CHAPTER 3

Confederation Next -- Not Federation Now?

To our friends and associates in the Atlantic community: We propose a
broader partnership that goes beyond our common fears, to recognize the
depth and sweep of our common political, economic, and cultural
interests. We welcome the recent heartening advances toward European
unity. In every appropriate way, we shall encourage their further growth
within the broader framework of the Atlantic community. -- Democratic
Platform, July 12,1960.

The vital need of our foreign policy is new political creativity,
leading and inspiring the formation, in all great regions of the free
world, of confederations, large enough and strong enough to meet modern
problems and challenges. We should promptly lead toward the formation of
such confederations in the North Atlantic community and in the Western
hemisphere. -- Point Two of the Nixon-Rockefeller Agreement, July 23,
1960.

The advance toward Atlantic Union reached a new high mark in 1960 when
Governor Nelson Rockefeller proposed a "North Atlantic Confederation" in
his address to the Binghamton (N.Y.) Rotary club on June 21.[1] It rose
still higher on July 12 when the Democrats adopted a platform promising
a "broader partnership" in "the Atlantic Community" than NATO; the terms
were broader and the volume of support was greater. And then the advance
reached still another peak on July 23 when Richard M. Nixon agreed to
the Rockefeller proposal's Point Two in their joint statement.

The climax came when the Democratic party, which has long been the one
more favorable to Atlantic Union, won the White House and both Houses of
Congress. This puts it in position to achieve, as far as the United
States is concerned, its promise of a "broader partnership" -- a term
that does not exclude Atlantic Union. Its responsibility to do this is
the greater, since it cannot fear opposition to this from Vice President
Nixon -- and he ran so far ahead of the Congressional candidates of his
party that he nearly won the White House, and surely won their respect.
Nor need President Kennedy fear opposition from Governor Rockefeller and
his wing of the Republican party. To advance Atlantic unification
through Congress in these conditions would seem easy, compared to some
of the legislative feats that those master Congressional leaders, Vice
President Lyndon Johnson and Speaker Sam Rayburn, have already
accomplished.

Their party being split as it is, the Republican candidate for President
and Governor Rockefeller deserve hearty applause for the refreshing
courage they have shown in proposing American leadership toward a North
Atlantic Confederation. In the American mind "confederation," is
inevitably associated with two highly significant experiences in
American history: The Articles of Confederation, ratified by the
Thirteen States in 1783, which formed a system more advanced than NATO,
and the Confederate States of America, set up by the South in 1861,
which was practically a federation (as Chapter 8 will bring out).

Parties tend to steal each other's thunder (rather than lightning), and
Confederacy may understandably appeal more than Union to Southern
Democrats. Before we attach too much importance to this emotional
factor, however, or to the Nixon-Rockefeller use of the term, let us see
what they mean by confederation, and try to define the basic difference
between confederation and federation, both in principle and in American
practice. Then let us assess the results achieved by the American
experiments with both systems, and draw all the advantage we can from
the lessons they have now for us, and all Atlantica -- and the world.

"Albert Kolonji, a Baluba tribal leader," Russell Howe reported from
Elisabethville in the Washington Post on August 10, 1960, "called for a
confederal type of association in the Congo but seemed hazy about the
difference between federation and confederation. He said he was studying
the constitutions of Canada, the United States and Switzerland." His
confusion is all too widespread, and may even be increased by the
examples he is studying. All three are clear examples of federations,
but the Swiss style theirs the "Helvetian Confederacy." One may gain
more clarity by studying the examples of both systems which the history
of the United States gives.

WHAT DID NIXON AND ROCKEFELLER MEAN?

First let us see what light the authors of the Nixon-Rockefeller
agreement throw on the meaning they attach to "confederation." The
latter, while leaving its substance vague, has given some significant
hints. The most far-reaching came when Curtin Winsor asked the Governor
this question from the floor, after his talk on "The Third Century" to
the Philadelphia World Affairs Council on April 22, 1960: "Do you think
that it is possible that these regional groupings (such as the Atlantic
one) might get together into full federation, at some time in the
future?"

