World Commonwealth-II Toward the Ideal Federation
MADARIAGA, SALVADOR DE
World Cammonweulth — II TOWARD THE IDEAL FEDERATION By Salvador de Madariaga Whatever road we choose will in the end lead us to one conclusion: The world community must be governed as a World...
...nor indeed by the as yet rudimentary state of the institutions and workings of the rising world democracy...
...And so for world affairs, events have a definite tendency to prove that public opinion can paralyze a show of force...
...Freedom is not a mere condition for peace to emerge: Freedom is peace and peace is freedom...
...They should be endowed with a complete system for recording and transmitting facts, such as television cameras and broadcasting material...
...The first duty of the free world is therefore to rise to the conception of world unity and world solidarity and to set out to organize a World Commonwealth...
...Peace is the enjoyment of activity within a group that knows no inner strife, and therefore under rules and ways freely arrived at between its members...
...It is obvious that there is such a thing as passive violence: the refusal to put an end to a situation inherently unjust...
...It follows that peace and freedom are inseparable ideas...
...Let us then define the desirable...
...This means that a permanent administration of justice must watch events and see that every nation gets its due...
...Possibly not...
...If any doubts were entertained by Soviet Union on the matter, they would surely have been dispelled by the risings in East Berlin, Poznan and Budapest, and the reception given to Nixon by the people of Warsaw...
...But the time has come to organize the free world on a basis that would take account of this image of the future...
...It should be offered to the world as a model, rival to that of the universal Soviet Union offered by the Communist party...
...To begin with, justice can be administered only in the name of a sovereign...
...This imposture was put in circulation by the Soviet Government not merely for Western consumption but for the benefit of its own public opinion...
...It is not merely inadvisable...
...This charter should ensure: 1. Inviolability of the White Guards...
...The third section of this article, on a world police force, is taken from a proposal submitted to the UN by Madariaga and Jayaprakash Narayan...
...How should the free world face the issue...
...Islam (from Pakistan to Morocco) ; Africa south of the Sahara...
...It follows that an international police should be unarmed...
...That part of Europe that is still free, the Iberian Americans, the Islamic peoples, the Asians, should begin to set up their several federations...
...the charter would be difficult to negotiate...
...If peace implies the absence of violence, and lack of freedom is conceivable only under (active or passive) violence, peace and freedom are identical terms...
...And so we complete the circle of ideas which support each other and which, together, support the peaceful World Commonwealth...
...There would appear therefore to be a singular lack of consistency in expecting the United Nations to solve disputes by force—be it punitive, as in so-called military sanctions, or preventive, by means of an international armed force...
...in political life, one must be content with the possible...
...The following grouping is suggested as a concrete sketch, if only as a basis for discussion: There would be nine big units: the United States...
...If the government is not democratic enough, it is therefore relying, in part at least, on force and not on public opinion...
...Yet another important circumstance in this respect is the all but dramatic change brought about in "foreign" or "international" or (as I prefer to say) "world" policy by the entry of a crowd on the stage...
...One does not leap to one's goal at the first try...
...Europe up to the Russian frontier...
...A treaty with a country split by civil war, whether cold or hot, is impossible...
...Once the true nature of peace has been grasped, it becomes patent that no peace is possible with a party that is not at peace within itself...
...But if one is wise, one must achieve the possible, bearing in mind the desirable...
...In days of old, not so very old at that, "foreign" policy was the privilege of the selected few...
...It will be remembered that the Suez and Budapest crises broke upon the world simultaneously and that public opinion, not merely national but world public opinion, forced Britain and France to give up that enterprise, while the invasion and murder of Hungary proceeded to its inexorable end...
...We may then dismiss as irrelevant all endeavors to come to terms with the Soviet Union, since the Soviet Union is not at peace within itself and since it maintains a number of nations in the same split frame of mind...
...And, what is even more to the point, it is alive not merely to issues directly concerning the nation, but to all issues abroad as well, thereby revealing a sound instinct for moral solidarity and world unity...
...What will be missing if and when peace must be maintained is not likely to be force but, rather, unanimity among states as to which is the party in the wrong in the conflict and how to deal with the trouble...
...This fact became clear during the Suez and Budapest crises to such an extent that General Sir Charles Keightley, the British Commander-in-Chief for the Suez operations, in his report to his Government after the event, concluded that henceforth public opinion must be counted as an important military factor...
...Brown Asia...
