International Order and Economic Integration

II THE NATION AND THE COMMUNITY OF NATIONS

MACHIAVELLISM AND REALISM

In actual fact what can all the international treaties and all the appeals to the nations to restrict their sovereignties in the higher interests of an international order avail if the conviction prevails that treaties need only be adhered to as long as appears profitable? That states can live according to their own code of laws, which is beyond good and evil? That politics turn only on the conception of friend and foe and are subject to a different set of morals than obtain between individuals? That the sacrosanct egoism of the nation justifies falsehood, breach of contract and force.

These are the convictions which are meant in speaking of Machiavellism, leaving aside the question of whether this is not being unjust to the great Florentine 1). Four hundred years of criticism have, however, so brought this term into disrepute that only the opponents of the theory of unscrupulous statecraft make use of it, while the disciples of such prefer other expressions. Power-politics, reasons of state, realist politics – all these expressions need not necessarily involve Machiavellism in its most absolute and brutal form, but even in weak dilutions the pungent essence can still be distinguished. Even when the doctrine of Machiavellism confronts us under the cloak of scientific positivism and tries to prove to us that the behaviour of states is determined by objective factors, such as ‘constant historical values’, ‘lines of geographical force’ or ‘economic laws’, we must not let that deter us. And the real geographical romanticism which becomes inebriated over an atlas in the same way as historical romanticism over a mediaeval chronicle, exudes the same strong odour of Machiavellism, mingles with the perfume of scientific positivism.

Europe would not have become a charnel house and a heap of smoking ruins if these doctrines had not during the last century gained an ever stronger hold over people’s minds and an increasingly unrestrained influence over foreign politics. The history of this development of modern Machiavellism has still to be written. This is not the place for it, but a few remarks are unavoidable.

As apparent to all today as is the destruction which this doctrine of a double-barrelled morality has brought about, so indubitable is it that no international order of any kind will be possible in the future unless the confusion of moral ideas is abolished which this doctrine has created. Just as any human relations are impossible if falsehood, force and breach of contract are made maxims of conduct, so must a policy which undermines confidence between governments by such maxims make any international understanding or agreement worthless, and inevitably lead to war. It replaces international law by the law of the jungle.

Machiavellism like every other form of cynicism is presented to us with an expression of pitying superiority for those who have still retained their childish faith and who in their innocence do not yet know what is going on behind the scenes, whereas this alleged superiority is in reality nothing but callowness and superficiality. Because the expression ‘realist politics’ is used we are given to understand that in regarding it as dangerous we are shutting our eyes to reality. The grim humour of this is not recognized, namely that these realist politicians reveal their lack of reality, before their fatal results even become apparent, by ignoring the decisive reality of moral forces. The advocates of this doctrine also have another trait in common with all cynical disillusioners in that they regard all statesmen who declare themselves their opponents as hypocrites who are only out to deceive others.

Alone the fact that the relationship of politics to morals is one of the oldest problems of civilized man gives some idea of the extent and difficulty of the questions to be discussed here. It is all the more important that we should not lose our way among them, but pick out certain decisive points.

In the first place it may be said that modern Machiavellism cannot lay claim to the fact that it is only recommending a practice which is as old as political history itself. It is true that we meet with Machiavellism in practice on almost every page of world history, but that this practice should be recommended is something new. Falsehood, force and breach of contract have always existed, but one should realize very clearly the mighty difference it makes whether this happens with a bad conscience and while basically acknowledging the moral principles which are being abused, or with an impudent grin. When occasional practice is converted into a philosophy the axe is indeed laid to the root of any international community, and this is the novelty which the last centuries have introduced. It should be said further that were Machiavellism as old a doctrine as it is a practice it might still be asked whether there were no hope of ever conquering it, and whether humanity today had not reached a degree of mutual dependence which for the first time in history makes this conquest an absolute necessity.

The second essential point is that Machiavellism is not only bad morals but even bad politics. The famous comment of Boulay (wrongly ascribed to Talleyrand) on the execution of the Due d’Enghien (1804), also applies here, ‘C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute’. The only thing which is supposed to justify it is just that which is denied to it in the long run, namely success. In the end it leaves behind it a heap of ruins which makes one want to shout ‘to be thieves and murderers for this!’ If all the same it is always tried out by political adventurers this is because final failure is always preceded by brillant success at the beginning. To be a machiavellist is to bet against time, and this is a bet which is certain to incite gamblers, just as certain as that they must lose in the end. It is the pact with the devil as described in the legend: Satan, after giving him all the splendours of the world, comes in the end to fetch the soul destined for damnation. It may not happen for a long time, but what is left of the great kingdoms which were built up by force and falsehood? One might well advise machiavellists to recollect the saying of an eminent and noble thinker of pre-Bismarkian Germany, ‘The realist in politics is right for a moment, ideas are a matter of eras’ (F. A. Lange in ‘Die Arbeitsfrage’, which appeared in 1865). Even if one is less confident about the final victory of ideas there can be no doubt about the other, the realist in politics is wrong in the end. If he were not, human society would have been impossible from the beginning.

