Democratic Goals and World Order

...none of them offers world security ogaiiiBt war...

...but if each nation merely seeks the best possible strategic position in the event of future conflict, so that no common program of collective action is achieved, a new period of world anarchy is bound to ensue...

...The nations must be given power commensurate with their various positions as well as the security of their participation in a total plan...

...We have achieved real military collaboration and the tieginning of wider cooperation in such a conference aa the one just completed at Bretton Woods...

...The dismemberment of Ger- ' many may well be offered to a weary world as such a guarantee, should the great powers fail to reach basic agreements...

...the agreements of the...

...An agreement sufficiently fundamental to overcome the tension between the great powers also offers the best possible hope of solving the question of Germany and the defeated nations...

...The detailed plans flor establishing unilateral security (such as the boundary lines in Eastern Europe...

...Each one of these problems tiecomes hopeless if subjected to ad hoc bargains and arrangements between the powers...

...It requires the reversal of our policy of flirting with reactionary and fascist forces...

...In the vanquished countries, the trusteeship should he unlimited and relinquished only where this can safely lie done, .Such s plan would have the advantage of eliminating German control of property outside of Germany, of eliminating National Socialist control of property within Germany, and of encouraging the unification of the economic life of Europe on a supernational level...

...This step is necesssry if justice is to be done to colonial peoples, and in order to prevent rivalries among the great powers over colonist possessions...

...4. "A Mew Conception of America t Responsibility TllERF...

...A global alliance, victorious in a global war, should provide the moot natural beginning of a system of world order...

...In an economically interdependent world, unilateral policies create the frictions and tensions which are finally expressed in overt conflicts...

...All these forms require the participation of the smaller powers as well...

...He is ('resident of the I'DA...

...It ia, however, impossible to organise Urn continent without the reoperation of the great powers...

...A peace without a genuine system of mutual security ia bound to degenerate into an uneasy armistice, in which former allies will seek strategic advantages against each other, thereby hastening the conflict for which they either overtly or covertly plan...

...Europe could thus become an economic, at veil as political, meeting ground, rather than the battle ground, between Russia and the west...

...Reinhold Niebuhr of Union Theological Seminary in a distinguiahed philosopher, author of The Nature and Destiny of Man and other works...

...The disarmament of Germany is also necessary and inevitable, but it has only a short-range efficacy and is no guarantee of peace...

...Niebuhr it is more truly the social product of a group of liberals who participated in an ofl-tbe-record conference sponsored by the Union for Democratic Organisation who discussed the original draft prepared by Dr...

...An adequate agreement between the great powers in Europe will overcome the fear of economic as well as political domination by one side or the other...

...We should promulgate such a policy without waiting upon the other great pov.ers, since more open discussion and a more courageous statement pf pur attitude would contribute to its ultimate victory...

...This would be a cruel joke upon tha I peoples of the world...

...Nevertheless, tendencies toward the establishment of unilateral security continue, particularly by each of the art-eat nations, which have, or think they have, the power to guarantee their own safety against aggression...

...In this category are the Russian insistence on a line of strategic defense in Eastern Europe, Field Marshal Smuts' unofficial and yet significant proposals for the inclusion of north-European countries in the British Commonwealth, and American proposals for vast naval and air power expansion, including the retention and extension of naval and air bases everywhere...

...Two world wars in a generation have proved the ephemeral quality of our security and the error of our irresponsibility from the standpoint of both our own and the world's interests...

...In order to bring thia about, a United Nations Council must be railed and made permanent...

...Europe ran neither he reduced to the rIsIuk of an economic colony of Great Britain and the United States, nor yet be made an appendage of < ommunist economy...

...Thia requires a complete change of policy by the western powers in their relations to the European situation...

...and the present tendency toward independent action, particularly by the various great powers must, be reversed...

...These policies all look toward the security of each great power in rase of war...

...Thus the best hope of peace also gives us the best chance of justice...

...Fortunately, there is a possibility of a real synthesis between collectivist and free economic institutions in Europe...