Governor Rockefeller answered: "I would think, myself, that that would
be, at some point, a very logical conclusion Certainly the experience of
the United States has been one of the most exciting and thrilling in the
history of the world. I know that some of us are concerned about states
rights, and we do our best to preserve them. Yet I think the federal
system has proven its tremendous strength and vitality. So I do not see
why -- where regions exist, with compatible objectives on the part of
the people -- they should not ultimately lead to confederation."

These words suffice to show that he has been thinking in terms of
federal union and does not shy at the thought of trying this solution
"at some point." The last two sentences indicate, moreover, that he then
used "federal" and "confederation" as synonymous, that when he spoke of
ultimate "confederation" in the last sentence, he had in mind "the
federal system" he had cited just before. How could the reverse be true
-- how could he have meant confederation in its usual sense when he
spoke of "federal," since he had said "the federal system has proven its
tremendous strength and vitality," and he had already called "the
experience of the United States ... most exciting"? Its trial of the
Articles of Confederation proved, as Governor Rockefeller knows the
feebleness and futility of confederation.

On the other hand, one must remember that Governor Rockefeller was then
speaking "off the cuff." Although such speaking often throws more light
on a political leader's real thinking than do his formal statements, the
latter show much better what he considers to be "practical politics."

The little light he gives on the meaning he attaches to confederation
strongly indicates that he uses the term in its usual, non-federal
sense. "The work of moving toward confederation does not involve any
super-states," he explained at Binghamton. He made clearer that he did
not mean federation when he proposed in the same speech that the United
States should enter not only a North Atlantic but also a Western
Hemisphere confederation. No state in the United States -- or in any
federal union -- can belong at the same time to another federation, or
enter into any confederation, league, alliance or treaty with any
foreign nation. Nor could any member do this in the Confederation
originally set up by the Thirteen States; the Confederation stipulated
in Article VI: "No state without the Consent of the united states (sic)
in congress assembled, shall send any embassy to, or receive any embassy
from, or enter into any conference, agreement or alliance or treaty with
any King, prince or state." Apparently Governor Rockefeller uses
confederation in a much looser sense than did these Articles.

The only significant hints added by Governor Rockefeller's statement of
July 23 to which Mr. Nixon agreed lay in the words, "vital," "strong,"
"promptly" -- "the vital need ... of confederations, large enough and
strong enough to meet modern problems and challenges. We should promptly
lead toward the formation of such confederations in the North Atlantic
community and in the Western Hemisphere."

Vice President Nixon, in his major campaign speech on foreign policy on
October 14, strongly pledged himself to push energetically, if elected,
"toward confederation" -- a term he twice repeated. "I would ask the
NATO governments to consider the feasibility of still closer ties," he
said and added a little later, in a way that covered both Atlantica and
Latin America, "Such regional action, moving toward confederation, is an
imperative of our times."

He threw no light on what he meant by confederations, but the context
suggested that he shared the Rockefeller view as indicated above --
except that he made no mention of either super-state or federal union.

From the available evidence, one may well conclude either that Vice
President Nixon and Governor Rockefeller have not thought out what they
mean by confederation (although there is good reason to believe they
have long given thought to both confederation and federation), or that
they have made only an opening move which will be spelled out later.
Certainly one must conclude from the public evidence now that the
confederation they are talking about is a system stronger in structure
than the present NATO alliance -- but much weaker than confederation in
the historic American sense, though capable of "gradual and
evolutionary" growth (to quote from the Binghamton speech) into
something similar to the latter.

To clarify this vital question further, let us turn now to the
dictionary, see if its definitions can be bettered, and then pin them
down more realistically by comparing NATO with the Articles of
Confederation, and the latter with the federation which the Federal
Constitution formed. Webster distinguishes thus between confederation
and federation:

Confederacy and confederation ... [apply] specifically to a union by
treaty or compact of independent states under a government to which
powers are delegated for dealing with common external relations; of the
two, confederation, perhaps, now implies the closer or more permanent
association; as the Southern Confederacy, the Articles of Confederation,
the Germanic Confederation. Federation in its broad sense includes any
union under the terms of a league or covenant; but specifically it
designates a sovereign state, especially one formed by the union of
other states with a central general government and several local
governments; ... in the strictest sense the United States of America
constitutes a federation.

This indicates how dictionaries reflect the existing loose usage, and
contribute to the resulting confusion.

