CHAPTER 10

Union Now, the U.N. and World Government


The world must be made safe for democracy. --
Woodrow Wilson, April 2, 1917.

What of the United Nations? The establishment of this successor to the
League of Nations since Union Now appeared raises several questions.
Many assume that they must choose between the U.N. and Atlantic Union,
and some devotees of the former fear the establishment of the latter
must injure or destroy it. Ever since President Roosevelt first used the
term, United Nations, I have urged the establishment of both a Union of
the Free and a universal United Nations league in which the Union would
be a member. I have given priority to the former, as more important to
freedom and peace, but I have always seen the two supplementing each
other. As early as 1944 I said to the Resolutions Committee of the
Republican and Democratic national conventions:

I would readily grant that, as far as universal international
organization is concerned, the best we can hope for at this stage of
human development is the league system. So valuable do I hold such an
international organization, that from my experience at Geneva, I would
recommend a league with every nation in it rather than a more limited
league with "teeth," for its "teeth" would be illusory. But to have all
the national governments meeting regularly together would be a very real
blessing indeed.

There is no sense in not getting the good there is in such a league
simply because it is not good enough -- but I see no reason, either, in
putting all our hopes for peace in so weak a basket.

The mistaken idea that the U.N. and the proposed Atlantic Union are in
conflict is unfortunately held much more widely than the true view, that
they complete and strengthen each other. The belief that they are
competitive arises partly from the fact that they are based on opposite
principles though aiming at the same general objective.

The two are so different that it is easy to conclude they can no more
mix than can water and gasoline. But though an automobile would not work
if water were mixed with the gasoline, one can use the two together in
it very effectively by keeping each to its proper function, and being
careful never to pour gasoline in the radiator or water in the fuel
tank. Water would never give the motor the power it needs to run, nor
would gasoline keep it from over-heating. Similarly, the principles of
the U.N. can not provide the power that peace requires, but they can
provide a climate in which that power can function most effectively for
peace in present conditions.

THE U.N. CHARTER PERMITS ATLANTIC UNION

In so dangerous a world situation as the present one, surely only the
fanatical supporter of the U.N. would over-estimate its role in Korea,
Suez and the Congo to the point where he would want the Atlantic Pact
dissolved and all trust placed in the U.N. flag. More reasonable men
must concede that the great bulk of the power on which the U.N. must
depend to protect its members from aggression is centered in the North
Atlantic community, that it will be hard and slow enough to organize
this ungoverned community's power, and that it will be impossible to
organize a more effective force in time.

The reasonable must also agree that nothing could so endanger the U.N.
and its individual members from Latin America through Africa, the
Mideast, and Southern Asia than military defeat of the Atlantic
Alliance, or its economic collapse, or its moral and political
disintegration. The more the Atlantic community can unite its power, the
less it will be faced with inflation and the more others can obtain from
it the means they lack to raise their living standards and the greater
will be the protection the new, under-developed nations will enjoy
against both the military and the economic threats of Communism. This
would seem to reduce the issue to this: Is there anything in the Charter
to prevent these Atlantic peoples from transforming their alliance into
a federal government? The answer is, No. Nothing in the Charter prevents
any members from peacefully federating. There are not even the
restrictions on this that the Charter places on non-federal regional
associations or alliances. It does not so much as mention federal
unions. Supporters of the U.N. have generally hailed the steps toward
union taken by the Western European nations as helpful to it.

Unlike proposals to change the U.N. into a world government, Atlantic
Union would require no amendment of the Charter, nor involve any action
by the U.N. This proposal could not be vetoed by the Kremlin.

Formation of the Union need not affect the voting power of its members
in the U.N., except that the Union government would decide how all these
votes would be cast. The Union could follow the precedent that gave
three votes and plural representation to the Soviet Union. Since the
United States, the United Kingdom and France are specifically named in
the Charter as permanent members of the Security Council, this solution
would avoid the need of making even this change in the Charter. If the
Atlantic Union should prefer to follow instead the precedent of the
American Union which has but one representative and one vote, the Soviet
Union would no doubt quickly agree to this Charter amendment.

With nothing in the Charter to prevent Atlantic Union, is there danger
that its creation would cause other members of the U.N. to feel offended
or "excluded?" The formation of a union involves no more threat to
non-members than does an alliance, and no worse "exclusion." There are a
number of groupings of nations already, and none has seriously offended
those excluded.

The issue then boils finally down to this: Is an Atlantic Union
incompatible in any way with the Purposes and Principles of the
Charter.[1] Would it weaken them? The answer is again, No. Atlantic
Union is in harmony with them and would greatly strengthen them.

