THE CASE FOR FEDERAL UNION
Kefauver, Estes
The Case for Federal Union By ESTES KEFAUVER The Progressive has published a number of articles in recent months interpreting and analyzing major moves in peacemaking. As part of this general...
...In this situation, it is but common sense to begin to explore a more comprehensive solution of our security and economic problems...
...The Atlantic Union Resolution would not prevent continued efforts along these lines, or any of the variations of them that have been proposed in other Resolutions...
...Already our budget has been thrown out of balance by defense requirements in a period of full production...
...Since last July, moreover, the frontiers of freedom have greatly, receded...
...I believe that this Resolution is in the great tradition of American history...
...Such a Union, by uniting the defense forces of its members, would create a stronger defense at less cost...
...They are peoples possessing a common heritage and long experience in the exercise of free institutions, and are bound together by extensive ties of trade and common security...
...These developments would lead to a progressive expansion of freedom...
...And their inclusion in an Atlantic Union would guarantee that they would not again relapse into dictatorship by guaranteeing their free institutions...
...We all know that in our country, as in other federal unions, there is diversion of powers...
...Since that time, support for Atlantic Union as an effective means of maintaining peace and preserving freedom has developed rapidly...
...Competition within this vast, rich, free market area would create within a few years the most efficient system of production and distribution that the world has ever known...
...er Undersecretary of State Will L.Clayton, and former Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, as well as...
...At the same time the defense of the democracies would be so strong that no aggressor would dare attack...
...At the hearings, Justice Roberts said: "A federal union of Atlantic democracies, with a common foreign policy, a common currency, a common defense force, with free movement of goods and services, is the surest, cheapest, strongest way to stop war, to stop Communism, to create prosperity, to extend freedom...
...They would all see in its security a bulwark of their own...
...free enterprise would be strengthened...
...With the whole of China now under Communist dictatorship and with Indo-China, Burma, and...
...As for the peoples within the Iron Curtain, it seems clear that the emergence of a powerful, prosperous, and expanding Atlantic Union would force the Communist leaders onto the defensive and multiply their difficulties in maintaining control over subjugated millions who aspire to freedom...
...Speaking of the economic consequences of Atlantic Union, former Undersecretary of State Clayton testified: "Every producer in the Union would have a free market of 350 to 400 million consumers just as we now have a free market in our 48 states of 150 million consumers...
...2) in company with the Canadian, British, French, and Benelux democracies with which we share most closely these economic, military, monetary, and atomic problems, and which sponsored with us the North Atlantic Pact...
...it would thus dispel the fear or war and greatly reduce the present unbearable military burden of the democracies...
...On the same date companion resolutions (HCR 107-111) were introduced into the House of Representatives...
...Combining the armed forces of all would permit some disarmament by each...
...But—if we were to combine our armed forces, each nation could afford to decrease its armaments...
...Public support: centers in the Atlantic Union Committee, headed by former Supreme" Court Justice Owen J. Roberts, form...
...The Germans could not dominate an Atlantic Union which included the people of North America as they might dominate any union in Europe...
...As part of this general presentation, we propose to carry in the months ahead the case for some of the more significant organizational proposals, as argued by their most prominent proponents, to be followed by an overall and more critical survey of the entire field...
...There are many prospective or possible developments which threaten to make piecemeal policies end in failure and disaster, as did our policy in China, and to bring crashing down the security and the economic structure which we have erected at such vast expense in the postwar years...
...the standard of living would rise...
...How creation of an Atlantic Union would solve the problems which have proved insoluble by diplomatic methods, leagues, and alliances, just as our own American Union solved the problems which had caused the disintegration of the prior League of Friendship, was brought out in the testimony of eminent witnesses at hearings on our Resolution...
...It we were building an Atlantic there would be no basis tor such fears...
...No one knows what will happen in Germany in the future, and widespread fears are expressed that the outcome may be a partnership between Germany and Russia...
...Following the trail blazed so successfully by our own Constitutional Convention of 1787 it proposes to carry out this exploration through a Convention of delegates appointed by these governments to serve as individuals...
...it would restore and strengthen free enterprise...
...it would release and vitalize the labor genius and capital of men everywhere...
...In the existing world situation we Americans face with the other six sponsors of the North Atlantic Pact not one problem but a complex of problems—economic, political, military, monetary, atomic, and, I would add, moral and spiritual...
...That is certainly the aim of the Kremlin dictatorship, a political and military marriage between Russian manpower and German industrial skills and capacity...
...Kefauver is coauthor of the book, "20th Century Congress...
...A strictly limited number of powers are entrusted by the people to the Federal Government and the others are reserved to state or local governments...
...The principles of federal union are familiar to Americans...
...it would solve the dollar problem...
...In 1952 the Marshall Plan is scheduled to end, a fact which creates uncertainty about the future economic condition of Western Europe...
...III At the present time our policy makers are much concerned with Germany...
...Funds now allocated to ships and planes and bombs, and to the manpower to operate these, could be used instead to produce consumer goods—to wipe out poverty, ignorance, and disease, and to build a new Atlantic community in which peace and progress would go hand in hand...
...The Atlantic Union Resolution seeks exploration of the possibilities of union by the seven democracies which sponsored the North Atlantic Pact...
...II Former Secretary of War Patterson pointed out: "If the democracies will band together to protect their freedom, no dictator can take it from them...
...Its basic unit is the citizen, who is directly represented in the Federal Government and with whom the Federal Government deals directly by legislation...
...of the United States in a federal J2 The PROGRESar Convention to explore how far their peoples, and the peoples of such other democracies as the convention may invite to send delegates, can apply among them, within the framework of the United Nations, the principles of free federal union...