Study of the sense in which each of the various terms used today for
interstate groupings is generally meant shows that they readily fall
into two types. These two can be most simply and surely distinguished by
the supreme or sovereign unit of, by and for which the combination is
formed. In last analysis (see Union Now, Chapter VI) there are only two
possible units: Man taken as an individual person or sovereign, and mall
taken as a collective person or sovereign -- a manmade body politic
taken as supreme instead of a God-made, flesh-blood-and-soul human body
... John Bull instead of a John Q. Citizen.

If the citizen is the sovereign, and power is divided between the
representatives he elects to his state and his interstate government,
then the combination is variously called a union, organic union, federal
union, federal republic, federation. I see no significant difference
between these terms and use them all interchangeably. As regards the
outside world, each creates a "sovereign" state in the sense of
diplomacy. From the domestic standpoint, however, its "sovereignty" is
limited by that which the member states retain. Each is "sovereign" in
relation to the other as regards the powers assigned it by the
constitution. But the supreme sovereignty is equally divided among the
citizens, who have merely delegated a portion of their sovereignty to
their representatives in their state and interstate governments, and
retain the power to re-delegate this.

If, to the contrary, some body politic -- tribe, city, kingdom, state,
nation -- is taken as the supreme sovereign unit, the resulting
combination is variously called a bloc, coalition, alliance, league,
confederation, confederacy, or -- when used in the modern international
sense -- community. None of these forms a new "sovereign" state or
government in the usual sense of the terms; however close some types may
come to this, they remain in last analysis an association of sovereign
states. The different names indicate different degrees of association,
though one finds many exceptions to whatever distinguishing rules one
seeks to apply. I lump all these terms together when seeking to
distinguish the category to which they all belong from the other basic
category. But when using them in contra-distinction to others in their
own category, I would define them broadly and briefly as follows:

A bloc or coalition is the loosest and most temporary form; neither
usually involves a treaty, and the former indicates more common
interests than the latter, which implies association despite conflicting
interests. Both imply a number of members.

An alliance may have two or a number of members; it implies a treaty and
a longer period of duration, with some definite commitments, presumably
military, though possibly political.

League now implies a treaty associating a still larger number of states
for a longer time and for more purposes with some common institutions,
such as a secretariat and council, and a headquarters city.

Confederation and confederacy I use interchangeably to mean a league
that usually has fewer members but should have closer ties, stronger
commitments and more developed institutions -- the system in which
member states may (but rarely do) join together as closely as is
possible while still remaining the supreme sovereign units in it.

All the above terms involve a political association, though alliances
may and leagues and confederations do involve more than political and
military affairs.

Community has entered the international field since World War II from
Western Europe where it is used with reference to associations which are
highly confederal in character except that they have thus far been
non-political and limited each to one field, as the European Economic
Community or Common Market of the Six Nations, and the projected
European Defense Community. Though the term began as part of the
"functional" approach to union, it has recently taken on broader scope,
but vaguer meaning. Thus 1957 brought the Bruges "Conference on Atlantic
Community" which conspicuously omitted the article the before Atlantic
to make clearer that it meant "community" in the older and widest sense.
Then the London Atlantic Congress sponsored by the NATO Parliamentarians
Association in 1959 repeatedly used the term, "the Atlantic Community,"
in the sense of something existing. Yet at the same time its Declaration
also said: "The time is ripe for these nations to build an Atlantic
Community with responsibilities extending to military, political,
economic, social and scientific fields."

The term, community, in short, seems to be moving in the international
sense from the functional and specific to the political and general, and
from the confederal to the federal type of structure. But the degree
depends so much on the user of the word, or the listener, that its
growing popularity increases the existing confusion considerably.

Unfortunately for clarity, many organizations of states or nations fall
between these -- or other -- definitions, or their own choice of terms
causes confusion. The Articles of Confederation established a most
advanced type of confederacy; Article II gave it that name -- but
Article III called it a "league of friendship," and the other Articles
usually referred to it as "the united states in congress assembled"
(without the capital letters used today). The Charter of the United
Nations calls that body an "organization", I would call it a league,
leaning toward a confederation. The North Atlantic Treaty gave no name
whatever to the grouping it formed; the parties to it later styled it
the "North Atlantic Treaty Organization" (NATO). It is universally
termed an alliance and is, in fact, an exceptionally developed "grand
alliance." It might well be called a league, were it not so
predominantly military in its development thus far. It has far to go
before it could be rightly called a confederation.