...It follows that the elimination of violence from international relations requires a number of institutions: • A World Court administering world law in the name of a World Authority...
...but it does not happen...
...The idea of a police force is born of the old error that the League of Nations failed because it did not have enough military power to enforce its decisions...
...If the best definition of democracy is government by public opinion, all that precedes amounts to saying that the world has become one big democracy...
...The first two are separated by an unbridgeable political abyss, but land this is a crucial point) even if this abyss were to be bridged, the nations of each of the three groups would still remain separated by political ditches wide enough to bar the way to that moral solidarity without which a world army is unthinkable...
...Each of these groups would be governed by a council and an assembly...
...Then again, what do we really mean by justice...
...In 1936, I endeavored to set up a World Foundation, one of whose purposes was defined as "an impartial inquiry into the means for ensuring adequate and unbiased information as to events in order to maintain amongst the several national public opinions of the world a minimum common ground of fact and knowledge on which a sufficient agreement may be built to ensure international peace...
...The public followed their activities with only a distracted eye...
...This is the second of a two-part article on a world community by Salvador de Madariaga, the distinguished Spanish diplomat and author...
...No contract could be concluded with a person afflicted with a split personality...
...World Cammonweulth — II TOWARD THE IDEAL FEDERATION By Salvador de Madariaga Whatever road we choose will in the end lead us to one conclusion: The world community must be governed as a World Community...
...Diplomats and a few politicians of each nation wove and unwove the nets of foreign relations...
...Iberian America...
...some countries might belong to two groups and act as links between them...
...3. Their right to intervene in any conflict of any nature when asked by only one of the parties thereto or by the Secretary General...
...for, through that organization, the objectives, prejudices or policy of those who have succeeded in putting the UN machinery in motion will be clearly discerned...
...A World Legislature defining the law which the Court is to administer...
...Violence in public affairs might be defined as the use of force without the backing of public opinion...
...But this time our ever-recurring conclusion contains a new element...
...In the face of this development, frontiers vanish and peoples, even when separated by oceans, merge into a physical solidarity before death much more intimate than that physical solidarity in life we have been led to observe...
...it is impossible...
...The ideal federation would in all probability be achieved by grouping the nations first in federations naturally formed into families by geographical, historical and spiritual forces...
...These reflections add to our skepticism on disarmament...
...Or should it be a law legislated by the sovereign authority in whose name it is to be administered...
...It is incoherent, unmanageable and unrealistic...
...This means a split inner life and thus no possibility of true peace...
...Therefore, when a nation at peace within itself attempts to come to peaceful terms with a nation at war within itself, whether this war be hot or cold, the inevitable dilemma arises: Since in the split nation the government is the enemy of the people, the free nation can be the friend of the government and therefore the enemy of the people, or the friend of the people and therefore the enemy of the government...
...Who would launch the action of the Guards...
...At every stage in our discussions with the Soviets, whether polemical or diplomatic, we ought to insist on liberty...
...This proves that nowadays the world is governed to a considerable extent by public opinion...
...Is it not obvious that on the day we decide that violence must be eliminated from international relations we have ipso facto decided that a supra-national sovereignty must be set up...
...on the contrary, this observation breeds a number of problems...
...It may be negotiated, drafted, signed and ratified...
...If we now approach the subject from yet another angle, our conclusion will remain unaltered...
...It is far in advance of anything the free world can evince as its own aim for two reasons: It has an aim while the free world has none...
...Like the Covenant of the League of Nations, the United Nations' Charter aims at relying on argument instead of force for the settlement of international disputes...
...nor indeed, spread its ugly tentacles so far into the territory and economy of the neutral or uncommitted onlookers...
...A World Council able to deal with awkward situations, and amicably to resolve states of passive violence...
...the Soviet Union...
...In the first case, the "peace" achieved will be a shame and a sham...
...3. non-committed...
...The world is today split into roughly three groups: 1. Communist...
...The United Nations is but an embryo of such a federation...
...The present position is extremely poor indeed...
...But the immediate need is to raise the true idea and ideal of liberty for all nations and for all men, instead of the false idea of peace, broadcast by the Soviet Union in order to stun and paralyze the free world...
...for even the Soviet Union had to pretend that its tanks had been called in by the Hungarian Government itself...
...The idea is too obvious for elaboration, and has been embodied in the famous dictum, si vis pacem colet justitiam...
...Even so, truth will out and it will ooze in...
...If the world will not be united in life, it will certainly be united in death...