THE VETO AND U.N. POLICE FORCE

What of the veto, and a U.N. police force? The intrinsic importance of
the U.N. veto is much over-rated, as are also the votes in it. What
really counts in any league is not so much the way their delegates vote
as what the governments behind them do to carry out these votes. A
delegate's vote is even less binding than his signature to a treaty.
Americans should remember from President Wilson's experience that even a
Chief Executive's signature does not necessarily mean a treaty will be
ratified.

Even if every Great Power agreed to abolish the veto entirely in U.N.
proceedings, this "delayed veto" power -- which every sovereign nation,
large and small, still retains (in NATO as in the U.N. ) -- would remain
to frustrate action particularly when the Security Council sought to
enforce peace. As Geneva's experience in applying sanctions to Italy
indicated, it is easier to get sanctions voted than to get them applied.
There is no way to abolish the "delayed veto" short of full federation,
for the veto is inherent in national sovereignty.

"Suppose the United States should follow the short-sighted theorists who
would have it lead in pushing abolition of the U.N. veto to a showdown."
I wrote in 1948 in the Postwar edition of this book. "Suppose all the
non-Communist nations should stand with it when the break came. What
would be the result? The United States would be morally bound to
organize its non-Communist league on a non-veto basis where the United
States would have to supply most of the men, money and material for the
war with Russia that this would hasten -- but would have no legal
control over them. It might well find itself in a small minority.
Control over diplomatic and war policy would have passed not only out of
its hands but out of those of the experienced democracies, and into the
hands of the immature democracies who would form the majority. This
chaotic coalition would have to face the most centralized of
dictatorships. If the United States held to this policy, and did not
resort to the 'delayed veto,' it would simply be delivering itself, and
all the free, and all the world, to dictatorship."

Since 1948 all this has been made only the more valid by the number of
new members added to the U.N. and by other developments.

While the "delayed veto" remains, let alone the present U.N. veto, the
hopes placed in the establishment of an international police force or
disarmament must also be vain. And even if the veto difficulty could be
overcome, there would be the difficulty of actually forming from
sovereign nations a force effectively controlled by them all, yet
capable of overawing and overcoming any of their own national forces, or
any combination of these. If the international force were not capable of
this, what Great Power would trust it enough to disband its own means of
defense?

True, it is easy for any one to work out on paper a "quota force" or a
"weighted representation" that is satisfactory to its author But to get
sovereign nations to accept it means getting each to accept a fixed
ratio of its own power in relation to that of every other nation's.
There lies the rub, not only for the international police question but
for disarmament. To solve it proved much too tough a job for the Geneva
Disarmament Conference in 1932 -- and for all the meetings that have
followed. Apart from the problems of national pride and suspicion that
vex it, it requires bafflingly intricate calculations of the relative
importance, now and in future, of land power, sea power, air power,
atomic power, rocket power, industrial power and raw material power. The
nations are differently equipped with these various elements of power;
some are in course of rapid development and others in course of decline.
It is significant that the only example of a quota or ratio in power
that was actually agreed on by sovereign nations was confined to the
simplest arm to measure and control, the navy. Even there it could not
be extended to all types of warships, and proved at Pearl Harbor to be
anything but a contribution to peace.

Grant that those who hope to make the U.N. work by equipping it with an
international force, or limiting national armaments, find some way to
overcome all these obstacles. They would still face the basic obstacles
to league coercion of sovereign states set forth in Chapter IV and
section 3 of Chapter VII of Union Now. The patchers still are with us,
but patching still won't do.

UNION NOW AND WORLD GOVERNMENT

Union Now devoted to world government only one chapter -- but it was
entitled, "Public Problem No. 1." Many have jumped to the utterly wrong
conclusion that I believe, or believed, that a universal world
government could or should be formed at once. I meant that the problem
as a whole was urgent -- not that it could be solved in one stroke, or
that a universal organization should be the first step.

My reasoning was simply this: The development of machines and science is
driving the world relentlessly closer and closer together. This
increasingly requires us to solve the problem of organizing the world
for freedom and peace.

It was obvious to me that current solutions in the 1930s must inevitably
plunge mankind into a worse World War. To avert this imminent danger, a
sound plan for governing our world had to be devised at once. It was in
this sense that I meant that world government was "Public Problem No.
1." I still believe it is -- but only in this sense.

The war Union Now sought to avert did prove to be far worse than World
War I -- but happily did not throw us back into Dark Ages, as it might
have done. Instead, it resulted in accelerating the development of
science, technology and the speed of change. One must pause in awe at
the astounding vitality of man and of the civilization which freedom has
developed. Despite the devastation, production and standards of living
almost everywhere are higher now than before the war -- even in England,
Japan, Italy, France, Germany and Russia which suffered the worst
destruction. And despite the millions killed, the world's population has
increased so fast -- thanks again to science and technology -- and is
rising so rapidly that it is likened to an "explosion" and feared now by
many more than war itself.