...It is as important that economic policy on raw materials, credits, tariffs, etc...

...Mutual relations established for the task of defeating a common foe must be Sroadened and deepened if they are to create a sufficient nucleus or foundation for further development and structure...

...The ft rat objective of democratic foreign policy ought to be the establishment of the United Nations in fact as well as in name...

...2. Eoropeon Unity ond Reconstruction No plan for mutual security can be launched without reducing the tensions and fears which have already developed...

...and such counter measures will merely accentuate the general tension...

...But we eon agree on our willingness to be guided by the wishes of the peoples concerned...

...The punishment of war criminals is necessary and inevitable, bat it will not get to the roots of the problem...

...Chinese social and economic institutions and practices are sufficiently different from both Western capitalism and democracy on the one hand, and Soviet communism on the other, to make them the baais of cooperation with either, but only If the actual form of such instittuions can be worked out within China and among the Chinese...

...In order to make the cooperation of the great (towers count in the practical solution of the problem, a special committee of the United Nations should become the trustee of European corporate economic assets under forms similar to alien property custody...

...Failure to elaborate a general program of mutual senility will hasten the apparent drift toward the policy of creating "spheres of influence" in Europe and of partitioning (the world among the great powers...

...Other questions, such as the future of India, would not be solved automatically by a partnership of the .great powers but the solution would be made easier if they became the concern of all the nations and of the Asiatic peoples themselves...

...powers, especially regarding peace terms for Germany and Japan, must be discussed in this Council...

...are special reasons why our nation should take the initiative in a more constructive world policy...

...Such trusteeship should create the foundations for a genuine economic democracy...

...We should therefore press for a working compromise between the ¦various groups in China, through the establishment of • constitutional government...

...Although a constitutional system must be the consequence- of historic development, there is no possibility of a stable and continuing accord between the great powers unless their partnership is implemented by various quasi-constitutional forms at the very beginning...

...In it lies our best hope—and the best hope for the world...

...If foreign policy, during the wer ami after, degenerates into a similar series of power-political bargains, the nation's new sense of international responsibility will be dissipated...

...it cannot avert it...

...A part of this synthesis would be supplied if the west accepted the transference of property systems, achieved by Nazi expropriation of property, and refrained from restoring this property to its "owners," seeking rather to make it the basis of a new economic unity...

...In the liberated countries, this trusteeship should be limited to essential industries where the Germans have succeeded in gaming ownership aa well as political control...

...In previoua issues we have run articles by Bert rand Russell and David J. Dallin...

...For if no mutual agreements are reached, the dismemberment of a vanquished foe might well accentuate the general chaos of the world, by increasing economic insecurity, and by tempting the great powers to vie with each ether la seeking to annex dismembered portions of the defeated nation to their respective spheres of influence...

...Such a policy would make for economic stability and prevent more extravagant forms of complete socialization and the peril of totalitarianism which inheres in them...

...An adequate agreement, if it is to be the basis of a genuine world organization, requires common councils for economic affairs and instruments for the arbitration of disputes, as well as strategic and political institutions...

...e * World order must be initiated by a partnership of the great nations because their preponderant power in the community of nations gives them the primary responsibility and opportunity to do so...

...For our foreign policy will again become the victim of an alliance between the cynics who know no law beyond obvious national interest and the disappointed idealists who are shocked by the course which events have taken...

...If these continents are not given a new unity and order, each side will seek to prevent the opposing side from organizing the continent against it...

...If tha world is not organized, it ia oven highly probable that a defeated nation could elude dismemberment by courting on* group of victors against the other...

...It requires an open "expression of confidence in the democratic forces in Europe, ..ot only as the best hope for the reconstruction of the continent, but also as the best hope of friendship between Europe and the rest of the world...

...It might even obscure the necessity of breaking the power of the predatory military caste in Germany, a caste which is older than Nazism and less obviously involved in war atrocities...

...should lie discussed only in relation to the total problem of mutual security...

...Although this article is signed by Dr...

