No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Dilemma of the Peace-Seekers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
Extract
“Right without Might is weakness,” wrote Blaise Pascal three centuries ago. But “Might without Right is tyranny. We must therefore combine Right and Might, making what is Right mighty and what is mighty Right.” To achieve such a combination in the community of nations is, by common consent, the major problem of world politics in our time. Outside of the dwindling ranks of the anarchists, few would any longer dispute the propositions that peace among men is unattainable without the organization of men into government, possessed of effective power to enforce law, and that justice among men is unattainable without the subordination of government itself to law, reflecting men's conception of right. How these goals are to be reached among nations is still a matter of controversy. But after participating in two world wars against tyrants, dedicated to world unity through conquest, most Americans are now agreed that peace and justice among nations depend upon order and law among nations and that these, in turn, depend upon the efficacy of what has long been called “international organization” or, more optimistically, “international government.”
The Great Debate of 1944–45, like that of 1919–20, is not over ends, but over means. How can an effective world organization be brought into being, and how can it be made to function for the maintenance of peace, the enforcement of law, and the achievement of justice? In an age whose slogan in grappling with its most fateful problems has too often been “too little and too late,” it is not strange that American discussion of the problem of world order has largely taken the form of old disputes as to the terms upon which the United States should assume membership in an association or league of nations to keep the peace. The tacit assumption behind the discussion is that such a partnership of sovereignties can and will keep peace, enforce law, and promote justice if only it be organized with sufficient cleverness and joined by a sufficient number of states.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © American Political Science Association 1945
References
1 “Art. 16: 1. Should any Member of the League resort to war in disregard of its covenants under Articles 12, 13 or 15, it shall ipso facto be deemed to have committed an act of war against all other Members of the League, which hereby under take immediately to subject it to the severance of all trade or financial relations, the prohibition of all intercourse between their nationals and the nationals of the covenant-breaking State, and the prevention of all financial, commercial or personal intercourse between the nationals of the covenant-breaking State and the nationals of any other State, whether a Member of the League or not.
“2. It shall be the duty of the Council in such case to recommend to the several Governments concerned what effective military, naval or air force the Members of the League shall severally contribute to the armed forces to be used to protect the covenants of the League.
“3. The Members of the League agree, further, that they will mutually support one another in the financial and economic measures which are taken under this Article, in order to minimize the loss and inconvenience resulting from the above measures, and that they will mutually support one another in resisting any special measures aimed at one of their number by the covenant-breaking State, and that they will take the necessary steps to afford passage through their territory to the forces of any of the Members of the League which are co-operating to protect the covenants of the League.
“4. Any Member of the League which has violated any covenant of the League may be declared to be no longer a Member of the League by a vote of the Council concurred in by the Representatives of all the other Members of the League represented thereon.”
2 Cf. International Conciliation, Feb., 1944, No. 397. Art. XI of the Draft reads in part: “There shall be a Defense Committee of the International Authority, consisting in the first instance of the Permanent Members, who shall undertake that they will use their whole strength to prevent or stop any act of aggression, that is to say any act by any State unauthorized by the International Authority and designed to attack or diminish the security of any other State.”
3 Cf. “A Design for a Charter of the General International Organization,” issued May 30, 1944. Art. 22 of the “Design” reads: “(a) Each state should be pledged to take such military and economic measures for the maintenance of peace as may be prescribed by the Assembly on proposals by the Political Council, and the Assembly should have power to provide for distributing the burdens which such measures may entail, (b) Eact State should be pledged to refrain from interference with any action taken by the Security Committee in execution of its powers, (c) Each State represented in the Security Committee should be pledged to take part, to the full extent of its resources, in any action which may be decided upon by the Security Committee for preventing or suppressing a use of force.”
4 Farrand, Max (ed.), The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (New Haven, 1923), I, pp. 34, 54, 164–165.Google Scholar Cf. Freeman, Harrop and Paullin, Theodore, Coercion of States in Federal Unions (Philadelphia, 1943)Google Scholar, where these and other relevent passages are quoted.