THE U.S. CONFEDERATION WAS STRONGER THAN NATO

Since the Nixon-Rockefeller agreement calls for a North Atlantic
Confederation, let us now compare the existing structure of the North
Atlantic alliance with that of the Articles of Confederation. However
hazily the two authors of that agreement may have had the latter in
mind, this comparison will serve to show how greatly NATO can be
strengthened while remaining an association of sovereign states --
without crossing the Rubicon that separates confederation from a federal
union of sovereign citizens.

The NATO Council, like the United States Congress under the
Confederation, is composed of delegates named, paid and instructed by
each member nation's government, with each state having one vote,
regardless of the number of people in it. NATO, like the United States
then, has no executive organ but simply a figurehead president. He
serves one year and his name is as forgotten a year or so later as are
the names of all the "Presidents of the United States" who preceded
George Washington. But though the United States Congress was then only a
"diplomatic assembly," as John Adams contemptuously called it, the
Confederation it represented was far stronger than NATO structurally at
every significant point of comparison. Consider these nine points:

1. The Congress of the Confederation could act: the NATO Council can
only make recommendations to the member nations.

2. To make even these recommendations, NATO requires unanimity; the
Congress of the Confederation could act in a number of fields, by a
majority of seven of the Thirteen States, and in others, by a vote of
nine states.

3. The North Atlantic Treaty provides no judicial machinery whatever;
the Confederation not only established machinery for settling disputes
between states but authorized Congress to act as a court of "last
resort" by a majority of seven of the Thirteen States.

4. With the assent of only seven states Congress had the power of fixing
the standards of weights and measures throughout the Confederation,
regulating trade between the states, establishing and regulating postal
service "throughout all the United States," appointing "all officers of
the land forces, in the service of the United States, excepting
regimental officers" and commissioning all naval officers. NATO not only
has none of these powers but has never dared even to make
recommendations in any of these fields.

5. With the assent of only nine states, the Confederation could and did
make war and peace, enter into treaties and alliances, coin money and
regulate its value, fix the expenses "for the defense and welfare of the
United States," emit bills, borrow on the credit of the Confederation,
appropriate money, decide on the land and naval forces to be raised, and
the quota to be furnished by each state, and appoint the
commander-in-chief of the army and navy. NATO has no such powers, nor
has its Council dared to make recommendations in any of these fields
except as regards the total military forces to be assigned to NATO, and
the contributions to joint defense to be made by member nations. It is
not free to choose its commander-in-chief, but must accept, in practice,
an American nominated by Washington.

6. Congress could not only formulate foreign policy for the
Confederation but name diplomatic envoys to other states -- as Franklin
and Jefferson to France and Adams to London. NATO has never dreamed of
sending even its Secretary General -- although Paul Henri Spaak has
often been Premier and Foreign Minister of his own country -- to speak
for it in Moscow ... let alone think of naming an envoy to represent it
in any country, or formulating a NATO foreign policy toward the world.

7. No state without the consent of Congress could send or receive any
diplomatic envoy, or enter into any treaty alliance or confederation, or
engage in war unless invaded. In NATO no nations -- not even the Six
Nations who have established such "communities" as the Common Market
Coal and Steel Authority and Euratom -- dream of such a commitment.

8. In 1783, Virginia, the largest state in the Confederation, followed
the example of Connecticut and New York, and turned over to the
Confederation its much larger and stronger claims to the Northwest
Territory. The Confederation thereafter governed this huge area. In 1784
it decided that one square mile in each township of thirty-six in this
Territory should be reserved for the maintenance of public schools; and
by the Northwest Ordnance of 1787 it provided for the government of the
Territory and for its eventual division into states and their entry into
the Confederation on an equal basis with the Original Thirteen. Out of
this territory came the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and
Wisconsin -- after the Confederation had been transformed into the
present Federal Union.

None of the NATO nations has ever offered to turn over any of its
territory in Africa or elsewhere to the alliance; the latter has no
important joint possession of any kind to hold it together and make it
less dependent on its member nations. There has been increasing talk in
NATO of the need of a common policy for the building up of the
under-developed countries, but -- despite the fear of Communist
expansion there -- nothing has been done to meet this need. Even the
talk is timid, compared to the bold solution of this problem by the
Thirteen Confederated States.