...On closer examination, however, it reveals perhaps an insufficient analysis of the underlying facts...
...Therefore, again, our conclusion is that the world community must be governed: i.e., it must become a World Commonwealth...
...An army rests on a moral solidarity far more advanced than that which nowadays obtains between nations...
...They would be empowered to act in any capacity their chiefs might think adequate for the situation, though they would never use force...
...But if such a view of peace were correct, what better ideal of peace than the peace of the dead...
...It is far too loosely conceived and far too demagogic—that is, as an institution, it is not organic enough, indeed not at all...
...and that the Khrushchevs and Francos, who cannot hope to gain approval from their people, have no other way out than to keep the public as ignorant of the facts as the efficiency of their machines allows...
...We can inquire how to eliminate violence from international life...
...It follows that force is bound to weigh less and less as a factor in the relations between nations and men...
...Talks" would not appear to afford an adequate way, since they could hardly lead to friendship with the rulers without leading to enmity toward the ruled...
...It is obvious that the Great Schism is the chief obstacle on the way to peace...
...The way out would appear to lie in a new approach more in conformity with the spirit of the Charter...
...They do not impair the fact that the true ruler of the world today is public opinion...
...Peace is by no means such a negative and passive concept...
...It does not happen...
...The right way surely must be in keeping with the principles, rules, ideas and findings which have been stated above...
...We are not yet there...
...Without in any way detracting from the deterrent value of the nuclear weapons and the intercontinental missiles, it is safe to assert that the most effective deterrent against a Soviet invasion of Western Europe is no other than the state of public opinion in that part of the continent which the Soviet Union already occupies...
...By far the most dramatic case of victorious public opinion may well be the very force that keeps the world safe from the Red Army...
...In my view what, inter alia, was wanted was a world monthly, a world wireless and television center, a world Board of Factual Trustees to correct any trend to digress from truth, etc...
...That such a question is being debated at all is encouraging proof of the progress of world opinion toward a fuller awareness of the moral solidarity of men and nations...
...Are we then to give up the idea of an international police altogether...
...The Soviet Union seeks to unite the world by force...
...This, however, belongs to the realm of organization...
...It was easy to bamboozle the public into believing almost anything by a few articles in the press...
...the Commonwealth...
...To be sure, European wars have at times in the past taken on all the grim aspects of natural catastrophies...
...The fact was that the League never took a decision that could be enforced by its military power— which was formidable enough in any case, since it included all the important armed forces in the world except those of the United States and the particular state that happened to be in conflict with the League...
...Setting up this institution would no doubt be delicate...
...We must, therefore, begin by understanding clearly what violence actually is...
...Because it seeks to reach that aim by means inimical to human nature, since in the process it abolishes freedom and public opinion wherever it holds sway...
...Finally, a number of permanent and temporary institutions should be considered—among the former a Free World Technical Aid Center, among the latter a Free World Trade Commission...
...In these circumstances, any injection of power into a conflict which in itself will be due to power will only render the conflict more complicated, even if this newly injected power operates under United Nations colors...
...The White Guards would be parachutists...
...On the other hand, there is no more urgent, important and pregnant task than that of ensuring an unimpeachable enlightenment of world public opinion...
...It may therefore become useful at this stage to inquire into the true nature of peace...
...Public opinion is far more awake nowadays, even in backward nations...
...It relies on the rudimentary method of counting votes, which amounts to adding up pots and pans with horses and books, ideas and operas...
...2. Their right to go anywhere at any time from the day they are given an assignment by the United Nations...
...Which sovereign in this case...
...They should be able to stop advancing armies by refusing to move from roads, railways or airfields...
...This trend has been further intensified by the invention of the new missiles and bombs...
...Nevertheless, from our point of view, the difference is far less material than meets the eye...
...There is nowhere in the world a system, a center, a focus, of non-nationalistic, unbiased opinion on anything...
...Why, then, is the Soviet Union rejected as a world leader by every land and people both civilized and free...
...But the matter does not by any means end there...
...Madariaga has served in many important international positions, including Director of the Disarmament Section of the League of Nations Secretariat (1922-27), Spanish Permanent Delegate to the League (1931-36), Secretary General of the Geneva Conference for the Supervision of Trade in Arms (1925) and Spanish delegate to the Disarmament Conference of 1932...
...The Thirty Years' War is one of the worst examples...
...For we have established that the core of peace is freedom for men and nations, and the Communist party, in control of Russia and China, is the sworn and outspoken enemy of freedom...