5 Ibid., I, p. 256.
6 Ibid., I, p. 284.
7 Ibid., I, p. 320.
8 Ibid., I, pp. 339–340.
9 Freeman and Paullin, op. cit., p. 16, quoting Elliott's Debates.
10 Ibid., pp. 13–14. Cf. also The Federalist, Nos. 15–22.
11 Cf. his “Declaration, of the Federation of the World,” adopted by the legislature of North Carolina, March 13, 1941, and by other state legislatures subsequently.
12 Cf. his World Federation Plan and Total Peace (New York, 1943).
13 Cf. his Union Now (New York, 1939) and Union Now with Britain (New York, 1940).
14 Cf. Willkie, Wendell L., “Our Sovereignty: Shall We Use It?,” Foreign Affairs, Apr., 1944.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15 Cf. Adler, Mortimer J., How To Think About War And Peace (New York, 1943).Google Scholar In commenting upon “The International Law of the Future,” published in the April, 1944, issue of the American Journal of International Law, Edwin Borchard observes (pp. 285–286): “Any law that prevails among equals cannot be decreed or enforced by a superior and must be of a type quite different from that which prevails within the State…. If there were a superior, it would not be international law; and so long as States are legally equal, as the recent resolutions admit, there can be no superior authority. Force behind an international organization, independent of that of particular States, is unthinkable so long as the members are sovereign States, and would soon prove fatal to the organization…. The men who founded this nation seemed to have a clear grasp of that elementary human fact in discussing the suggested enforcement of the federal Constitution on the States.”
16 Cf. Fox, William T. R., The Super-Powers (New York, 1944).Google Scholar Cf. also Lippmann, Walter, U. S. War Aims (New York, 1944)Google Scholar, and U. S. Foreign Policy (New York, 1943). In his more recent book, Lippmann observes: “President Wilson and his disciples … were assuming that they were laying the foundations of a world state under a world government. The Wilsonian principles, which are irrational in the world we live in, are quite rational if we imagine that the nations are about to do what the thirteen American states did when they formed the Federal Union…. To Wilson, the apostle of the new international order, the real object was the surrender of national sovereignty to the sovereignty of mankind. But because of what he regarded as current prejudice, he had to make concessions which concealed and denied the real object (pp. 178–179)…. We have to reverse the Wilsonian pattern of collective security. We cannot build a universal society from the top downwards. We must build up to it from the existing national states and historic communities. That, I think, is what we must learn from the experiment at Geneva and from its failure…. We cannot afford to fail again” (p. 195).
17 Dean, Vera Micheles, in Foreign Policy Bulletin, Oct. 13, 1944.Google Scholar
18 Grafton, Samuel, in The New York Post, Nov. 23, 1943.Google Scholar
19 Cf. The Chicago Tribune, Nov. 1, 1944: “The more the American people learn about the magnitude of our naval victories off the Philippines and about the progress of our army on the islands the more incredible becomes the clamor in this country to subordinate the United States to a combination of so-called great powers…. Single-handed, we have beaten the Japanese…. The German army tore up the armies of France, Britain, Belgium, and Holland. It remained for the American army to crush Germany in France…. On land, on sea, and in the air the American fighting man has proved himself the superior of every opponent and of every ally. It is time for Americans, conscious of their country's strength and aware of the terrible cost that war exacts, to denounce the foreign agents and the sycophants who would drag us into every war whether we wished to engage in it or not.” A different but equally disastrous type of obstructionism is represented by Bullitt's, William C. article, “The World From Rome,” Life, Sept. 4, 1944.Google Scholar
20 Cf. also the Czechoslovak-Soviet pact of December 12, 1943, and the French-Soviet pact of December 10, 1944.
Comments
No Comments have been published for this article.