9. Finally, the Confederation allowed the citizens of each state to move
freely in and out of all the others, and enjoy in each all the
privileges of its own citizens. This was done "the better to secure and
perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the
different states." NATO faces the same need, only more acutely, but it
has made no such provisions, nor has its Council yet recommended any
important step in this direction.

This may suffice to show what confederation meant from the start in
United States history, how primitive by comparison is the NATO
structure, and how far one can go in developing it into a confederation,
while still keeping it an association of sovereign states.

THE "SUPERSTATE" BOGY

Governor Rockefeller said that the confederations he had in mind
involved no "superstates." Yet if he proposed concretely to bring NATO
UP to the level of the Articles of Confederation in even one or two of
the above nine respects, the cry of "superstate" would doubtless be
raised. It was raised in the Senate against the League of Nations,
although that League, like NATO today, had none of these powers our
early "League of Friendship" enjoyed. But even the most benighted Member
of Congress would not think of calling that Confederation of ours with
all its powers a "superstate." He would be laughed out of Congress, for
that Confederation is indelibly associated in the American mind with
wretched weakness, not with strength.

This bogy, however, still has power to frighten American politicians.
They do not blanch at the ghosts of all the myriads who were slaughtered
in World War II because the League of Nations proved too weak. Nor do
they blanch at the certainty that far more millions will be slaughtered
sooner or later if NATO is not made strong enough to keep the peace. But
they do blanch at the word "superstate."

The Nixon-Rockefeller compact, happily, calls for a North Atlantic
Confederation "strong enough to meet modern problems and challenges." No
candidate for President, or for Senator or Congressman, and certainly no
statesman, could dare propose anything less -- openly call for some
solution which he admitted was "too weak" to do the job.

Both presidential candidates in 1960, and both parties agreed that NATO
is too weak, that it must be strengthened. The candidate who won the
White House -- and all those who won seats in the Senate and the House
-- thus have a strong moral commitment to the American people to unite
the North Atlantic peoples strongly enough to meet "modern problems and
challenges" -- to win for freedom without another world war or
depression.

The basic question, therefore, is this: Can this obligation be met by
converting NATO into a confederation -- or "community" or "partnership"
-- that is no stronger structurally than the Articles of Confederation
(to say nothing of something weaker)?

The answer is flatly but demonstrably, No. The proof is easy: Since so
strong a "superstate" as the American Confederation failed to meet the
problems and challenges of oxcart, sailing ship years, what American in
his senses can hope that a North Atlantic Confederation can meet those
of our rocket-atomic age? The highly advanced confederation of the
Thirteen States did not face Red Russia and Red China; it faced only
small tribes of Redskins, who were as divided among themselves as the
NATO "tribes" are today. The Thirteen American States were relatively
self-sufficing, with simple economies. Yet the fact is undeniable that
their super-superstate failed to meet even the problems of that day, and
has left its name as a symbol of feeble futility.

All of us Americans rightly honor our forefathers for scrapping that
Confederation promptly -- not in any gradual, evolutionary way -- before
it delivered them to anarchy, tyranny, war. We honor them for not
waiting long, as we have waited with NATO, before replacing it with a
revolutionary experiment. We revere Washington for calling on them at
the Federal Convention, to "raise a standard to which the wise and the
honest" could repair -- for leading them to take the "con" out of
confederation and create a system that was truly strong enough to meet
the challenge. We rightly honor him and them, because their answer --
federation of the free -- met the challenges of 1789, 1803, 1832 and
1861, and then of 1917, 1933, 1941, and offers now the one reasonable
hope of meeting today's and tomorrow's challenges.

The common sense conclusion is that we should waste no more billions of
taxpayer money and still more precious time on answers which failed to
meet even lesser tests; that we should try next the federal union
solution that has succeeded wherever it has been tested; that we should
skip the confederation stage now, as we should have skipped the alliance
stage in 1949. But when one draws this conclusion he is met by a
perennial argument, though it is put forward a little less dogmatically
now than formerly.

