayers granted carries the world so very slight a way forward. The Austrian is no longer in Italy; the Pope has ceased to be master in Rome; the patriots of Hungary are now in possession of their rights, and have become friends of their old oppressors; the negro slave has been transformed into an American citizen. At home, again, the gods have listened to our vows. Parliament has been reformed, and the long-desired mechanical security provided for the voter's freedom. We no longer aspire after all these things, you may say because our hopes have been realised and our dreams have come true. It is possible that the comparatively prosaic results before our eyes at the end of all have thrown a chill over our political imagination.

"Political imagination" is indeed the key word. If the West cannot think of something better than nationalism, it may well lose the opportunity to think at all. It has been its moral virtue and besetting political sin to look at nationalism as though it were a self-sufficient political principle and could bring freedom, justice, order, and peace simply by being consistently applied. In truth, no political principle carries within itself such a force for good. What good and what evil it will work depends not only upon its own nature, but also upon the configurations of interest and power in which and for the sake of which it is called upon to act.

The West has consistently tended to misunderstand the subtle and complex relationships between these configurations and political principles. Thereby, it has blunted its political will, its political judgment, and its political imagination. It has failed to see that political principles, such as nationalism, must direct, rechannel, even transform these configurations but that they cannot replace them. Yet when their work is done, they must themselves be replaced.

Nationalism has had its day. It was the political principle appropriate to the post-feudal and pre-atomic age. For the technology of the steam engine, it was indeed in good measure a force for progress. In the atomic age, it must make way for a political principle of larger dimensions, in tune with the world-wide configurations of interest and power of the age.

BOLLINGEN SERIES

1957

XLIX THE TAO OF PAINTING

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XXXV·2 THE NUDE: A STUDY IN IDEAL FORM

The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts for 1953
By Kenneth Clark.

7½" x 10", xxii + 512 pages, 298 illustrations. $7.50

XLI CHAPMAN'S HOMER

Edited with introductions by Allardyce Nicoll. New edition of the Renaissance translations of George Chapman. Vol. 1: The Iliad. Vol 2: The Odyssey, together with the Lesser Homeric. 6¼" x 9¼" xxii + 741, xvi + 654 pages, 2 vols., boxed. $10.00

XX·1 PSYCHIATRIC STUDIES

Volume 1 of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung.

Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Jung's papers from 1902 to 1905, many never published in English before.

6" x 9", 260 pages. $3.75

XLV·4 DIALOGUES

Vol. 4 of the Collected Works of Paul Valéry. Edited

by Jackson Mathews. *Translated by William McCaus-*

land Stewart with two prefaces by Wallace Stevens. The dialogues, all in one volume.

5" x 8", xxviii + 198 pages. $3.00

LIII BEAUTYWAY: A NAVAHO CEREMONIAL

*Texts recorded or translated by Father Berard Haile and Maud Oakes.* Edited with commentaries by Leland C. Wyman. Navaho text in separate booklet.

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# THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF COMMUNISM

By R. N. Carew Hunt

Fifth Revised Edition

This enlightening critical study of Communism's historical and ideological development has been brought up-to-date. The new material includes activities through the 20th Russian Party Congress held in February, 1956 and a penetrating analysis of the post-Stalinist situation. The bibliography now contains many works published since 1951 on this vitally important subject.

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# THE DARK SUN

## A Study of D. H. Lawrence

By Graham Hough

D. H. Lawrence lived with such passionate intensity that he has more often been the subject of biography than of literary criticism. Graham Hough offers here one of the first full-length appraisals of Lawrence's achievement as a novelist, poet, short story writer and philosopher. Masterful analyses of such works as *The White Peacock*, *Sons and Lovers*, *The Rainbow*, and *Lady Chatterly's Lover* make this study a major contribution to our understanding of Lawrence as a literary artist.

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at all bookstores, or write

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60 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 11, N.Y.

November 5, 1956

Dear Hans:

I wonder if we might change our dinner engagement
to some other night during the week of November 12th. On
the 14th the Council is having a dinner in honor of Habib
Bourguiba, the Tunisian Prime Minister, and I have received
an invitation.

I feel very badly asking you to change and do
hope that some other evening will be convenient for you
to come.

With kind regards,

Dr. Hans J. Morgenthau
Department of International Relations
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut

# THE NEW UNITED NATIONS

## What It Can't and Can Do

### HANS J. MORGENTHAU

IN TRYING to assess the contribution the United Nations makes today, and might be able to make tomorrow, to the settlement of international conflicts, it is indispensable to keep in mind that what we call the United Nations today is not what the United Nations started out to be. A sharp distinction must be drawn between the constitutional provisions of the Charter and the manner in which the agencies of the United Nations, under the pressure of unforeseen political circumstances, have actually performed their functions under the Charter. What we habitually do with regard to the government of the United States we must also do here: confront the provisions of the constitution with the realities of political practice. Nor does our task end here. For within this sphere of political practice we must also clearly distinguish between two phases in the development of the United Nations: one covering roughly the first decade of the organization's existence, the second starting in 1957. The United Nations of the first phase differs in its character and the functions it was able to perform from the United Nations of the second phase, as both differ from the United Nations envisaged by the text of the Charter.

The Charter intends the United Nations to be an international government by the great powers, which are identified as the five permanent members of the Security Council, i.e., China, France, Great Britain,

the Soviet Union, and the United States. Two major constitutional devices serve that purpose. Articles 10 to 14 establish the predominance of the Security Council over the General Assembly by limiting the latter to the making of recommendations in political matters. The General Assembly can debate, investigate, and recommend, but it cannot act. Even these functions are qualified by Article 12, which precludes the General Assembly from making even recommendations on matters that are on the agenda of the Security Council. This device enables the Security Council to control indirectly the political functions of the General Assembly. By simply putting a matter on its agenda, the Security Council can transform the General Assembly into a debating society without even the right to express its collective opinion on the matter.

The predominance of the Security Council having thus been established, the Charter proceeds to establish the predominance of the great powers within the Security Council. Article 27, paragraph 3, stipulates that "decisions of the Security Council ... shall be made by an affirmative vote of seven members including the concurring votes of the permanent members." That is the famous veto provision. Dissent by one of the permanent members is sufficient to prevent action by the Security Council, even when all the other ten members are in favor of it. In other words, each of the permanent members has a veto. Thus the Charter predicates the United Nations upon the continuing unity of the permanent members of the Security Council. In the scheme of the Charter these five members are, as it were, the nucleus of a world federation, of a limited world government. It follows that with but one permanent member dissenting there can

HANS J. MORGENTHAU, who is Director of the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of American Foreign Policy, is presently working at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. His book, *Dilemmas of Politics*, was published earlier this year. Professor Morgenthau contributed "Should We Negotiate Now?" to our issue of March 1958.

375

378

COMMENTARY

number more than one-third but less than two-thirds of the total membership. In consequence, the best the United States can hope for with any degree of regularity is to impose a veto upon objectionable resolutions by withholding the vote of its supporters from them. The United States can still perform a negative task: prevent the use of the United Nations against its interests. But it can no longer count upon using the United Nations for the positive task of promoting its interests.

WHILE the influence of the United States within the United Nations has thus drastically declined, that of the Soviet bloc, amounting to nine votes, has increased. During the first postwar decade, the Soviet Union was in a virtually hopeless minority, both in the Security Council and the General Assembly. In the Security Council it has been able, as we have seen, to protect itself against the consequences of being regularly outvoted through the use of the veto. In the General Assembly it was unable as a rule to prevent resolutions objectionable to it from passing because it could count upon less than one-third of the members to support its position. Today, the Soviet Union has a good chance—although not yet as good a chance as has the United States—to add to the votes of the members of its bloc the votes of a number of other nations, which votes together would amount to more than one-third of the membership and would thus place the Soviet Union in a position to prevent resolutions objectionable to it from being passed.

This shift in the distribution of voting strength results from the fact that the massive increase in the membership of the United Nations primarily benefited nations belonging to the so-called Afro-Asian bloc. The Afro-Asian bloc, numbering twenty-nine members, comprises more than one-third of the membership of the United Nations. Thus, if it were to vote in unison, it could both exercise a veto on any resolution adverse to its interests or else, by joining either the American or the Soviet bloc, become

the core of a working two-thirds majority. In reality, however, the Afro-Asian bloc has but rarely voted as a unit; its vote has typically been split, with some members voting with the American, others with the Soviet bloc, and a very considerable number abstaining. Consequently, as concerns the ability of the United Nations to function politically through the General Assembly, the Afro-Asian bloc has thus far performed a negative function. By splintering its vote between them, it has strengthened the power of the American and Soviet blocs to oppose the will of a simple majority with the veto of more than one-third of the membership. As a result, the General Assembly has proven itself incapable of passing resolutions calling for any action more decisive than investigations, good offices, and reports by the Secretary General, his representatives, or a committee of the General Assembly.

The sole exception is the resolution of February 3, 1957, establishing a United Nations emergency force to patrol the borders of the Gaza strip and the coast line adjacent to the straits of Tiran. Yet this action was due to a unique convergence of circumstances: the United States voting with the Soviet Union against its principal allies on a political issue, the general indifference if not hostility in the United Nations to the interests of Israel, the need of Egypt to recover from the rout of the Sinai campaign. Each of these positions commanded wide voting support, and their convergence assured overwhelming support for the action taken. In addition, the issue with which the General Assembly had to deal—mitigation of the danger of war at the two most sensitive spots of the Israeli-Egyptian frontier—was susceptible to the limited action taken.

None of the issues that have come before the General Assembly since show either that convergence of positions supporting for different reasons the same action, or that susceptibility to a limited action, the only kind which the United Nations is capable of taking. Consequently, the General Assembly has had to limit itself to passing declaratory resolutions which at best convey the appear-

THE NEW UNITED NATIONS

379

ance of action while being devoid of substance. That appearance has been supplied by the office of the Secretary General.

The Charter intends the Secretary General to be "the chief administrative officer of the organization." He "may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security." And he "shall perform such other functions as are entrusted to him by (the) organs" of the United Nations. It is from this provision of the Charter that the new functions of the Secretary General as the apparent chief political agent of the United Nations derive.

These new functions are intimately related to the impotence of the General Assembly, as the responsibility for action which the General Assembly has taken on is intimately related to the impotence of the Security Council. And one can go one step further and say that the responsibility for the settlement of political issues with which the United Nations as a whole has been burdened is a by-product of the inability of the nations directly concerned, especially the great powers, to settle outstanding political issues among themselves. The nations directly concerned and, more particularly, the great powers, have been unable to agree on a political settlement for the Middle East. So they charge the United Nations with finding a settlement. The members of the General Assembly, taking the place of the paralyzed Security Council, are no more able to agree on a settlement collectively than they were when acting as individual nations. So they charge the Secretary General with finding a solution. Yet the result is bound to be not action delegated, but inaction concealed.

PARTIES to a political conflict can be induced by outsiders to agree on a peaceful settlement by four methods, employed alternately or simultaneously. They can be threatened with disadvantages expected to outweigh the advantages to be gained from continuing the conflict; they can be prom-

ised advantages greater than those to be expected from seeing the conflict through to a successful conclusion; they can be persuaded by rational arguments pointing to the advantages and disadvantages to be expected and to the intentions and capabilities of the other side and of interested third parties; they can be helped in taking the last small step toward the consummation of a settlement already achieved in substance through the elaboration of a face-saving and technically satisfactory formula. Of these four devices, the first two tower in importance over the two others, which perform essentially subsidiary functions. It is the measure of the weakness of the Secretary General's position as a political agent that he is almost completely deprived of the two most potent instruments of conciliation, threat and promise, and limited to the use of rational persuasion and formulation of agreements already substantially attained.