...3 Ret oastracfioa of Asia . 1 HE reconstruction of Asia also requires common, rather than unilateral, action on the part of the great powers...

...We have managed to survive an era in which preasure groups, representing ecclesiastical, economic or sectional interests sought to gain or to avert ends they considered most advantageous or detrimental to themselves...

...No agreement between Kussis and English-speaking nations is possible if we make a futile rdm i to use reactionary political forces to reconstruct an allegedly individualistic and competitive property system, or if, on the other hand, Kassia seeks to force Communism on Europe...

...Any workable program of mutual security must rest provisionally upon a partnership of the great nations which possess the effective political and military power in the present world.-it is significant,, however, that the gteat powers cannot reach a basic and stable agreement among themselves, if the agreement does not provide for the organization of the continents which lie between them (Europe, Asia and to some extent, Africa...

...All of the vexing problems—strategic, political and economic—which include the tasks of restoring broken sovereignties, of giving China her rightful place in the concert of nations, and of organizing the economic life of the continent, can be solved only on terms of mutual advatage...

...TrlE reconstruction of the continent requires a healthy Germany, nod a healthy Germany requires a reconstructed cod stable continent...

...Unity in either Europe or Asia ran be achieved only by drawing the nations of the continents into initial agreements...

...cease to be purely unilateral as it is that strategy and security become a common concern...

...Each nation's concern for ita own security is inevitable...

...The effort of any great Power to reserve to itself s basic issue in which the interests of all nations are involved expresses, and will inevitably accentuate, a stste of anarchy between the powers...

...It requires much stronger pressure on Spain...

...America has a greater degee of natural security than any other nation in a world of internatianal anarchy...

...Such a policy can only slightly postpone another world conflict...

...If we allow them to express themselves by due democratic process, the pattern of a new economy in Europe might well become discernible...

...It should be frankly acknowledged that there is a tremendous opportunity in our being forced to compromise with a communist power on practical matters of economic organization...

...TlllS article by Reinhold Niebuhr is another in a series of discussions presented by The New leader on the nature of a world security organization necessary for peace...

...for the smaller powers will not accept German economic hegemony and would have no escape frost it if they were left alone on the continent with Germany...

...Agreement between them, while difficult, is still more possible than the immediate establishment of a system of international constitutional justice...

...In any general economic and political chaos, aew movement* of political hysteria are bound to arise, whether ia Germany or else where...

...This comparative advantage tempts us to irresponsibility toward the community of nations...

...The opening of a front in Western Europe has established the Anglo-Saxon powers and their smaller allies in a position of political strength which they did not enjoy as long as the Soviet Union alone was fighting Germany's main land forces...

...The immediate objective of American foreign policy must be the creation of a genuine and permanent organ of the United Nations so that the experiences of mutual accord and accommodation, gained in war time and under pressure of immediate necessities, msy become the cornerstone of a permanent and genuine form of world order...

...Thia vicious circle of mutual fear ia already in the making and must be broken...

...and we should use lendleaae to strengthen the peoples' cooperative movement rather than the capitalistic interests of the dominant group...

...An adequate agreement between the great powers must include international trusteeship for colonial regions with the expressed aim of ultimate self-government for their populations...

...The result of this compromise ran hardly be a hybrid of American and Russian economic aims and ambitions—the less So because there are sharp differences of opinion in the United States on what our economic aims ought to be...

...In any event, punishment of individual criminals will not eradicate the complex collective roots of collective evil...

...The western powers are at a great disadvantage in negotiations with Russia because they lack it general European program which transcends ¦these immediate issues...

...And we shall be doomed...

...It will be fruitleaa then to measure the exact proportion of responsibility of each of the great powers for auch a development...

...This conception of our objectives is as necessary for a speedy victory as for a lasting peace...

...But this position can be lost if it is not supported by a democratic approach to the social and economic problems of Europe...

...Democratic Goals and World Order By Reinhold Niebuhr I. A &«•¦>•« Sytfum of l*)cwMy Ik another world war i* to be avoided, stronger and more ambitious plana for collective security than are now in prospect must be laid...