We heard this argument from 1939 to 1949 when we cited the example of
American history as a warning against wasting time, money and lives
trying to secure peace and freedom through a league system,
unsupplemented by an Atlantic Federal Union. After the United Nations
had to be supplemented with NATO, we heard the same objection when we
cited the American example as a warning that alliance would also fail,
and urged the Atlantic democracies to call a convention, as the Thirteen
did in 1787, to explore the possibilities offered by the federal
alternative. Now that NATO has proved inadequate, and confederation is
proposed in its place, the same objection is raised when we propose that
Atlantica skip making a costly experiment with this system that failed
the Thirteen States, and try now the method that worked so well for them
-- and all the other peoples who since have tried it.

This hardy perennial argument is that the comparison is not valid, that
conditions are too different for there to be any analogy; and especially
that it was much easier for the Thirteen to federate than it is for the
Atlantic nations to do so now.[2]

And so we are told that the nations around the North Atlantic are
separated by history, language, different political and economic
institutions and customs, the ocean and other barriers. The people of
the Thirteen States, the argument continues, had much more in common --
the same historical background, the same language, the same political
system, the same basic "New World" problems and psychology, the same
relatively simple economy, and they were all on the same continent, and
had never been in war with each other.

CONFEDERATION FAILED THEN -- IN THE BEST CONDITIONS

There is much that is obviously true in all this, and much that will not
stand investigation, either because it simply isn't so or omits the
other side of the picture.[3] Let us pause for a smile while we hear one
contemporary witness, the English traveler, Burnaby, who wrote after
visiting the colonies in 1760:

Fire and water are not more heterogeneous than the different colonies in
North America Nothing can exceed the jealousy which they possess in
regard to each other. The inhabitants of Pennsylvania and New York have
an inexhaustible source of animosity in their jealousy for the Jerseys.
Massachusetts Bay and Rhode Island are not less interested in that of
Connecticut. Even the limits and boundaries of each colony are a
constant source of litigation. In short, such is the difference of the
character, of manners, of religion, of interest in the different
colonies, that I think, if I am not wholly ignorant of the human mind,
were they left to themselves there would soon be a civil war from one
end of the continent to the other; while the Indians and negroes would,
with better reason, impatiently watch the opportunity of exterminating
them altogether.

The widespread belief that it was easy to federate the Thirteen States
is more plausible than informed. It remains true that they did have
certain advantages, but it is also true that they faced difficulties we
do not have today, and that we have advantages they lacked. When the
balance is struck some may still conclude that it was less difficult to
federate America then than Atlantica now. But this leaves their argument
confronted with this self-evident, unanswerable fact:

All the advantages that made federal union a workable solution for the
Thirteen States were equally enjoyed by the Confederation. Since their
highly developed type of confederation failed to work in these most
advantageous conditions, how can any practical statesmen hope that NATO
will prove adequate if only we convert it into a similar confederation
-- let alone a far weaker one?

Whether or not the difficulties facing federation then were less than
now, there can be no doubt that we now face far more formidable dangers.
It is no less certain that we live in a world that requires much swifter
political and economic adaptation to changing conditions as the price of
life, liberty and happiness, than did the people of the American
Confederation.

How then can any reasonable man believe that the practical and prudent
policy is to risk seeking salvation now in the confederation solution
that failed in more advantageous and safer conditions?

How can you agree that Washington was right in rejecting half-way
measures and in boldly raising "a standard to which the wise and the
honest" could repair, and then conclude that in our rocket-atomic day we
can wisely spare the time to try the experiment in confederation that
failed in more hopeful conditions, and at the slow-rising dawn of the
steam-electric world?

____

1. See July-August Freedom & Union for the full text of his proposal.

2. As if the question were one only of relative ease, and not primarily
one of relative necessity and advantage -- whether they required
federation to preserve their liberties and lives then in America more or
less than we do now in Atlantica.

3. See the description of the Thirteen States during their Confederation
by Tom Paine and Josiah Tucker in Chapter I of Union Now. See also the
powerful case that Prime Minister Michel Debre and Emmanuel Monick,
former Governor of the Banque de France, make that "Oceans Unite Men --
Land Divides Them," in the November 1959 Freedom & Union, and their
book, Peace by Oceanic Union (Demain La Paix, Plon, Paris), from which
this article was drawn. Land formed so much more of a barrier in 1787
than water that the delegates of South Carolina to the Federal
Convention found it easier, safer and faster to come to Philadelphia by
ship.