The weakness of the General Assembly, as presently composed, then, is reflected in the weakness of the Secretary General. Both can talk, explain, and formulate; but neither can at present put a hand on that lever of threats and promises which is the very soul of political action. The new eminence of the Secretary General in terms of sheer activity is but a function of the General Assembly's embarrassment at being called upon to act without being able to. And that call to action, addressed to the General Assembly, is in turn but the great powers' cry of despair at being unable to settle among themselves issues which, as long as they remain unsettled, carry within themselves the threat of war. Thus the travels of Mr. Hammarskjöld, like the resolutions of the General Assembly, are not so much harbingers of recovery, let alone a cure for the disease, as symptoms of its intractability. Yet they can also have the effect of sedatives for jangled nerves and of medication which prevents existing wounds from opening still wider. This is indeed the contribution which the United Nations is at present able to make to the peaceful settlement of international disputes.

380

COMMENTARY

The General Assembly is, at any rate for the time being, in the position in which the Security Council found itself from the very beginning: it is unable to act for the reason that the majority required by the Charter is lacking. Yet while the Security Council was paralyzed from the outset by the foreseeable and almost automatic use of the veto by the Soviet Union, the paralysis of the General Assembly has been the result of a dynamic process which can be broken down into three phases: disintegration of the two-thirds majority led by the United States; the vain attempt by the two superpowers to fashion a two-thirds majority in support of their respective policies; the attempt by the two superpowers to minimize the voting support of the other side. This continual search for votes, or at least abstentions, has become one of the main preoccupations of the great powers in the General Assembly. Out of it, a new diplomatic procedure has developed, the significance of which is twofold. It forces the great powers to defer, at least in the formulation of their policies, to the preferences of the small member nations and thereby blunts the sharp edges of international conflict. It provides the nations concerned with an opportunity to shift the apparent responsibility for unpleasant decisions to the United Nations and thereby acts as a face-saving and shock-absorbing device.

The powerful nation which needs for the successful execution of its policies the support of small nations can follow one of two courses of action. It can resort to the traditional method of diplomacy and bring its superior power directly to bear upon the weaker nations. In this way dependencies are established and alliances are formed. However, a powerful nation which tries to gain support for its policies through the United Nations General Assembly cannot rely upon its superior power alone. Superior power avails it nothing if it is unable to attract the number of votes sufficient for the purposes of its policy. Thus it must pursue a different course of action, which is determined by the procedures of the General

Assembly. These procedures and the new United Nations diplomacy which has developed from them tend to diminish the distinction between great and small nations, since all of them have but one vote.

IF A great power had only the task of fashioning an alliance with the techniques of traditional diplomacy, it would select the members of the alliance primarily according to the power they could add to it. Yet the task of the new United Nations diplomacy is not so much to build an alliance with a maximum of political and military power, as to form a majority with a maximum of voting strength. In the General Assembly, India's vote counts for as much as Nicaragua's, and Yemen's is as valuable as Great Britain's. The most powerful member of an alliance can afford to disregard the preferences of small nations whose power counts for nothing, making concessions only to those whose power counts. The most powerful member of a majority in the process of formation must heed the wishes of even the weakest nation whose vote is needed.

Of course, the power of the big nation is still felt, as is the weakness of the small one. Yet while power and weakness still count in the new United Nations diplomacy, they do not count for as much as in traditional diplomatic methods. Here lies the important distinction between the techniques of traditional and United Nations diplomacy: the latter is compelled to persuade, where the former could afford not to care. Thus a great power must present the issues to be voted on in terms acceptable to the members whose votes are needed. This necessity involves a dual transformation of the measure from what it would be were it to serve exclusively the purposes of the great power.

First of all, the measure must be presented in language reflecting the common interests of the prospective members of the two-thirds majority, rather than the interests of a particular nation or more limited group of nations. This linguistic transformation may frequently amount to no more than ideological justification and rationalization

THE NEW UNITED NATIONS

381

of national policies in terms of supranational ones. Yet the constant use of a certain terminology, not only for purposes of propaganda but in the give and take of political transactions, may well exert a subtle influence upon the substance of the transactions themselves. For the language constantly used will create in the participants to the transaction expectations to which the transaction somehow must conform or from which, at the very least, it cannot completely deviate. Thus a foreign policy with which a certain nation or limited group of nations is completely identified, and for which the broad support of two-thirds of the General Assembly is sought, may well undergo a subtle change if, for the purpose of gaining such broad support, it is constantly presented in supranational terms. Such a change would hardly ever run counter to the objectives and methods envisaged by the original national policy. Yet it may well result in the blunting of the sharp edges of a national policy, its retreat from an advanced position, and its reformulation and adaptation in the light of the supranational principles embodied in the language of the resolution.

The same result will be directly and almost inevitably achieved in the course of the negotiations by which a two-thirds majority in support of the resolution is formed. The divergence of interests, capabilities, and points of view among the members whose support is sought necessitates a search for a common denominator, which is bound to be below the maximum desired by the originator of the national policy. How far below that maximum the measure enacted by the General Assembly is going to be will depend in part upon the skill with which different nations make use of the new methods of United Nations diplomacy. In large measure, however, the distribution of material power between the nations seeking support for a policy and the nations whose support is sought will decide the extent to which the former must give way in order to gain that support. For the nations that can afford to do so will use their power as a lever by which to gain concessions and avoid

making them. It is here that old and new diplomacy merge.

YET the United Nations presents two great inducements for making concessions, at least in the formulation of policies: it is at present powerless to act, and it speaks with a voice which pretends and appears to be, and within certain limits actually is, different from that of the great powers. Thus nations in conflict with each other can afford to do vis-à-vis the United Nations what they think they cannot afford to do in their relations with each other: make concessions in the formulation, if not the substance, of their policies without fear of losing face. This is particularly so if the face-saving formula is proposed by a "neutral" nation or group of nations. For then the parties to the dispute appear to make concessions not to each other, but to the majority of the General Assembly in whose name the "neutral" nation appears to speak. Conversely, the refusal to make concessions appears in the circumstances not so much as defense of one's own rightful position against the enemy, but rather as defiance of the "political voice of mankind itself." However intangible and imponderable these influences are which the General Assembly is able to bring to bear by virtue of its very existence as an operating agency, these influences exist and are being taken into account by the nations concerned.

The Secretary General, as designer of the face-saving formula, personifies both the "neutral" nations and the "political voice of mankind" and partakes of the influences they exert in the General Assembly. However, he has at his disposal two more devices which enable him under favorable circumstances to mitigate international conflicts. One is a function of his office and the sole means of real pressure at his disposal. He can warn a reluctant party that he will bring the situation to the attention of the General Assembly as a threat to international peace and security, and in terms which place the blame where the Secretary General thinks it belongs. By doing this, he threatens to bring

382

COMMENTARY

those influences into motion which enable
the General Assembly to play the mediating
and mitigating role to which we have re-
ferred.

The other instrument at the disposal of
the Secretary General is a function of his
personality and lies purely in the realm of
persuasion. Mr. Hammarskjöld's tenure of
office shows impressively how dependent the
peace-promoting functions of the Secretary
General are upon the intellectual and moral
qualities of the holder of that office. Only a
man of Mr. Hammarskjöld's personality

could have tried to do what he has tried to
do in this respect, and have achieved what
he has achieved.

In view of the magnitude of the unsettled
issues, it is fair to say that what he has
achieved is little enough, and this judgment
must be extended to the United Nations as
a whole. But in view of the enormity of the
consequences with which these unsettled is-
sues threaten not only individual nations but
civilization itself, it must also be said that
the little that has been achieved by the
United Nations is better than nothing.

THE CHILD

EMIL BOYSON

ON MY way through the park
I saw you playing one second.
Watching you, your father
Reads "Family Times of Zion."
(Berlin, 1933; it's still allowed
for Jews
To sit on a bench in a park;
We're humane; Der Führer wishes it.
But it won't be much longer.)
You get up from the sandpile,
And tear over to him,
The black curls jumping on your head,
Calling out, Father! Father!
And dark eyes burn with gayness
And all the charm of a foreign race.

It won't be much longer.
Take off your clothes! (Economical,
Der Führer wishes it)
Throw yourself in the big fire-oven!
Der Führer wishes it!

Little bloom of a strange race,
I am the only person on the entire earth
Who even knows that you were alive.
They tossed your father in the fire-oven,
Then the uncles and cousins and aunts
And all who were remotely related.
Those who murdered you, you have slipped
their mind.
That's all I have to say.

EMIL BOYSON, considered widely to be Norway's best living poet, won the Norwegian Critics' Prize in 1957 for his book of poems that year. The translator of this example of his work is ROBERT BLY, himself a poet whose verse is included in *New Poets of England and America* (Meridian).

The third edition of POLITICS AMONG NATIONS is a major reworking and broadening of material contained in earlier editions. Testing his theory of international politics in the light of changes in the political environment since the second edition was published, Dr. Morgenthau has felt the need to change the emphasis here and there while leaving the assumptions, tenets, and theoretical structure intact.

The central element of power has been stressed more than before, especially in the form of charismatic power. The discussion of political ideologies has been elaborated. A section has been added on the theory of alliances; and the discussion of the balance of power has been extended. This edition includes a new section on nuclear disarmament. The chapter on peaceful change has been expanded; that on the United Nations completely rewritten.

When the first edition was published in 1948, POLITICS AMONG NATIONS put forward a realistic conception of international relations which was not currently popular. It was in many respects a revolutionary book. It quickly won the admiration of scholars everywhere for the close reasoning of its argument and has since come to be recognized as a monumental work in its field.

WALDEMAR GURIAN, writing in the *Review of Politics*, called the book "a landmark in American literature dealing with international politics." ROBERT D. HAYTON of *Hunter College* referred to it as "the best 'food for thought' for the new but serious student of international affairs," and L. LEDERMANN of the *University of Geneva* commented, "This book is not only a high-ranking piece of scientific research and an excellent teaching aid, but also thought-provoking reading for everyone who is interested in the basic problems of present-day international relations."

# PREFACE

## to the Third Edition

THE THIRD EDITION of this book continues the process of revision which the second edition undertook five years ago. The continuing need for such revision, fruitful for author and reader, points up one of the basic theoretical tenets of this book, which owes its existence to the conviction, developed in the first chapter, that there exists an objective and universally valid truth about matters political, that this truth is accessible to human reason, and that it is both embedded in, and pointed toward, the ever changing configurations of successive periods of history. Both in its empirical manifestations and in the purposes it serves, political truth is a child of its times. The balance of power of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with its multiplicity of approximately equal weights looks different from the bipolar balance of the mid-twentieth century, although the underlying principles are identical. To discuss the nature of the balance of power in the England of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was to explain the obvious, to make clear what everybody already knew by dint of a political experience of centuries. To speak of the balance of power as the perennial element of international policies in the United States of the thirties and forties of the twentieth century was to reveal a truth the existence of which few suspected and most took for rank heresy, a passing and already obsolete aberration.

Testing the theory of international politics presented in this book against the changes which have occurred in the political environment since the second edition was written, I felt the need to change the emphasis and elaborate here or there while leaving assumptions, tenets, and theoretical structure intact. Against the misunderstanding of the central element of power, which, after having been underrated to the point of total neglect, now tends to be equated with material strength, especially of a military nature, I have stressed more than before its immaterial aspects, especially in the form of charismatic power, and have elaborated the discussion of political ideologies. In view of the problem which alliances pose in contemporary world politics, I have added a section on the theory of alliances and have extended the discussion of the balance of power. From the chapter on international law certain technical details

viii

Preface

have been eliminated, and sections on nuclear disarmament and the European Communities have been added. The chapter on peaceful change has been expanded in view of recent developments, and the one on the United Nations has been completely re-written.

I have been particularly careful in checking the adequacy of the theory of international politics presented here for the understanding of certain general problems which are at present in the forefront of public discussion, such as the obsolescence of all-out violence as an instrument of foreign policy in view of the total destructiveness of nuclear war, the nuclear balance of power, the relation between all-out nuclear and limited war, the need for, and trend toward, supranational organizations, the new nationalism in the former colonial areas, and the obsolescence of the nation state. Of these seemingly novel phenomena and problems, only the obsolescence of all-out violence is really unprecedented, as was pointed out in the first edition of this book. The others are manifestations of the perennial principles of international politics within a novel political or technological environment.