...This Union would possess such an overwhelming weight of the world's economic, industrial, and spiritual power that no nation on earth attack...
...communism would disappear...
...Freedom's gain by it would put in shadow Communism's gain in China...
...I believe that any thoughtful person who has studied the testimony on the Atlantic Union Resolution at these hearings will perceive that this Resolution offers a broad and viable road to enduring peace, to expanding freedom, and to unprecedented economic welfare...
...That is all the Atlantic Union Resolution proposes...
...Peace has become more precarious, now that Russia has succeeded in making atomic bombs and now that Communist armies camp on the borders of Indo-China...
...The seven sponsors of the North Atlantic Treaty comprise the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg...
...The Editors IT WAS almost a year ago—on July 26, 1949—that I introduced into the Senate on behalf of 20 Senators the Atlantic Union Resolution, officially entitled Senate Concurrent Resolution 57...
...They would gain from its rapid economic development a richer market and a means of obtaining cheaper goods and larger investments...
...Senator from Tennessee, has taken the leading role in Conqress in behalf of the program for Federal Union...
...Such a union, moreover, is a government of peoples, not a league of states...
...And it must be passed while there is still time to undertake this complex and difficult task with care and prudence...
...There are several reasons for the selection of these seven nations...
...The enacting clause of this Resolution provides: "Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That the President is requested to invite the democracies which sponsored the North Atlantic Treaty to name delegates, representing their principal political parties, to meet this year with delegates...
...What has happened during the past year has deepened that conviction and has made a Union of the Atlantic democracies more urgently necessary...
...If a depression such as has always followed war should engulf us under these conditions, the consequences defy prediction...
...Kefauver served five terms in the House of Representatives before his election to the Senate—against the opposition of the powerful Crump machine—in 1948...
...A liberal Democrat who has long been on the firing line for progressive legislation, Sen...
...In the Congress those who support the Atlantic Union Resolution now number nearly seventy...
...it would give a great new hope to the world that at last we are on the road to permanent world peace...
...Not only are we still relying on piecemeal technique, but we are confining our efforts to the diplomatic, or government-to-government approach...
...In this space it is possible to touch on only a few of the convincing points made...
...Such a Union would be a positive factor...
...Inclusion of less experienced democracies would cause confusion, impede progress, and might produce less success ful results...
...It seems evident that once such a nucleus was formed, its security and prosperity would cause other free peoples to seek to join it and would also cause peoples who lacked adequate free institutions to seek to perfect those institutions in order to become able to join it...
...They are already engaged intimately together under the North Atlantic Treaty...
...The next in this series will be an examination of the position of United World Federalists, Inc., argued by Cord Meyer, Jr., the chairman of its executive committee...
...and (3) on the man-toman federal union basis of our own Constitution...
...prospects of continuing peace havt certainly been improved by these developments or by the shadow already cast by our knowledge that Russia, as well as our country, is seeking to make the hydrogen bomb...
...Though the task of creating such a Union is both complex and difficult, I do not believe it is beyond the capacity of the best brains of the Atlantic Community, assembled in the Convention for which this Resolution provides...
...The Atlantic Union Resolution provides the means to found such a community in our time...
...I believe that those of us who are responsible for the welfare of the American people can do no less...
...This outcome would enlist German skills and productive capacity permanently on the side of the West and at the same time provide the Western Germans with a huge and growing market and enduring freedom...
...But it would permit us to try also to solve this complex of problems by tackling them (1) as a whole...
...Meanwhile the "cold war" continues and authoritative voices warn us it may continue indefinitely...
...It is not too much to say that it would be imprudent and even reckless to delay this urgent action...
...Tibet under growing threat from that dictatorship, freedom is partially secure only on the fringes of Eurasia, that vast super-continent which contains more than threes fourths of the world's people...
...It is apparent, moreover, that the complex task of exploring the possibilities of Atlantic Union should be undertaken by the most experienced democracies and by democracies already closely associated...
...Such a federation would be colossal-ly powerful in arms, in industry, in raw materials, in financial and moral power...
...As long as the democracies remain separate, it is necessary for each one to remain—at tremendous cost—armed to the teeth...
...The Resolution provides, however, that the Convention may invite other democracies to send delegates, since the Convention can best judge the desirability of adding to its members the delegates of other free nations...
...The greater part of the natural resources needed for a high standard of living, as well as the greatest spiritual and moral force in the world are concentrated among the democracies...
...Behind this action was a common conviction that the piecemeal policies pursued by the Atlantic democracies were proving inadequate to safeguard peace and preserve freedom...
...Tf—~uld embody <he" ogical power and drive that free men need...
...For that Union would provide a ready means for integrating Western Germany without danger to the free world...
...The Union would exert a powerful magnetic attraction upon all peoples outside the Iron Curtain...
...It is our best defense and preventive of war...
...To these brief excerpts from the testimony concerning Atlantic Union, I wish to add that the Union would constitute a nucleus of the free peoples designed to grow by common consent...
...by a National Council comprising more than 400 eminent Americans and comprising active chapters or community leaders in every state...
...They can become so strong that no aggressor will dare to attack...
...We have been trying to solve these problems piecemeal by the European Recovery on the economic side, and when that insufficient, by the North Atlantic Treaty on the political side, and the Military Assistance Program on the military side...
...But to initiate this effort toward so effective an overall solution of our problems, the Resolution must be passed...
...Our ESTES KEFAUVER, U.S...
...And our time may be the end of time unless we, who are still free, unite to protect our freedom...
Vol. 14 • July 1950 • No. 7