The problem of governing the world that was No. 1 in 1939 remains only
more urgently No. 1 in our dawning rocket atomic age. This is not yet
evident to some Congressmen who vote billions for the exploration of
Space, while forgetting that they cannot bring the moon within reach
without developing machines that must also bring Europe and the rest of
the world far closer than they already are. But this fact has impressed
others so much that they not only rate this problem as No. 1 but center
their attention on the universalist approach to it. Even in 1939 the
prevailing logic was that since the problem was world-wide the solution
must embrace all, or nearly all, the nations from the start.

The more practical members of this school have always recognized that
the greater the number of nations organized, the lesser must be the ties
that bind them, and therefore a solution that begins with a world-wide
organization must necessarily be very rudimentary, much too weak to cope
either with war or depression. It can at best contain only the germ of a
world government. The hope is that this germ gradually will grow strong
enough to do the job. That was the hope behind the first such solution,
the League of Nations. It is the hope behind the United Nations now. And
the same approach animates most of those who would transform it into a
"world government" in some one respect, as by abolishing the veto, or
giving it an "international police force," or control of weapons of mass
destruction.

The Union Now solution has always been just the opposite. It recognized
world government only as an eventual, ultimate goal. It proposed to
solve the problem by (a) rejecting universality at the start and
beginning with only the few Atlantic democracies that could be united in
a full, free federal union, and (b) counting on this nucleus to grow in
numbers by gradually extending its federal relationship to others.
Though few in numbers, these Atlantic peoples had -- and still have --
together so great a share of the world's moral material and military
power that by federating it fully they could -- and can -- avert current
dangers of war, depression and dictatorship from the start -- a hope
that no universalist solution can give -- and gain enough time and
experience for the nucleus to grow peacefully in numbers.

FREEDOM'S ANSWER TO THIS WORLD PROBLEM

Union Now was, and is, proposed as freedom's answer to this world
problem. Dictatorship already in 1939 had its plans for world
government; the universalists who put peace first had theirs in the
League of Nations -- but those who put freedom first had no world plan
in 1939. The Nazi plan was then the most aggressive, but the Communist
blueprint was already much more carefully worked out, and much wider in
its actual and potential appeal. Since the destruction of its Nazi
rival, the Communist plan for a world government has grown far more
formidable than Hitler's ever was. The Union Now plan differs
diametrically from both not only in seeking to make sure that the world
shall be governed by the principles of individual freedom, but in two
other important respects. Whereas dictatorship seeks to advance its plan
by exploiting hate, prejudice, the mob mind, Union Now has directed its
appeal to reason, common sense, -- to the open mind of the individual
and to such emotions as may sway him when alone with his conscience. And
whereas dictatorship seeks to build its world government by subversion,
violence and war, the Union Now program has always confined itself to
the democratic methods of full free and open discussion and agreement at
every stage in the long process, from beginning to end.

The Union Now approach to world government is so centered on freedom and
its Atlantic nucleus that believers in the universalist approach have
long criticized it as "exclusive," "dividing the world into two camps,"
and so on. It has been attacked as a universalist "world government
scheme" only by American isolationists or nationalists (few of whom
could have read it) and by Communists, here and abroad.

Within the Federal Union organization I long had to battle continually
with those who sought to change its accent from Union of the Free to
world government or the United Nations. By 1945[2] practically all these
universalists had withdrawn either to the United Nations Association or
to the United World Federalists.

When the atomic bomb added "nuclear physics" to the jargon of science,
it ironically blew many nuclear scientists -- and a surprising number of
nuclear unionists and "practical" politicians -- into the camp of the
universal "world governmenters." In the days of the Acheson Plan and the
Baruch offers to Soviet Russia, when there was far stronger support of
the United World Federalists than now, I re-examined the universalist
approach carefully. I gave my reasons for rejecting it in the 1949
Postwar Edition of Union Now, listing "ten fallacies in the universalist
approach" to world government which confirmed me in the view that it was
untenable. Events since then have made this so clear to the great
majority that there seems no need to make the case again here.[3]

____

1. See Atlantic Union and the United Nations by the author. This
reprint, available from Freedom & Union for $0.20, compares in parallel
columns the effect of Atlantic Union on each of the "Purposes and
Principles" of the Charter.

2. Since 1945 there has been no controversy on this issue within
the Federal Union association, which has steadily and increasingly
kept its accent on Atlantic Union.

3. I would refer those who are still in doubt to pages 259-262 of the
Postwar Edition. A reprint of these pages is available free from Freedom
& Union.