I had occasion in the preface to the second edition, finding solace in Montesquieu's similar experience, to bemoan the fate of authors "to be criticized for ideas one has never held." While writing this preface, I came across an article entitled "International Relations: The Long Road to Theory,"¹ which, in this connection, deserves to be mentioned for purposes of education. This article refers to page 9 of the second edition in these words:

> We reach at this point one of the most fundamental ambiguities of the theory. The postulate of the permanence of power politics among nations as the core of international relations tends to become a goal. The static qualities of the theory lead to confusion between the phenomenon of power conflicts and the transitory forms and institutions in which such conflicts have been taking place in recent centuries. Why should the sound reminder that power is here to stay mean that the present system of nation-states will continue, or change only through forces that are of no concern to us? Such an attitude is a double evasion: from the empirical duty of accounting for change, and from the normative task of assessing whether the present system should indeed continue. One cannot help but feel that, in spite of Mr. Morgenthau's qualifying statements, there is behind his theory the old position that whatever has been, must continue.²

But what did I actually say on page 9?

What is true of the general character of international relations is also true of the nation state as the ultimate point of reference of foreign policy at the present time. While the realist indeed believes

¹ *World Politics*, Vol. XI, No. 3 (April 1959), pp. 346-77.

² Ibid., pp. 352-3.

Preface

ix

that interest is the perennial standard by which political action must be judged and directed, the contemporary connection between interest and the national state is a product of history, and is therefore bound to disappear in the course of history. Nothing in the realist position militates against the assumption that the present division of the political world into nation states will be replaced by larger units of a quite different character, more in keeping with the technical circumstances and the moral requirements of the contemporary world.

And the obsolescence of the nation state and the need to merge it into supranational organizations of a functional nature was already one of the main points of the first edition of 1948!

Continuing his criticism of what are supposed to be my opinions, the author continues:

> This brings us to a second limitation, which concerns the usefulness of the scheme as a normative theory. It is something of a success philosophy. The criterion of a good foreign policy is its rationality, but the touchstone of rationality is success. Unfortunately the standards of success and failure are not made clear. First, how will we distinguish between the follies of straight utopianism and the fallacies of wrong realism—realism that did not work? Secondly, from what viewpoint shall we decide whether a statesman has succeeded or failed? Shall we turn to history alone? But at what stage? Metternich had succeeded by 1825, failed by 1848, and writers disagree as to whether he had succeeded or failed by 1914.³

Yet as far back as 1955 I advanced exactly the same arguments against making success the standard for political action:

> Yet, how do we determine success and failure in foreign policy? Surveying the centuries, history is able to assess the contribution of a particular move at a particular time to the ultimate success or failure of a nation's foreign policy. The contemporary observer is handicapped by his ignorance of the consequences of contemporary policies. Judged by success alone, Hitler's foreign policy, if viewed in the perspective of 1938-40, made Bismarck's look like a mere preparation for greater things to come. But how did it look but five years later? Who did not think in 1929 that the Briand-Kellogg Pact was a great success, and who did not think so of the Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam agreements at the time of their conclusion? But who would think so now?

> However, we do not object to the Briand-Kellogg Pact and the wartime agreements with the Soviet Union solely or even primarily for their lack of success. What we are critical of is the cause of their failure, that is, the wrong way of thinking about foreign policy which made the framers of these agreements expect success when failure could have been avoided only by fortuitous circumstances lying beyond the ken of their intentions and control. What makes foreign policy deserving of praise or blame is, then, not success or failure per se but a way of

³ Ibid., p. 353.

x

Preface

thinking about foreign policy which by virtue of its inherent qualities
is likely to lead to success or failure. A foreign policy based upon cor-
rect thinking deserves to be called "good" even though it fails for
reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of thought that went
into it, and a foreign policy derived from wrong thinking must be
called "bad" even though it succeeds in spite of the deficiencies of the
reasoning from which it stems.⁴

To impute to a scholar the very opinions which he opposes and then
refute him with his own arguments is certainly an extraordinary feat of
critical originality. While I am far from agreeing with the author of this
article that "the discipline of international relations is in poorer shape
than practically any of the other social sciences,"⁵ I would agree that
some of the critical literature is in very poor shape indeed.

This edition was written during my stay at the Institute for Ad-
vanced Study in Princeton. I acknowledge with gratitude the competent
assistance of Mrs. Marion G. Hartz and Miss Joan Ogden.

I appreciate the permission to use material previously published in
*Commentary* and *Confluence*.

HANS J. MORGENTHAU

Princeton, New Jersey

⁴ The Yearbook of World Affairs (New York: Alfred A. Praeger, 1955), Vol. IX, pp. 1-2; reprinted in *Dilemmas of Politics* (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 324-5.

⁵ Ibid., p. 346.

# CONTENTS

## PART ONE

### *Theory and Practice of International Politics*

1. A REALIST THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 3
   Six Principles of Political Realism 4

2. THE SCIENCE OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 16
   Understanding International Politics 16
   Different Approaches 16
   Limitations to Understanding 18
   Understanding the Problem of International Peace 22

## PART TWO

### *International Politics as a Struggle for Power*

3. POLITICAL POWER 27
   What Is Political Power? 27

   *Its Relation to the Nation as a Whole* 27

   *Its Nature* 28

   *The Depreciation of Political Power* 31

   *Two Roots of the Depreciation of Political Power* 35

   *Nineteenth-Century Philosophy* 35

   *The American Experience* 36

4. THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER: POLICY OF THE STATUS QUO 38
5. THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER: IMPERIALISM 44

   *What Imperialism Is Not* 44

   *Economic Theories of Imperialism* 48

   *The Marxist, Liberal, and “Devil” Theories of Imperialism* 48

   *Criticism of These Theories* 49

   *Different Types of Imperialism* 53

   *Three Inducements to Imperialism* 54

   VICTORIOUS WAR 54

   LOST WAR 54

   WEAKNESS 55

xx

Contents

Alliances vs. World Domination 187

Alliances vs. Counteralliances 189

The "Holder" of the Balance 194

13. THE STRUCTURE OF THE BALANCE OF POWER 198

Dominant and Dependent Systems 198

Structural Changes in the Balance of Power 201

14. EVALUATION OF THE BALANCE OF POWER 204

The Uncertainty of the Balance of Power 205

The Unrealty of the Balance of Power 210

The Balance of Power as Ideology 213

The Inadequacy of the Balance of Power 215

Restraining Influence of a Moral Consensus 216

Moral Consensus of the Modern State System 220

PART FIVE

Limitations of National Power: International Morality and World Public Opinion

15. MORALITY, MORES, AND LAW AS RESTRAINTS ON POWER 227

16. INTERNATIONAL MORALITY 233

The Protection of Human Life 234

Protection of Human Life in Peace 234

Protection of Human Life in War 238

Moral Condemnation of War 240

International Morality and Total War 241

Universal Morality vs. Nationalistic Universalism 244

Personal Ethics of the Aristocratic International 245

Destruction of International Morality 248

Destruction of International Society 251

Victory of Nationalism over Internationalism 253

Transformation of Nationalism 255

17. WORLD PUBLIC OPINION 260

Psychological Unity of the World 262

Ambiguity of Technological Unification 263

The Barrier of Nationalism 266

PART SIX

Limitations of National Power: International Law

18. THE MAIN PROBLEMS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 275

The General Nature of International Law 275

The Legislative Function in International Law 279

Its Decentralized Character 279

<table><thead><tr><th>Contents</th><th>xxi</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Interpretation and Binding Force</td><td>281</td></tr><tr><td>The Judicial Function in International Law</td><td>285</td></tr><tr><td>Compulsory Jurisdiction</td><td>285</td></tr><tr><td>THE OPTIONAL CLAUSE</td><td>287</td></tr><tr><td>International Courts</td><td>290</td></tr><tr><td>The Effect of Judicial Decisions</td><td>292</td></tr><tr><td>The Enforcement of International Law</td><td>293</td></tr><tr><td>Its Decentralized Character</td><td>293</td></tr><tr><td>Treaties of Guaranty</td><td>296</td></tr><tr><td>Collective Security</td><td>298</td></tr><tr><td>ARTICLE 16 OF THE COVENANT OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS</td><td>298</td></tr><tr><td>CHAPTER VII OF THE CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS</td><td>303</td></tr><tr><td>THE VETO</td><td>307</td></tr><tr><td>THE "UNITING FOR PEACE" RESOLUTION</td><td>309</td></tr><tr><td>19. SOVEREIGNTY</td><td>312</td></tr><tr><td>The General Nature of Sovereignty</td><td>312</td></tr><tr><td>Synonyms of Sovereignty: Independence, Equality, Unanimity</td><td>315</td></tr><tr><td>What Sovereignty Is Not</td><td>316</td></tr><tr><td>How Sovereignty Is Lost</td><td>318</td></tr><tr><td>Majority Vote in International Organizations</td><td>322</td></tr><tr><td>Is Sovereignty Divisible?</td><td>325</td></tr></tbody></table>

PART SEVEN

World Politics in the Mid-Twentieth Century

<table><tbody><tr><td>20. THE NEW MORAL FORCE OF NATIONALISTIC UNIVERSALISM</td><td>335</td></tr><tr><td>Nationalism, Old and New</td><td>335</td></tr><tr><td>The Struggle for the Minds of Men</td><td>338</td></tr><tr><td>Three Principles of Propaganda</td><td>339</td></tr><tr><td>21. THE NEW BALANCE OF POWER</td><td>346</td></tr><tr><td>Inflexibility of the New Balance of Power</td><td>346</td></tr><tr><td>Numerical Reduction of Great Powers</td><td>346</td></tr><tr><td>The Bipolarity of Power</td><td>349</td></tr><tr><td>The Tendency toward a Two-Bloc System</td><td>350</td></tr><tr><td>The Uncommitted Nations</td><td>351</td></tr><tr><td>Disappearance of the Balancer</td><td>352</td></tr><tr><td>The Problem of a "Third Force"</td><td>353</td></tr><tr><td>Disappearance of the Colonial Frontier</td><td>355</td></tr><tr><td>The Colonial Revolution</td><td>358</td></tr><tr><td>Potentialities of the Bipolar System</td><td>360</td></tr><tr><td>The Possibility of Its Breakup</td><td>360</td></tr><tr><td>Continuation of the Cold War</td><td>361</td></tr><tr><td>Peaceful Co-existence</td><td>363</td></tr></tbody></table>

xxii

Contents

22. TOTAL WAR

365

War of Total Populations

367

War by Total Populations

371

War against Total Populations

372

The Mechanization of Warfare

373

The Mechanization of Weapons

373

The Mechanization of Transportation and Communications

376

War for Total Stakes

378

Total Mechanization, Total War, and Total Dominion

381

PART EIGHT

*The Problem of Peace in the Mid-Twentieth Century:*
*Peace Through Limitation*

23. DISARMAMENT

389

The Problem of Peace in Our Time

389

History of Disarmament

391

The Failures

392

The Successes

395

Four Problems of Disarmament

396

The Ratio

396

THE RUSH-BAGOT AGREEMENT, THE WASHINGTON TREATY, AND THE ANGLO-GERMAN NAVAL AGREEMENT

397

THE WORLD DISARMAMENT CONFERENCE

399

DISARMAMENT NEGOTIATIONS SINCE THE

SECOND WORLD WAR

401

Standards of Allocation

402

Does Disarmament Mean Reduction of Armaments?

405

Does Disarmament Mean Peace?