...What then are we to conclude if not that the nations who oppose a supra-national authority do not really want violence entirely eliminated from international relations, or do not really believe it can he done, or refuse to pay the price of peace...
...But never in history has a war so completely engulfed in its maelstrom the whole life of the nations engaged in it as the two World Wars of our century...
...and it seeks world unity, which is consonant with the need of our day...
...Peace is often interpreted in a shallow way as the mere absence of trouble, turmoil, noise, outward strife...
...The nine councils would appoint one representative each, and this Council of Nine would rule world affairs...
...Let us not be diverted from the main line of our argument by the criticisms, only too often justified, against the too sudden transplantation to Asian or African soils of tender European or American democratic institutions...
...As an example, if a few thousand such White Guards had been parachuted into Budapest during the five or six days Hungary was free, the outcome of that struggle might have been quite different...
...The first of these new circumstances is the totalitarian character of modern war...
...A number of circumstances have developed in our modern world which make war not merely odious, as it always has been, but obsolete...
...If, for instance, we admit, as we must, that violence is only to be countenanced as an answer to violence, we must be careful to be clear as to who begins it...
...Problems such as that of the French minority in Algeria or of Israel should be settled by special measures under the international right of minorities...
...They would not be there as a fanciful im-provization, but as the positive and practical application of a previously negotiated and ratified charter binding all United Nations members...
...The free world should seek to organize mankind by federation...
...Given the present lack of moral solidarity among nations, the Secretary General would never be in a position to use his force...
...Indeed, the opinion might be ventured that if the abyss opened by Communism were to disappear, the ditches hewn by nationalism would become larger...
...It is doubtful whether disarmament meetings as such are worth the trouble and expense—aside from whatever maneuvering and negotiating may go on in other more substantial matters while they last...
...In these circumstances, any military force raised under seemingly international auspices is bound to arouse suspicion...
...it is, on the contrary, a positive and active state of affairs...
...It is no longer merely the all-absorbing nature of wars as omnipresent activities which throws whole nations into the turmoil, but also the fact that the range and power of the new weapons is life-destroying to a degree no one had dared imagine generations ago...
...Is a situation inherently unjust to continue indefinitely for the sake of barring the way to physical violence...
...It seems, at any rate, that in the negotiations the chief difficulty—fear and mistrust of power—would have been eliminated and the nations that would oppose the scheme would lose much face...
...in the second case, it will lead to diplomatic tensions, but the situation will be more real...
...If law is the opposite of and antidote for violence, can it be interpreted as the mere application of the net of treaties inherited from the international jungle of the past...
...The Soviet Union has a clear aim in view...
...The world community is a world democracy...
...This is due to the fact that all countries, even the most backward, have evolved enough public opinion (more or less enlightened, but that is a different problem) to be politically alive...
...We know now why...
...While the wars of old could be considered mostly as matters for the military specialists of both sides, wars today carve deep, hollow channels into the body politic of our nations in which the whole of the nation's life must flow...
...All countries ruled by other than democratic methods must, therefore, be placed in the category of nations with whom no peace treaty is possible...
...Grim as our conclusion may be, there is no other way to reach peace in any given area than true freedom throughout that area...
...The World Foundation was to be a strictly international, inter-continental body, under the influence of no single nation, color, class or religion...
...It may not always be enlightened, but it is alive to the issue...
...This essay, published in connection with the 50th anniversary program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, will form a chapter in a new book, Perspectives on Peace: 1910-1960, to be issued this fall by Praeger in New York and Stevens & Sons in London...
...At the first shot of a European war, the whole of Eastern Europe would rise against its tyrants...
...How about a world army or police force...
...And, of course, in order to gain authority thereto we ought to see that liberty reigns everywhere in our free world...
...This statement would appear prima facie to be of good omen for world peace...
...Yellow Asia...
...The Secretary General should have permanent power to do so on his own initiative...
...The presence of a body of regular "White Guards" or "Peace Guards" intervening, with no weapons whatsoever, between two forces in combat or about to fight might have considerable effect...
...This will lead us to what seems an inevitable distinction between passive and active violence...
...That difficulties would be surmounted if a standing police force were put at the disposal of the Secretary General of the United Nations would appear to be unduly optimistic...
...Our conclusion would then be, again, that since the world community has become a World Commonwealth it must be governed as such...
...2. Christian-liberal-socialist...
Vol. 43 • July 1960 • No. 29