407

24. SECURITY

412

Collective Security

412

The Italo-Ethiopian War

418

The Korean War

419

An International Police Force

422

25. JUDICIAL SETTLEMENT

425

The Nature of the Judicial Function

425

The Nature of International Conflicts: Tensions and Disputes

427

Pure Disputes

428

Disputes with the Substance of a Tension

429

Disputes Representing a Tension

430

Limitations of the Judicial Function

431

Contents xxiii

26. PEACEFUL CHANGE

Peaceful Change within the State 435

Peaceful Change in International Affairs 439

Article 19 of the Covenant of the League of Nations 440

The Resolutions of the General Assembly 442

PALESTINE 442

KOREA 444

GERMANY AND AUSTRIA 446

HUNGARY 447

OTHER FAILURES 447

THE SUEZ CANAL 448

JORDAN AND LEBANON 448

THE ITALIAN COLONIES 449

The Resolutions of the Security Council 450

PALESTINE AND KASHMIR 450

ANGLO-EGYPTIAN DISPUTE OF 1947 AND BERLIN BLOCKADE 452

TRIESTE 453

INDONESIA 453

THE SUEZ CANAL 454

27. INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENT

The Holy Alliance 456

History 457

Government by the Great Powers 457

Dual Meaning of the Status Quo 458

Peace, Order, and the National Interest 459

The Concert of Europe 461

The League of Nations 464

Organization 465

Dual Meaning of the Status Quo: France vs. Great Britain 468

Three Weaknesses of the League of Nations 470

CONSTITUTIONAL WEAKNESS 472

STRUCTURAL WEAKNESS 472

POLITICAL WEAKNESS 475

28. INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENT: THE UNITED NATIONS

The United Nations According to the Charter 478

Government by Superpowers 478

Undefined Principles of Justice 478

The Undefined Status Quo 481

The United Nations—Political Reality 483

The Rise and Decline of the General Assembly 484

New Procedures 493

The United Nations and the Problem of Peace 496

Chapter 1

THIS BOOK purports to present a theory of international politics. The test by which such a theory must be judged is not a priori and abstract but empirical and pragmatic. The theory, in other words, must be judged not by some preconceived abstract principle or concept unrelated to reality, but by its purpose: to bring order and meaning to a mass of phenomena which without it would remain disconnected and unintelligible. It must meet a dual test, an empirical and a logical one: Do the facts as they actually are lend themselves to the interpretation the theory has put upon them, and do the conclusions at which the theory arrives follow with logical necessity from its premises? In short, is the theory consistent with the facts and within itself?

The issue this theory raises concerns the nature of all politics. The history of modern political thought is the story of a contest between two schools that differ fundamentally in their conceptions of the nature of man, society, and politics. One believes that a rational and moral political order, derived from universally valid abstract principles, can be achieved here and now. It assumes the essential goodness and infinite malleability of human nature, and blames the failure of the social order to measure up to the rational standards on lack of knowledge and understanding, obsolescent social institutions, or the depravity of certain isolated individuals or groups. It trusts in education, reform, and the sporadic use of force to remedy these defects.

4

# 1: *Theory and Practice of International Politics*

The other school believes that the world, imperfect as it is from the rational point of view, is the result of forces inherent in human nature. To improve the world one must work with those forces, not against them. This being inherently a world of opposing interests and of conflict among them, moral principles can never be fully realized, but must at best be approximated through the ever temporary balancing of interests and the ever precarious settlement of conflicts. This school, then, sees in a system of checks and balances a universal principle for all pluralist societies. It appeals to historic precedent rather than to abstract principles, and aims at the realization of the lesser evil rather than of the absolute good.

This theoretical concern with human nature as it actually is, and with the historic processes as they actually take place, has earned for the theory presented here the name of realism. What are the tenets of political realism? No systematic exposition of the philosophy of political realism can be attempted here; it will suffice to single out six fundamental principles, which have frequently been misunderstood.

## Six Principles of Political Realism

1. POLITICAL REALISM believes that politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature. In order to improve society it is first necessary to understand the laws by which society lives. The operation of these laws being impervious to our preferences, men will challenge them only at the risk of failure.

Realism, believing as it does in the objectivity of the laws of politics, must also believe in the possibility of developing a rational theory that reflects, however imperfectly and one-sidedly, these objective laws. It believes also, then, in the possibility of distinguishing in politics between truth and opinion—between what is true objectively and rationally, supported by evidence and illuminated by reason, and what is only a subjective judgment, divorced from the facts as they are and informed by prejudice and wishful thinking.

Human nature, in which the laws of politics have their roots, has not changed since the classical philosophies of China, India, and Greece endeavored to discover these laws. Hence, novelty is not necessarily a virtue in political theory, nor is old age a defect. The fact that a theory of politics, if there be such a theory, has never been heard of before tends to create a presumption against, rather than in favor of, its soundness. Conversely, the fact that a theory of politics was developed hundreds or even thousands of years ago—as was the theory of the balance of power—does not create a presumption that it must be outmoded and obsolete. A theory of politics must be subjected to the dual test of reason and experience. To dismiss such a theory because it had its flowering in centuries past is to present not a rational argument but a modernistic prejudice that takes for granted the superiority of the pres-

# 1: *A Realist Theory of International Politics*

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ent over the past. To dispose of the revival of such a theory as a "fash-
ion" or "fad" is tantamount to assuming that in matters political we can
have opinions but no truths.

For realism, theory consists in ascertaining facts and giving them
meaning through reason. It assumes that the character of a foreign pol-
icy can be ascertained only through the examination of the political acts
performed and of the foreseeable consequences of these acts. Thus, we
can find out what statesmen have actually done, and from the foresee-
able consequences of their acts we can surmise what their objectives
might have been.

Yet examination of the facts is not enough. To give meaning to the
factual raw material of foreign policy, we must approach political real-
ity with a kind of rational outline, a map that suggests to us the possible
meanings of foreign policy. In other words, we put ourselves in the posi-
tion of a statesman who must meet a certain problem of foreign policy
under certain circumstances, and we ask ourselves what the rational
alternatives are from which a statesman may choose who must meet this
problem under these circumstances (presuming always that he acts in a
rational manner), and which of these rational alternatives this particular
statesman, acting under these circumstances, is likely to choose. It is the
testing of this rational hypothesis against the actual facts and their con-
sequences that gives meaning to the facts of international politics and
makes a theory of politics possible.

2. The main signpost that helps political realism to find its way through the landscape of international politics is the concept of interest defined in terms of power. This concept provides the link between reason trying to understand international politics and the facts to be understood. It sets politics as an autonomous sphere of action and understanding apart from other spheres, such as economics (understood in terms of interest defined as wealth), ethics, aesthetics, or religion. Without such a concept a theory of politics, international or domestic, would be altogether impossible, for without it we could not distinguish between political and nonpolitical facts, nor could we bring at least a measure of systematic order to the political sphere.

We assume that statesmen think and act in terms of interest defined
as power, and the evidence of history bears that assumption out. That
assumption allows us to retrace and anticipate, as it were, the steps a
statesman—past, present, or future—has taken or will take on the politi-
cal scene. We look over his shoulder when he writes his dispatches; we
listen in on his conversation with other statesmen; we read and antici-
pate his very thoughts. Thinking in terms of interest defined as power,
we think as he does, and as disinterested observers we understand his
thoughts and actions perhaps better than he, the actor on the political
scene, does himself.

The concept of interest defined as power imposes intellectual disci-

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pline upon the observer, infuses rational order into the subject matter of politics, and thus makes the theoretical understanding of politics possible. On the side of the actor, it provides for rational discipline in action and creates that astounding continuity in foreign policy which makes American, British, or Russian foreign policy appear as an intelligible, rational continuum, by and large consistent within itself, regardless of the different motives, preferences, and intellectual and moral qualities of successive statesmen. A realist theory of international politics, then, will guard against two popular fallacies: the concern with motives and the concern with ideological preferences.

To search for the clue to foreign policy exclusively in the motives of statesmen is both futile and deceptive. It is futile because motives are the most illusive of psychological data, distorted as they are, frequently beyond recognition, by the interests and emotions of actor and observer alike. Do we really know what our own motives are? And what do we know of the motives of others?

Yet even if we had access to the real motives of statesmen, that knowledge would help us little in understanding foreign policies, and might well lead us astray. It is true that the knowledge of the statesman's motives may give us one among many clues as to what the direction of his foreign policy might be. It cannot give us, however, the one clue by which to predict his foreign policies. History shows no exact and necessary correlation between the quality of motives and the quality of foreign policy. This is true in both moral and political terms.

We cannot conclude from the good intentions of a statesman that his foreign policies will be either morally praiseworthy or politically successful. Judging his motives, we can say that he will not intentionally pursue policies that are morally wrong, but we can say nothing about the probability of their success. If we want to know the moral and political qualities of his actions, we must know them, not his motives. How often have statesmen been motivated by the desire to improve the world, and ended by making it worse? And how often have they sought one goal, and ended by achieving something they neither expected nor desired?

Neville Chamberlain's policies of appeasement were, as far as we can judge, inspired by good motives; he was probably less motivated by considerations of personal power than were many other British prime ministers, and he sought to preserve peace and to assure the happiness of all concerned. Yet his policies helped to make the Second World War inevitable, and to bring untold miseries to millions of men. Sir Winston Churchill's motives, on the other hand, have been much less universal in scope and much more narrowly directed toward personal and national power, yet the foreign policies that sprang from these inferior motives were certainly superior in moral and political quality to those pursued by his predecessor. Judged by his motives, Robespierre was one of the

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most virtuous men who ever lived. Yet it was the utopian radicalism of that very virtue that made him kill those less virtuous than himself, brought him to the scaffold, and destroyed the revolution of which he was a leader.

Good motives give assurance against deliberately bad policies; they do not guarantee the moral goodness and political success of the policies they inspire. What it is important to know, if one wants to understand foreign policy, is not primarily the motives of a statesman, but his intellectual ability to comprehend the essentials of foreign policy, as well as his political ability to translate what he has comprehended into successful political action. It follows that while ethics in the abstract judges the moral qualities of motives, political theory must judge the political qualities of intellect, will, and action.

A realist theory of international politics will also avoid the other popular fallacy of equating the foreign policies of a statesman with his philosophic or political sympathies, and of deducing the former from the latter. Statesmen, especially under contemporary conditions, may well make a habit of presenting their foreign policies in terms of their philosophic and political sympathies in order to gain popular support for them. Yet they will distinguish with Lincoln between their “official duty,” which is to think and act in terms of the national interest, and their “personal wish,” which is to see their own moral values and political principles realized throughout the world. Political realism does not require, nor does it condone, indifference to political ideals and moral principles, but it requires indeed a sharp distinction between the desirable and the possible—between what is desirable everywhere and at all times and what is possible under the concrete circumstances of time and place.

It stands to reason that not all foreign policies have always followed so rational, objective, and unemotional a course. The contingent elements of personality, prejudice, and subjective preference, and of all the weaknesses of intellect and will which flesh is heir to, are bound to deflect foreign policies from their rational course. Especially where foreign policy is conducted under the conditions of democratic control, the need to marshal popular emotions to the support of foreign policy cannot fail to impair the rationality of foreign policy itself. Yet a theory of foreign policy which aims at rationality must for the time being, as it were, abstract from these irrational elements and seek to paint a picture of foreign policy which presents the rational essence to be found in experience, without the contingent deviations from rationality which are also found in experience.

The difference between international politics as it actually is and a rational theory derived from it is like the difference between a photograph and a painted portrait. The photograph shows everything that can be seen by the naked eye; the painted portrait does not show everything

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that can be seen by the naked eye, but it shows, or at least seeks to show, one thing that the naked eye cannot see: the human essence of the person portrayed.

Political realism contains not only a theoretical but also a normative element. It knows that political reality is replete with contingencies and points to the typical influences they exert upon foreign policy. Yet it shares with all social theory the need, for the sake of theoretical understanding, to stress the rational elements of political reality; for it is these rational elements that make reality intelligible for theory. Political realism presents the theoretical construct of a rational foreign policy which experience can never completely achieve.

At the same time political realism considers a rational foreign policy to be good foreign policy; for only a rational foreign policy minimizes risks and maximizes benefits and, hence, complies both with the moral precept of prudence and the political requirement of success. Political realism wants the photographic picture of the political world to resemble as much as possible its painted portrait. Aware of the inevitable gap between good—that is, rational—foreign policy and foreign policy as it actually is, political realism maintains not only that theory must focus upon the rational elements of political reality, but also that foreign policy ought to be rational in view of its own moral and practical purposes.

Hence, it is no argument against the theory here presented that actual foreign policy does not or cannot live up to it. That argument misunderstands the intention of this book, which is to present not an indiscriminate description of political reality, but a rational theory of international politics. Far from being invalidated by the fact that, for instance, a perfect balance of power policy will scarcely be found in reality, it assumes that reality, being deficient in this respect, must be understood and evaluated as an approximation to an ideal system of balance of power.

3. Realism does not endow its key concept of interest defined as power with a meaning that is fixed once and for all. The idea of interest is indeed of the essence of politics and is unaffected by the circumstances of time and place. Thucydides' statement, born of the experiences of ancient Greece, that "identity of interest is the surest of bonds whether between states or individuals" was taken up in the nineteenth century by Lord Salisbury's remark that "the only bond of union that endures" among nations is "the absence of all clashing interests." It was erected into a general principle of government by George Washington:

> A small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of mankind, interest is the governing principle; and that almost every man is more or less, under its influence. Motives of public virtue may for a time, or in particular instances, actuate men to the observance of a conduct purely disinterested; but they are not

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of themselves sufficient to produce a persevering conformity to the refined dictates and obligations of social duty. Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good. It is vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature on this account; the fact is so, the experience of every age and nation has proved it and we must in a great measure, change the constitution of man, before we can make it otherwise. No institution, not built on the presumptive truth of these maxims can succeed.¹

It was echoed and enlarged upon in our century by Max Weber's observation:

> Interests (material and ideal), not ideas, dominate directly the actions of men. Yet the "images of the world" created by these ideas have very often served as switches determining the tracks on which the dynamism of interests kept actions moving.²

Yet the kind of interest determining political action in a particular period of history depends upon the political and cultural context within which foreign policy is formulated. The goals that might be pursued by nations in their foreign policy can run the whole gamut of objectives any nation has ever pursued or might possibly pursue.

The same observations apply to the concept of power. Its content and the manner of its use are determined by the political and cultural environment. Power may comprise anything that establishes and maintains the control of man over man. Thus power covers all social relationships which serve that end, from physical violence to the most subtle psychological ties by which one mind controls another. Power covers the domination of man by man, both when it is disciplined by moral ends and controlled by constitutional safeguards, as in Western democracies, and when it is that untamed and barbaric force which finds its laws in nothing but its own strength and its sole justification in its aggrandizement.

Political realism does not assume that the contemporary conditions under which foreign policy operates, with their extreme instability and the ever present threat of large-scale violence, cannot be changed. The balance of power, for instance, is indeed a perennial element of all pluralistic societies, as the authors of *The Federalist* papers well knew; yet it is capable of operating, as it does in the United States, under the conditions of relative stability and peaceful conflict. If the factors that have given rise to these conditions can be duplicated on the international scene, similar conditions of stability and peace will then prevail there, as they have over long stretches of history among certain nations.

¹ *The Writings of George Washington*, edited by John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington: United States Printing Office, 1931-44), Vol. X, p. 363.

² Marianne Weber, *Max Weber* (Tuebingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1926), pp. 347-8.

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also true of the nation state as the ultimate point of reference of contemporary foreign policy. While the realist indeed believes that interest is the perennial standard by which political action must be judged and directed, the contemporary connection between interest and the national state is a product of history, and is therefore bound to disappear in the course of history. Nothing in the realist position militates against the assumption that the present division of the political world into nation states will be replaced by larger units of a quite different character, more in keeping with the technical potentialities and the moral requirements of the contemporary world.

The realist parts company with other schools of thought before the all-important question of how the contemporary world is to be transformed. The realist is persuaded that this transformation can be achieved only through the workmanlike manipulation of the perennial forces that have shaped the past as they will the future. The realist cannot be persuaded that we can bring about that transformation by confronting a political reality that has its own laws with an abstract ideal that refuses to take those laws into account.

4. Political realism is aware of the moral significance of political action. It is also aware of the ineluctable tension between the moral command and the requirements of successful political action. And it is unwilling to gloss over and obliterate that tension and thus to obfuscate both the moral and the political issue by making it appear as though the stark facts of politics were morally more satisfying than they actually are, and the moral law less exacting than it actually is.

Realism maintains that universal moral principles cannot be applied to the actions of states in their abstract universal formulation, but that they must be filtered through the concrete circumstances of time and place. The individual may say for himself: *"Fiat justitia, pereat mundus"* (Let justice be done, even if the world perish)," but the state has no right to say so in the name of those who are in its care. Both individual and state must judge political action by universal moral principles, such as that of liberty. Yet while the individual has a moral right to sacrifice himself in defense of such a moral principle, the state has no right to let its moral disapprobation of the infringement of liberty get in the way of successful political action, itself inspired by the moral principle of national survival. There can be no political morality without prudence; that is, without consideration of the political consequences of seemingly moral action. Realism, then, considers prudence—the weighing of the consequences of alternative political actions—to be the supreme virtue in politics. Ethics in the abstract judges action by its conformity with the moral law; political ethics judges action by its political consequences. Classical and medieval philosophy knew this, and so did Lincoln when he said:

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I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

5. Political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe. As it distinguishes between truth and opinion, so it distinguishes between truth and idolatry. All nations are tempted—and few have been able to resist the temptation for long—to clothe their own particular aspirations and actions in the moral purposes of the universe. To know that nations are subject to the moral law is one thing, while to pretend to know with certainty what is good and evil in the relations among nations is quite another. There is a world of difference between the belief that all nations stand under the judgment of God, inscrutable to the human mind, and the blasphemous conviction that God is always on one's side and that what one wills oneself cannot fail to be willed by God also.

The lighthearted equation between a particular nationalism and the counsels of Providence is morally indefensible, for it is that very sin of pride against which the Greek tragedians and the Biblical prophets have warned rulers and ruled. That equation is also politically pernicious, for it is liable to engender the distortion in judgment which, in the blindness of crusading frenzy, destroys nations and civilizations—in the name of moral principle, ideal, or God himself.

On the other hand, it is exactly the concept of interest defined in terms of power that saves us from both that moral excess and that political folly. For if we look at all nations, our own included, as political entities pursuing their respective interests defined in terms of power, we are able to do justice to all of them. And we are able to do justice to all of them in a dual sense: We are able to judge other nations as we judge our own and, having judged them in this fashion, we are then capable of pursuing policies that respect the interests of other nations, while protecting and promoting those of our own. Moderation in policy cannot fail to reflect the moderation of moral judgment.

6. The difference, then, between political realism and other schools of thought is real and it is profound. However much the theory of political realism may have been misunderstood and misinterpreted, there is no gainsaying its distinctive intellectual and moral attitude to matters political.

Intellectually, the political realist maintains the autonomy of the political sphere, as the economist, the lawyer, the moralist maintain theirs. He thinks in terms of interest defined as power, as the economist thinks in terms of interest defined as wealth; the lawyer, of the conformity of action with legal rules; the moralist, of the conformity of action with moral principles. The economist asks: "How does this policy af-

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fect the wealth of society, or a segment of it?” The lawyer asks: “Is this policy in accord with the rules of law?” The moralist asks: “Is this policy in accord with moral principles?” And the political realist asks: “How does this policy affect the power of the nation?” (Or of the federal government, of Congress, of the party, of agriculture, as the case may be.)

The political realist is not unaware of the existence and relevance of standards of thought other than political ones. As political realist, he cannot but subordinate these other standards to those of politics. And he parts company with other schools when they impose standards of thought appropriate to other spheres upon the political sphere. It is here that political realism takes issue with the “legalistic-moralistic approach” to international politics. That this issue is not, as has been contended, a mere figment of the imagination, but goes to the very core of the controversy, can be shown from many historical examples. Three will suffice to make the point.³

In 1939 the Soviet Union attacked Finland. This action confronted France and Great Britain with two issues, one legal, the other political. Did that action violate the Covenant of the League of Nations and, if it did, what countermeasures should France and Great Britain take? The legal question could easily be answered in the affirmative, for obviously the Soviet Union had done what was prohibited by the Covenant. The answer to the political question depended, first, upon the manner in which the Russian action affected the interests of France and Great Britain; second, upon the existing distribution of power between France and Great Britain, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union and other potentially hostile nations, especially Germany, on the other; and, third, upon the influence that the countermeasures were likely to have upon the interests of France and Great Britain and the future distribution of power. France and Great Britain, as the leading members of the League of Nations, saw to it that the Soviet Union was expelled from the League, and they were prevented from joining Finland in the war against the Soviet Union only by Sweden's refusal to allow their troops to pass through Swedish territory on their way to Finland. If this refusal by Sweden had not saved them, France and Great Britain would shortly have found themselves at war with the Soviet Union and Germany at the same time.

The policy of France and Great Britain was a classic example of legalism in that they allowed the answer to the legal question, legitimate within its sphere, to determine their political actions. Instead of asking both questions, that of law and that of power, they asked only the ques-

³ See the other examples discussed in Hans J. Morgenthau, "Another 'Great Debate': The National Interest of the United States," *The American Political Science Review*, XLVI (December 1952), pp. 979 ff. See also Hans J. Morgenthau, *Dilemmas of Politics* (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 54 ff.

Hans J. Morgenthau, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the Study of American Foreign Policy at the University of Chicago, was born in Coburg, Germany, in 1904. His university studies took him to Berlin, Frankfort, and Munich, and he did post-graduate work at the Graduate Institute for International Studies at Geneva. He was admitted to the bar in 1927, and was acting President of the Labor Law Court in Frankfort. A year before Hitler came to power, Dr. Morgenthau joined the faculty of the University of Geneva, where he taught from 1932 to 1935. The next year he lectured in Madrid. In 1937 he came to the United States and in 1943 he was naturalized as an American citizen. He has taught at Brooklyn College (1937-39), the University of Kansas City (1939-43), and since 1943 at the University of Chicago. He has served as Visiting Professor at Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern, Yale, and the University of California. Dr. Morgenthau also served as Consultant to the Department of State in 1949 and 1951 and has lectured at all of the United States War Colleges. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, in 1958-59, and Associate of the Washington Center for Foreign Policy Research, 1959-60. A member of the Missouri Bar, he is the author of many articles and books on international law, international politics, and political theory. Among them are *Scientific Man vs. Power Politics* (1946), *In Defense of the National Interest* (1951), and *Dilemmas of Politics* (1958).

6¼ x 9¾ inches, 686 pages, $7.50 text

PRINTED IN U.S.A. KP 4M 1/60

Kissinger, Henry A: *The Necessity for Choice* (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, 1961) pp.358, $5.50

Professor Kissinger continues in this book the analysis of our inter-national problems which he started in *Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy*. The latter book attracted wide and deserved attention because it was one of the first attempts to present an integrated theory of foreign policy and national defense. More particularly, it seemed to provide a way out of the dilemma between the national suicide of all-out nuclear war and ignominious retreat, with which the nuclear age presents us, by offering limited nuclear war as an alternative.

The present book does no longer take that point of view. It recognizes the likelihood that a limited nuclear war would by imperceptible stages escalate into an all-out nuclear war. This revision of the original position is found in Chapter III: Limited War — a Reappraisal.

Foregoing a simple one-formula solution of our problems, the author discusses the main problems with which American foreign and defense policies are faced at present, such as deterrence, NATO, negotiations, arms control, communism, the new nations, and finally the processes of policy formation within our own government. On all of these major problems, the author has wise things to say, and it is difficult in a brief review to single out one or two for the reader's attention. Yet at the risk of appearing arbitrary, this reviewer would like to call particular attention to the discussion of two problems: negotiations and arms control.

What Professor Kissinger has to say on the chances for a negotiated settlement with the Soviet Union is eminently sound. He emphasises rightly the organic relationship that has historically existed between

war and peace, and he disparages the reliance on spectacular summit meetings to the neglect of secret negotiations through ordinary diplomatic channels.

In his discussion of arms control, the author takes a rather conservative position. He does not believe in the possibility of meaningful disarmament, nor is he sanguine about the results of an agreement on the cessation of atomic tests. The best he hopes for is not disarmament properly speaking but arms control, that is, the maintenance of an agreed-upon controlled level of deterrent power on either side. Such an agreement would at least bring the nuclear arms race under some kind of control.

One can only admire the learning, sound judgment, and analytical subtlety of the author. His new book deserves as much attention as the preceding one received.

Hans J. Morgenthau

WGBH

Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council
Educational television Channel 2, radio 89.7 mc. and motion pictures
UNiversity 4-6400
84 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge 39, Massachusetts

February 8, 1961

Professor Henry Kissinger
104 Fletcher Road
Belmont, Massachusetts

Dear Henry:

All my guilt feelings about having been over persistent
in urging you to take part in Mrs. Roosevelt's television
program on a nuclear test ban were dispelled by the re-
sults. I know that Mrs. Roosevelt was very pleased with
the discussion, and your part in it, and I hope that you
too found it reasonably satisfactory in retrospect.

Your honorarium of $100 is being sent through Harvard
which, as you know, is a customary requirement in regard
to faculty members who participate on our programs.

Over the past couple of years your helpfulness, not only
in appearing on the programs, but also in giving advice
and counsel in developing the entire series, have been
of tremendous assistance to me. I simply want to take
this opportunity, once again, to say thank you.

With all best wishes,

HM/CGK

**Council Members** Lowell Institute, Boston College, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston University, Brandeis University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Science, New England Conservatory of Music, Northeastern University, Tufts University

HANS J. MORGENTHAU

PROSPECT FOR A NEW FOREIGN POLICY

EXACTLY EIGHT years ago, I sat down to write an article explaining why great things could be expected from Messrs. Eisenhower and Dulles in the conduct of American foreign policy. On paper, the estimate was reasonable. The President-elect enjoyed enough prestige to marshal popular support for any foreign policy he might have chosen, from unilateral disarmament to preventive war. The Secretary of State-designate was uniquely prepared, and appeared to be eminently qualified, for the position: Dulles's *War or Peace*, published in 1950, was as sound a statement of the principles of American foreign policy as could then be found. Yet before I was able to finish the article, certain depressing indications of what the new foreign policy was likely to be had already appeared. The article was never finished, and the history of the last eight years has shown how mistaken my original estimate was.

HANS J. MORGENTHAU here inaugurates a series of articles—to be written by authors of differing points of view—on American foreign policy in the new circumstances of the 60’s. Future contributions will include, among other subjects, a critique of the strategy of atomic deterrence and an examination of the role of NATO. Mr. Morgenthau, whose many books and articles on foreign affairs have established him as one of the leading authorities in the field, is currently teaching at Harvard University. His latest book is *The Purpose of American Politics* (Knopf) and among the large number of articles he has written for COMMENTARY are “Our Thwarted Republic” (June 1960) and “The New United Nations” (November 1958).

These sobering reminiscences provide an appropriate background for evaluating the prospects of American foreign policy under the new administration. On paper, again, Rusk, Bowles, Stevenson, and Harriman each looks at least as good as Dulles ever did, and Mr. Kennedy’s *The Strategy of Peace* is as sound a statement of the requirements of American foreign policy for the 60’s as was Mr. Dulles’s book for the 50’s. The foreign policy of the United States has probably never been entrusted to so high-powered a team, every member of which is qualified, in his own particular way, to be Secretary of State.

Nevertheless, while personal excellence in those who make and carry it out is indispensable for a sound foreign policy, it does not assure a successful one. The new men must work within old circumstances, domestic and international, and the circumstances will put their excellence to the test. Regardless of their convictions and intentions, they are the prisoners of the past—of established institutions, policies, and habits of mind. They may at best be able to gain a little freedom of movement by loosening some chains, but they cannot break down walls. Whatever they may have hopefully counselled or planned or worked for when they were not in office, once they assume office, they are in prison and their ability to do what they would like to do depends only in part upon themselves.

Eisenhower and Herter have left to Kennedy and Rusk a heritage much in-

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THE LAVON AFFAIR 105

the Histadrut that the Lavon affair ought to be assessed. Mapai today is a house divided against itself. On the personal level the conflict can be viewed as a maneuvering for position in the war of succession which will follow Ben Gurion's final retirement; on the political level, it can be seen as a fight to the death between the principle of state supremacy and the principle of Histadrut dominance. Provided the étatist tendencies of some of the younger set are kept in check, and provided further that the present economic prosperity continues for some time, it is reasonable to anticipate the eclipse of the Histadrut, the victory of the younger set, the emergence of a new political configuration, and a consequent strengthening of

the democratic process in the country.

There is, however, one consideration of a purely personal character that rules out any assurance over these predictions. The younger set cannot possibly hold its ground without Ben Gurion's active support, and should he now withdraw from politics, his protégés would easily be crushed by the Histadrut forces. In short, the fortunes of the younger set depend on Ben Gurion's remaining in office for another few years, until his protégés are firmly entrenched in the party hierarchy. An inconclusive solution to the present crisis will be fatal to the younger set and to the political philosophy of Ben Gurion. From their point of view, it is now or never.

PROSPECT FOR A FOREIGN POLICY 107

ferior to that bequeathed by Truman and Acheson to the Eisenhower administration. At the beginning of 1953, the foreign policy of the United States was still a going concern. Brilliantly conceived in the spring of 1947 to counter the threat of Stalin's imperialism, it was still serviceable five years later, even though its weaknesses had by then become clear. Those weaknesses were in part owing to inherent misconceptions, such as the nature of the military role of NATO and the German contribution supposedly indispensable to it; and in part they stemmed from such new circumstances as the changes in the balance of world military power and the awakening of Asia. (The persistence of the issues of our foreign policy is indicated, I think, by the chapter headings in a book of mine published in 1951: one reads "The Precarious State of the Atlantic Alliance"; another, "The Struggle for Asia as a Struggle for the Minds of Men.")

It was the great failing of Dulles that he subordinated the requirements of a sound foreign policy to the demands of domestic politics; in consequence, he was compelled to accentuate the weaknesses of the foreign policy he had inherited while at the same time resisting its adaptation to new conditions. When Dulles assumed office, he resolved that what had happened to Mr. Acheson would not happen to him. Mr. Acheson, the architect of a sound and successful foreign policy, found himself deserted by public opinion, and, more particularly, by Congressional opinion, and hence was handicapped in the conduct of his policy. Dulles made it his first order of business to secure for his person and policies the support of the Congress and of public opinion at large: in this endeavor, he was eminently successful. But as a result something happened to him that had never happened to Mr. Acheson: he became the prisoner of a public opinion—in good measure created by his own words and deeds—which limited his freedom of action to a foreign

policy conceived in the image of a worldwide Maginot line around the Russian-Chinese empire, manned by invincible American military might and its steadfast allies.

However popular that policy was, it proved unsuccessful outside Europe. A military policy which vacillates between the implausible threat of "massive retaliation" on the one hand, and ineffectual response on the other, is incapable in the long run of containing the military expansion of Communism. And so far as the acute threat of Communist political expansion through "competitive coexistence" is concerned, the policy yields not only an irrelevant response—but actual ammunition for the enemy. Meanwhile, with the United States embarked upon an essentially futile, and even self-defeating, foreign policy, the world situation has changed in at least four important respects.

THE Soviet Union, of course, now ranks with the United States as an atomic power. And if the present trend continues, an indefinite number of nations will have acquired atomic weapons within the next decade. Second, the countries of Western Europe and Japan, having recovered their economic strength, are now in the process of building up their military and political strength as well. China, above all, is likely to become a first-rate power: it need only add to its enormous population and territory the achievements of modern technology. Third, the emancipation of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples of the world has entered its last stage in Africa, and has begun in Latin America. Finally, both the Soviet Union and (to a lesser extent at the moment) China have embarked upon a new expansionist foreign policy: it is no longer based so much upon a combination of the infallibility of Marxist prophesies and open military pressure as upon the achievements, actual and potential, of the Communist system.

The task of the new administration, if

108 COMMENTARY

it hopes for success in coping with the changed world situation, lies in rethinking and refashioning American foreign policy in five major areas: the relations with our allies, the relations with the uncommitted nations, the relation between domestic politics and foreign policy, the relations with the Communist bloc, and, finally, the supranational control of atomic power.

The several alliances of which the United States is a member owe their existence to two different factors: the need in which our European allies, as well as our former enemies, found themselves after the Second World War to have American economic, military, and political support; and the United States objective to contain by military means the Soviet Union and Communist China in the Middle East and Asia. In recent years, the foundations for the first type of alliance have changed radically; whereas the foundations for the second type were weak from the very outset.

The economic recovery of the nations of Western Europe and the former enemies has made them less dependent upon American support than they once were. As a consequence, they have at times been able to pursue their own narrower interests regardless of—indeed, to the detriment of—the common interests of the alliance. The Kennedy administration must find a new foundation for these alliances, one which reflects more faithfully the present underlying community of interests of the major nations of the non-Communist world. These alliances were primarily conceived in military terms. They must now be given an economic, political, and cultural content as well.

The transformation of the cold war into what is now called "competitive coexistence" has revealed the essential unsoundness of the policy of military containment as extended to Asia and the Middle East. For the conflict between East and West has taken on more and more the aspects of a struggle for the minds of men, especially

in the uncommitted nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America: a struggle to be fought with the weapons of prestige, subversion, political pressure, foreign aid, and foreign trade. Military alliances—in any contest for men's minds—are likely to be at best of minor importance, and at worst a political handicap.

IF THE United States is to wage this struggle for the minds of men with any chance of success, the Kennedy administration must devise a new grand strategy. Two fundamental reforms are called for: the integration of all the factors involved in the struggle, for the single purpose of maintaining and expanding the influence of the non-Communist world; and the adaptation of these various factors to the local conditions prevailing in any one country. In particular, the Kennedy administration must develop, and act upon, a coherent philosophy of foreign aid and foreign trade.

The uncommitted nations confront the Kennedy administration also with a problem in political organization. Many of the new nations owe their existence to mere accidents of colonial history, and are therefore not likely to become viable political, economic, and military units within the boundaries they now occupy. This being the case, they present a standing invitation for a new imperialism to establish a new order where the old colonial order has disappeared; alternatively, they are threatened with anarchy—into which the rest of the world might well be sucked. This enormously complex problem will test the political creativity and determination of the new administration.

It is obvious that the domestic policies pursued by the United States, especially in the field of race relations, are bound to have a direct influence upon our ability to wage the struggle for the minds of men with any chance of success. The new administration needs to be fully aware of this influence in its conduct of domestic policies. Where it cannot entirely control these

PROSPECT FOR A FOREIGN POLICY 109

policies, it must at least give moral support to the positions which conform most closely to the best traditions of America. Throughout the better part of American history, our foreign policy drew strength and its attractiveness to other nations from the character of our domestic politics. The American experiment in government and social organization was intended from the very outset—and was received by other nations as being so intended—not only for America but for the world. It was meant as a model for other nations to emulate. The new administration has the duty to restore that meaning.

THE ultimate outcome of these new policies, which we must look to the Kennedy administration to undertake, will depend upon the kind of relations which are established with the Communist bloc. For if in the course of the successful pursuit of these policies, our relations with the USSR and Communist China should further deteriorate, our very success might in the end turn out to be self-defeating insofar as it would bring closer the probability of a Third World War fought with atomic weapons. Thus the Kennedy administration must achieve the supreme task of statesmanship of successfully waging the competitive struggle with the Communist bloc without at the same time increasing the risk of war.

The first pre-condition for minimizing that risk is the stabilization of the present territorial frontiers between the Western world and the Communist bloc. The second pre-condition is the maintenance and, if need be, the restoration of the Western atomic deterrent. The risk of war will diminish only in the measure that the points of conflict which might ignite a war can be reduced, at the same time that deterrence against the starting of a war is strengthened.

Finally, even if the Kennedy administration should be successful in the pursuit of all these policies, the United States and the world will still be confronted with a

mortal danger: the spread of atomic weapons to an indefinite number of nations. This danger we can cope with only in cooperation with the other great nations of the world. The prospect of such a spread is bound to become a reality unless the present trend is reversed; if the trend continues, it is likely to cause unprecedented anarchy which will finally be beyond the control of the big powers. To bring nuclear weapons under supranational control is indeed the overriding task of the age. History is likely to judge the Kennedy administration by its approach to this task and its success in accomplishing it.

Nevertheless, even if the new administration were to devise sound policies for the five areas I have mentioned, their success would in good measure depend upon factors over which the government of the United States has no control, such as the policies of other nations. It would also depend upon the ability of the American government to put the policies, once decided upon, into actual operation. This problem is peculiar to the United States, stemming from our constitutional arrangements and political system. The problem arises in four different areas of policy formation: in the relations between the President and the Secretary of State; between the Secretary and the Department of State; between the President and the Secretary of State, on the one side, and other executive departments, on the other; and, finally, in the relations between the President and the Secretary of State, on the one hand, and Congress and public opinion at large, on the other.

The President is ultimately responsible for the conduct of American foreign policy, and the Secretary of State is supposed to be his main aide in the discharge of that responsibility. In reality, the relations between the President and the Secretary of State have conformed to this constitutional intent only when the President was in effect his own Secretary of State, and used the titular head of the

110 COMMENTARY

State Department as a mere instrument—as in the Roosevelt-Stettinius relations; or if the President and Secretary were continuously of one mind, as in the case of Truman and Acheson. Otherwise, the President has either bypassed the Secretary of State, as Roosevelt did with Hull, or given him a free hand, normally ratifying his decisions, as Eisenhower did with Dulles. When both the President and the Secretary of State have had their strong and different convictions about foreign policy, conflict has more often than not been the result.

Within the State Department, the chance of conflict is always present, and conflict has frequently materialized when the Secretary's subordinates have had strong policy preferences of their own. The relations between Hull and Sumner Welles and the independent and contradictory policies pursued in the 30's by Ambassador Kennedy in London and Ambassador Dodd in Berlin come to mind. If that problem is superimposed upon the ever-present task of fashioning a bureaucracy, set in its ways, into a pliable instrument of a new policy.

The new Secretary of State faces a slow-moving, if not recalcitrant, Department. He and the President must also impose their new foreign policy upon other departments of the executive branch which may be committed to a different policy. The official Far Eastern policy of the United States, for example—for all practical purposes the policy of two Chinas—is not only being obstructed by the government of Taiwan but has also been opposed in practice by certain groups within the State and Defense departments. The official policy of the United States concerning the cessation of atomic tests has been openly challenged in word and deed by the Atomic Energy Commission. The new administration, which must soon

make crucial decisions on this latter problem, minimizes its chances for successful negotiations—slim as they are in view of the objective nature of the issue and Russian attitudes—if it is unable to commit its own agencies to a common position.

FINALLY, it is obvious that the government of the United States can only go as far in its conduct of foreign policy as Congress and public opinion at large permit. The task of combining sound foreign policies with popular support is always difficult, and the temptation to sacrifice the former to the latter is always great and at times has proved irresistible. The foreign policies upon which the new administration must embark are not only new in that they differ from those which have been pursued up till now. They are also startling in that they run counter to cherished popular preconceptions. The international developments of the last eight years have transformed these preconceptions into illusions: neither the words nor the deeds of our government took cognizance of those developments. The new administration, in order to marshal public opinion behind its new foreign policies, must first of all restore a sense of reality to the American people.

The demands which these tasks make upon the courage, wisdom, and ability of the Kennedy administration are superhuman, in view of which, the prospects for a wholly successful American foreign policy are of necessity less bright than is suggested by the contrast between the personal and intellectual qualities of the new team and those of its predecessor. Whoever expects spectacular changes is likely to be disappointed. We others will be grateful to the Kennedy administration if it can give American foreign policy a new spirit and awareness, and a consistent movement in the right direction.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Testament tells, as well as those of the more recent past. By
detecting in the international relations of different cultures and
historic periods identical responses to identical challenges, we are
able to develop certain theoretical propositions about interna-
tional relations that are true regardless of time and place.

**Basic Patterns.**—The dynamic force that molds international relations is to be found in the aspirations for power of autonomous political units. These aspirations crystallize into three basic patterns: to keep one's power, to increase one's power, to demonstrate one's power. From these patterns three basic types of policy ensue: the policy of the *status quo*, the policy of imperialism and the policy of prestige. The clash of these policies —A trying to maintain the *status quo*, B trying to change it at the expense of A—leads to an unending struggle for power which characterizes all international relations. This struggle for power can be fought by two different means: diplomacy and military force. It leads of necessity to the balance of power through which nation A, either alone or in conjunction with other nations similarly threatened, tries to maintain itself against B. When A and B pursue their goals in conjunction with other nations, they embark upon a policy of alliances. When nations carry on the struggle for power by military means, they engage in an armaments race or war. When they try to justify and rationalize their position in the power struggle by reference to universal values, typically 'of a moral nature, they develop political ideologies. Continuous peaceful contacts among them lead to the development of an institutionalized diplomacy (*q.v.*).

Throughout the better part of history, several systems of
international relations have existed side by side with little or no
contact among them. Until the discovery of America, the Ameri-
can system or systems of international relations led a completely
separate existence. The Chinese and Indian systems had only
intermittent contacts with others.

Three different patterns of international relations can be dis-
tinguished according to the distribution of power within them:
multiple, bipolar and imperial systems. The multiple system is
distinguished by a number of units of approximately equal strength
which combine and oppose each other in ever-changing align-
ments. Its main characteristics are flexibility, uncertainty as to
the relative strength and future policies of its members and the
propensity for limited, inconclusive wars. The European state
system, from the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 to the
beginning of World War I in 1914, with the exception of the period
of the Napoleonic Wars, conformed to this pattern.

The bipolar system is characterized by the predominance of
two major powers of approximately equal strength, around which
the other members are grouped in different degrees of closeness.
This system is rigid and stable as long as the approximately equal
distribution of power between its two predominant members per-
ists. Any marked shift in that distribution threatens the system
with destruction. The structure of international relations that
emerged from World War II exemplifies this pattern.

The imperial system consists of one predominant nation with a number of subordinate members clustered around it. The stability of such a system is great, and conflicts within it tend to be marginal. Its existence can be threatened by the disintegration of the predominant member, the rise of a number of subordinate members to a position from which they can challenge the predominant one, or by a challenge from outside the system. The system of international relations dominated by the Roman empire is the classic example of this pattern.

**Changes in Modern Times.**—International relations have undergone in modern times four drastic changes: the formerly separate systems of international relations have merged into one world-wide system; the predominance of the European system has disappeared; the possibility and actuality of total war have come to dominate the international scene; the feasibility of universal destruction with nuclear weapons has radically altered the function of force as a means to the ends of foreign policy. While the first three changes do not affect the dynamics and structure of international relations as we have known them since the beginning of history, the last constitutes a veritable revolution, the only one in recorded history, in the structure of international relations.

The expansion of the European state system into the other con-
tinents by means of colonial empires, starting early in the 16th
century, broke down the barriers which had separated the dif-
ferent systems of international relations. They were all brought
into contact with, and into some form of dependence upon, the
European state system, and through it they came into contact
with each other. The two world wars of the 20th century, in
which most nations of the world participated, point in their very
name to the transformation of a number of separate systems of
international relations into one world-wide system. That process
of political unification was greatly advanced and expanded to
the individual sphere through the development of the technology of
transportation and communications. This development started
with the great voyages at the end of the 15th century and cul-
minated in the drastic reduction of geographic distances for trans-
portation and the virtual obliteration of the limits of time and
space for communications.

The last phase of this transformation of international relations into a world-wide system, covering roughly the period from the end of World War I to the aftermath of World War II, coincides with a radical change in the distribution of power within the system. From the beginning of the 16th century to World War I the European system provided the dynamics and the preponderant power for this transformation; now two nations, either completely or predominantly non-European—the United States and the Soviet Union—have taken its place. This decline of Europe as the political centre of the world may be said to have started with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 declaring the mutual political independence of Europe and the western hemisphere. This declaration foreshadowed the fragmentation of the European empires which was virtually consummated after World War II in the colonial revolutions sweeping Africa and Asia. Most of the colonial possessions of European nations, one after the other, gained their national independence, and many of them either withdrew their political support from the European nations or joined their enemies. The outstanding examples of these two different forms of political emancipation are India and China.

The decline of Europe resulting from the colonial revolutions
coincided with the rise to predominance of formerly backward
nations such as Russia and China. The technological unification of
the world gave these nations the tools to transform their superior
potential in geography, population and natural resources into the
actuality of national power.

**Total War.**—The decisive factors in the decline of Europe as the political centre of the world were the two world wars of the 20th century. At the same time that they weakened the main European nations in their human and material resources, these conflicts brought non-European nations to the fore—the United States and Japan in consequence of World War I, the United States and the Soviet Union in consequence of World War II. These two world wars differed not only in their consequences but also in their intrinsic character from other wars fought in the western world in modern times. Most of the latter were limited wars in that only a fraction of the total human and material resources of the belligerents was committed to them. Only a fraction of the total population was morally identified with these wars and suffered from them, and each war was waged only for limited objectives. The two world wars and those for which the most powerful nations continued to prepare were total in all these four respects. The actuality and threat of total war were, indeed, the most important distinctive characteristics of international relations in the mid-20th century. They were due to an unprecedented accumulation of destructive power in the hands of the most powerful nations and to the incentive to use that power for national purposes. The accumulation of power resulted from drastic changes in the distribution of political and technological power in the world; the incentive was presented by the closing of the colonial frontier and the ascendancy of a universalistic nationalism.

Throughout the rhodern period, with the exception of the wars
of religion of the 16th and 17th centuries and of the Napoleonic
Wars, wars were limited in every respect. Power was so widely
dispersed among a great number of sovereign states that no single
state or possible combination of states was strong enough to gain

2

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

more than limited objectives against its adversaries. The drastic reduction in the number of sovereign states and the resulting concentration of power in the hands of a few nations of the first rank, which occurred between the end of the Thirty Years' War and the end of World War II, created one precondition for total war. The treaty of Westphalia of 1648, for instance, reduced the number of sovereign states of which the German empire was composed from 900 to 355. The diet of Regensburg of 1803 eliminated 200 more. When the German confederation was founded in 1815, only 36 sovereign states were left to join it. The unification of Italy in 1861 and that of Germany in 1871 eliminated 31 additional sovereign states.

At the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, only five nations of the first rank were left—Austria, France, Great Britain, Russia and Prussia. In the 1860s Italy and the United States joined them, followed toward the end of the century by Japan. At the beginning of World War I in 1914, eight nations were of the first rank, with Germany having replaced Prussia. After World War I the trend toward reduction of the number of sovereign states was reversed; their number about doubled because the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, British and French empires were broken up. Yet the trend toward concentration of more and more power in the hands of fewer and fewer states continued. At the end of World War II the number of nations of the first rank was reduced to two: the United States and the Soviet Union.

It is not by accident that the two most powerful nations, capable of threatening each other with total war, are also most advanced technologically and industrially. The mechanization of warfare in terms of weapons, supplies, transportation and communications requires, in case of actual hostilities, the virtually total commitment of the industrial productivity of the nation. This total commitment has been made possible by the enormous increase in economic productivity brought about by a series of technological and industrial revolutions, starting in the 18th century. By contrast, in earlier periods of history, economic productivity was so low that after it had barely provided for the needs of the population, little was left for military purposes. Thus premodern technology could support only limited war, while modern industry is productive enough to allow the commitment of the lion's share of its products for military purposes.

One incentive for the great nations to use this enormous productive power for the purposes of mutual destruction was provided by a change in international relations which can be called the disappearance of the colonial frontier. The generally limited character of the means and ends of foreign policy from the end of the middle ages to World War I was in good measure due to the opportunity for the great European nations to seek satisfaction for their aspirations for power not in all-out contests with each other but through competitive expansion into Africa, the Americas and the part of Asia bordering on the eastern oceans. Colonial competition and conflict during that period provided outlets through which the European nations could compete for power without endangering their existence. But by the beginning of the 20th century the colonial frontier was, for all practical purposes, closed. Virtually all politically weak or empty spaces around the globe had been transformed into colonies or spheres of influence by one or another of the European nations. From then on, as the two world wars showed, the great European powers, deprived of the colonial safety valve, fought each other not for limited advantage but for total stakes, and they could do so with the instruments of total war.

These stakes became total not only in that total war threatened the belligerents with total destruction, but also in that the issue over which nations competed and fought had become total. That issue was no longer a limited military or territorial advantage but the universal triumph or defeat of a particular philosophy and way of life, which was supposed to be incarnate in a particular nation. While traditionally the international relations of the western world were carried on within the framework of common moral principles and of a common way of life, which imposed effective limitations upon the struggle for power, international relations in the mid-20th century were dominated by the conflict between democracy and Communism, each putting forth a universal mes-

sage of salvation, each trying—with different intensity—to extend its dominion to all mankind, and each identified with one of the two great powers left in the world. Thus international relations came to be characterized not only by the traditional threat and use of military force on behalf of the aspirations of individual nations but also by a struggle for the minds of men. The proponents of the two antagonistic philosophies and ways of life, using the instruments of propaganda, foreign aid and foreign trade, endeavoured to gain the allegiance of uncommitted nations. By the same token, the traditional methods of diplomacy were in eclipse. Nations can negotiate and bargain about their interests and conclude compromises concerning them, but they feel that they cannot yield an inch where their philosophies and ways of life are at stake.

While similar situations have existed before, temporarily and on a limited scale, especially in periods of religious conflicts and wars, international relations after World Wars I and II were marked by a change in structure unprecedented in recorded history. Throughout history, there has existed a rational relationship between the threat and use of military force and the ends of foreign policy. It was rational for a nation to ask itself whether it could achieve its ends vis-à-vis another nation by peaceful means or whether it had to resort to military force to achieve them, for the risks involved in the resort to military force were generally not out of proportion to the ends sought. Great ends justified great risks, since the risks were generally not so great as to obviate the ends. Yet all-out nuclear war, likely to destroy all belligerents and thus to eliminate the very distinction between victor and vanquished, is a completely irrational undertaking. No possible end can justify it; it is an instrument of mass murder and mass suicide.

**Two Modern Dilemmas.**—International relations, then, were faced with two interconnected dilemmas upon the solution of which depended the survival of western civilization and perhaps of mankind itself. The first dilemma consisted in the contrast between the technological unification of the world and the parochial moral commitments and political institutions of the age. Moral commitments and political institutions, dating from an age which modern technology had left behind; had not kept pace with technological achievements and, hence, were incapable of controlling their destructive potentialities. The second dilemma consisted in the contrast between the need of nations to support their interests by resort to violence and the irrationality of resort to nuclear arms. If a nation cannot resort to nuclear weapons without risking its own destruction, how can it support its interests in a world of sovereign nations which is ruled by violence as the last resort?

These two dilemmas put into question the very survival of the existing system of international relations. The first dilemma suggests a higher principle of international organization, transcending the nation-state, in the form either of a universal organization, such as the United Nations, which would minimize threats to international peace, or of regional organizations, such as the European communities or a projected Atlantic union, which would eliminate local threats to peace and facilitate the rational use of regional resources. The second dilemma suggests the abolition of international relations itself through the merger of all national sovereignies into one world state which would have a monopoly of the most destructive instruments of violence. Both kinds of solutions are supported by the awareness of the unity of mankind, underlying the inevitable fragmentation of international relations. However inarticulate and submerged, this awareness never completely disappeared even in the heyday of nationalism, and it has been sharpened by the threat of nuclear destruction facing all mankind. These solutions are also supported by the longing to give that unity a viable political form, a longing which has time and again endeavoured through theoretical schemes and practical measures to transform international relations into a supranational political order. This longing, in times past mainly a spiritual or humanitarian impulse, was in the nuclear age greatly strengthened by the desire for self-preservation, innate in all men

See also DIPLOMACY; PEACE, INTERNATIONAL; WAR.

(H. J. MÜ.)

3

CJ

July 10, 1961

Professor Hans Morgenthau
Department of Political Science
University of California, Santa Barbara
Goleta, California

Dear Hans:

I very much liked your article in the *New Leader*. Its criticisms of the present American foreign policy are exactly those I would make.

The only point on which I do not agree with you is the notion of having been overcommitted. I believe us to me the case that when you are on the defensive, you are always going to be under pressure to defend policies which are not very attractive. I do not see what areas the Communists are going to go after if not for the ones close to their boundaries. This will put us in the position of having to defend these areas.

This, however, is a minor criticism. Your basic point is only too true, and particularly what you said about university administrators-- this is more true than you can possibly know.

Kind regards as always.

Henry V. Klaasen

Sincerely yours,

Kind regards as always.

this is more true than you can possibly know.
what you said about university administrators--
your basic point is only too true, and particularly
this, however, is a minor criticism.

having to defend these areas.
poundaries. This will but us in the position of
to go after it not for the ones close to their
I do not see what areas the Communists are going
to defend policies which are not very attractive.
defensive, you are always going to be under pressure
from us to me the case that when you are on the
with you is the notion of having been overcommitted.
The only point on which I do not agree

foreign policy are exactly those I would make.
New Leader. Its criticism of the present American
I very much liked your article in the

Dear Hane:

Goleta, California
University of California, Santa Barbara
Department of Political Science
Professor Hane Morgenthau

July 10, 1961

July 25, 1961

Professor Hans J. Morgenthau
Department of Political Science
University of California
Goleta, California

Dear Hans:

I appreciate your letter of July 19th, and am very sorry that you will be unable to visit with the International Seminar this summer. I hope we can call on you again next year.

If you do come East later in the summer, please let me know, as there are many things about which I would like to talk to you, particularly the performance of the intellectuals.

Kind regards.

August 17, 1961

Professor Hans J. Morgenthau, Director
Center for the Study of American Foreign Policy
University of Chicago
Chicago 37, Illinois

Dear Hans:

This is just a note to thank you for sending me a copy
of your perceptive article, "Asia: The American Algeria." I
hope you will continue to send me the pieces in this series.

My only concern is the one I touched on in my letter
to you of July 10th. It is always said that we should not fight
close to the source of Communist power, that is close to their
borders. The only thing is that I cannot for the world imagine
what places they are going to attack if not the ones close to them.
If we give up Indo-China, Malaya will then be close to the Communist
frontier, and so on. Moreover, it seems to me that the side which
is on the defensive has to pay the price of fighting in places of
its opponent's choice, and these are not likely to be selected from
the point of view of our maximum convenience.

Kind regards as always.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

ASIA: THE AMERICAN ALGERIA

HANS J. MORGENTHAU

This issue we inaugurate a bi-monthly department, "Public Affairs,"
in which HANS J. MORGENTHAU, one of America's most eminent politi-
cal thinkers, will discuss leading questions of present concern. Director
of the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of American For-
eign Policy, Professor Morgenthau has also served as consultant to the
Department of State and, more recently, has been associated with the
Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research. A frequent contributor
to COMMENTARY, his many books include Scientific Man Vs. Power
Politics, The H-Bomb, In Defense of the National Interest, and Dilem-
mas of Politics. His latest is The Purpose of American Politics (Knopf
1960).

TWO GREAT ILLUSIONS have obscured for France the true nature of the Algerian problem. Their persistence has depleted the resources of France, contributed to the political and moral disintegration of France, and brought the nation to the verge of civil war. One illusion sees in Algeria just another French province, as integral a part of France as any other. The other illusion holds that the Algerian rebellion can be stamped out by military means. The illusory character of these beliefs is obvious to the outsider, but not to many intelligent Frenchmen. Nations, like men, need illusions to sustain them in their relations with themselves and their fellows, and most of the illusions are in the nature of foibles and, hence, do little harm. However, there are other illusions, such as the French ones about Algeria, which obscure a vital complex of a nation's concerns and confound its thoughts, corrupt its judgments, and misdirect its actions. They are the stuff catastrophe is made of.

It is not only France which suffers from il-

lusions of this kind. America has them, too. What has happened in Laos allows us a glimpse into the nature of some of them. And it is probably the most dangerous of our illusions which the events in Laos have brought to the fore.

It is tempting to look at the Laotian debacle as an isolated instance of misfortune from which we must extricate ourselves as painlessly as possible. Thus we are relieved of the necessity to search in ourselves for the causes of our misfortune, to revise our ideas in the light of the facts of experience, and to adapt our actions to the objective conditions. In truth, what has happened in Laos is not a self-contained local defeat which must be regretted but can be forgotten. Rather it is the first and for the moment localized symptom of a disorder in our minds which, if it is not cured, is bound to bring forth more serious symptoms and will in the end bring us to the verge of a national catastrophe of one sort or another. The disorder consists in two illusory but strongly held beliefs: that the Communist threat outside Europe can be

43

44 COMMENTARY

countered by military means, and that the Sino-Soviet empire can be contained within its present limits by surrounding its non-European periphery with local military strongholds.

The policy of containment was eminently successful in the area to which it was originally applied, that is, Europe. It was this success which led to its transformation into a general principle of American foreign policy. What has worked so well in Europe was expected to work as well at the periphery of the Sino-Soviet empire in Asia. It did not work as well. It could not have worked as well because containment as a general principle of policy derives from a dual misunderstanding. It misunderstands what made containment successful in Europe, and it misunderstands the nature of the threat containment is supposed to meet outside Europe. The Soviet Union has never been contained in Europe by the military forces which NATO could muster in Europe itself. That the Soviet Union was or could be so contained has been one of the abiding illusions which have confounded the policies of NATO. The Soviet Union has been contained by one thing and one thing alone: the nuclear power of the United States and the plausibility of its use.

THE United States built its containment policy outside Europe upon the mistaken assumption that as local forces were containing the Soviet Union in Europe, so local forces could contain Communism outside Europe. Thus the United States embarked upon a policy, for which John Foster Dulles bears the primary responsibility, of collecting allies and clients wherever it could find them at the periphery of the Sino-Soviet empire in order to build up their conventional military forces. Laos is part of that collection. However, military power—nuclear or conventional—is incapable of containing Communism outside Europe; for the primary threat Communism presents outside Europe is not military but consists in political penetration and subversion and the use of foreign aid and trade as instruments of an expansionist foreign policy. The build-up of local conventional forces is not only useless but counter-productive as an answer to this threat. Laos is a case in point.

When the Indochina war ended in 1954,

the two northeastern provinces of Laos bordering on North Vietnam were under control of the Communist Pathet Lao. The Geneva conference of the same year envisioned Laos as a neutral state with the Pathet Lao being incorporated into the royal army. That army was to be trained by the French. When the French pulled out, they were replaced by American military personnel in civilian clothes. This personnel tried to create a "modern" Laotian army. Its effort was supported by a total of $310 million in foreign aid. The infusion of such an amount of money into a poor economy, whose annual consumptive capacity was estimated at $24 million at the most, thoroughly corrupted the Laotian elite and created the very conditions of conspicuous consumption, demoralization, and popular dissatisfaction, upon which Communism feeds. In a country whose main economic problem is agriculture, we spent in 1960 somewhat more than half a million dollars for agricultural aid! The administration of our economic aid to Laos has been marked by inefficiency, incompetence, and large-scale corruption on the part of our officials and American contractors. The June 16, 1959 report on United States Aid Operations in Laos by the Sub-Committee of the House of Representatives Committee on Government Operations reads like a detective story peopled by crooks and misfits against whom a very few honest and competent men never had a chance.

Despite this American policy which blindly played into the hands of the Communists, the design which the Geneva conference of 1954 had developed for Laos remained, however precariously, intact. The country remained for all practical purposes divided between the Pathet Lao and the royal government under Prince Souvanna Phouma. The relations between these two groups ranged from sporadic fighting to friendly cooperation. The high point of friendly cooperation was reached in 1958 when the Pathet Lao joined the royal government. At this point the tenuous fabric of Laotian politics came apart.

The United States withdrew its aid from the new government and brought about its downfall. It shifted its support from Prince Souvanna Phouma, whose policies had been pro-Western in fact and neutralist in aspira-