This links up with the third point, that Machiavellism is one of those things which have a meaning only as long as they enjoy the monopoly of the trade secret of their origin, which monopoly they are bound to lose sooner or later. Falsehood and force can only succeed as long as there are enough people who assume that truth and a peaceable disposition are the maxims of human relations. As soon as the machiavellist is seen through no one believes a word he says, be it true or untrue. He therefore must wish that all the other people should embrace collectively a code of morals directly the opposite of his own, which therefore proves that his are completely unsuitable as a principle of statecraft. But the very fact that he pursues a machiavellist policy makes the fulfillment of his wishes impossible. The others have no need to become machiavellists, they only need be on their guard against Machiavellism to deprive him of his success. If everyone became a machiavellist, however, we should find ourselves in a state of war of all against all, which would be the end of both human society and all social philosophy. Voltaire probably had something similar in mind when, referring to the royal author of ‘Antimachiavellism’, he said, ‘II crache au plat pour en dégoûter les autres’.

Machiavellism – and here we come to the last and decisive point – proves its unsuccessfulness on a higher plane when we seek to discover the political aims that it is to promote. Machiavellism thinks only of wealth, power or fame, and forgets that the intrinsic value of justice is higher than these external gains. A state which squanders this treasure misses its highest aim; in the words of St. Augustine it is nothing more than a great band of robbers (magnum latrocinium). A policy which makes the abuse of justice a basic principle is irreconcilably opposed to the common weal in the highest and final sense. This is, however, true of all degrees of Machiavellism.

This by no means covers everything of importance which is to be said on this difficult subject. Above all one aspect remains to be considered, which after the end of the second world war became increasingly significant. To put it shortly it is a question of confronting Machiavellism as a philosophy of political amorality with another set of ideas which in their upshot are possibly no less pernicious: with moralistic illusionism, easily kindled idealism and impracticable optimism, which fail to recognize the tough game of international politics. Since a policy which permits itself to be overinfluenced by such optimistic and illusionist ideas generally meets with cruel disappointments, there is a danger that those who find themselves fooled in this way, wrathfully determined not to be tricked a second time and fall victim to their own high-flown ideas, may fly to the other extreme and join the ranks of the ‘realists’ and machiavellists.

The history of international politics since the end of the first world war does indeed justify our decrying dillettant ‘idealism’, impracticable optimism and moralistic doctrinarianism in this field. They have resulted in modern wars becoming passionate crusades and stern punitive expeditions; conclusions of peace deteriorating into moral judgements, and, in the name of justice and democracy, highflown principles (such, for example, as ‘the right of self-determination of the peoples’), resulting in so upsetting the sensitive political equilibrium that bad has turned to worse. Those were not far wrong who contrasted the wisdom of the Congress of Vienna with the madness of modern peace conferences, the benefits of a compromise with the disasters of inflexible doctrinarianism (as expressed, for example, in the demand for ‘unconditional surrender’ of the Axis powers); the discretion of secret diplomacy with its sober negotiations which are free from the pressure exerted by whipped up mass emotions with the ‘open diplomacy’ of conferences which turn to demagogic displays. Not without reason has sharp criticism been expressed that the principle of the balance of power, which is no longer understood today, has been all too quickly sacrificed in favour of the all too legalist set-up of universal organizations. The truth of the saying has been experienced that the wars of the peoples are worse than the wars of the kings. We have learnt that the international ‘anarchy’ of the past, which has been rightly condemned, did all the same have its limits in the prevailing system of international justice, in an unwritten code of behaviour and in a chivalry which perished in the hecatombs of the first world war. Today we make the depressing discovery that not only has the anarchy remained, but that it is worse than before, while international justice, manners and chivalry have disappeared.

It is understandable that the horrors of the last war, for which a daemonic political dilettante, eaten up with fanaticism, together with his accomplices and by means of the flood of ideology which he released, alone bore the responsibility as seldom before any individual in history, evoked the desire to punish all ‘war criminals’ in the name of outraged morals. People sobered down, however, when it became evident that the definition of a ‘war criminal’ includes being defeated, and that only the victors ever take their place on the judgement seat, not omitting the representatives of a victorious power which is well able to hold its own with the conquered as regards cruelty and ruthlessness. And a generation which has discovered what questionable things can take place even in the name of a crusade for humanity, international morals and democracy, may be excused if in future it mistrusts all the big talk, if behind every appeal to the ideals of international politics it suspects hidden intentions and propaganda and if it reflects before accepting as adequate an unequivocal distinction between absolute bad and absolute good in this field. Everything absolute, doctrinaire and emotional then becomes suspect, and accordingly every belief in the possibility of complete and comprehensive solutions, in the dawn of a ‘new age’, in big programmes and projects.

The present generation cannot be blamed for being extremely susceptible on this and similar subjects, in fact almost all over the western world today young people above all are moved by a spirit of chilly disillusionment. Who would deny that this is not only understandable but that it has its uses? It is by no means undesirable that people should become more sober and reserved, and, in the light of our merciless age, learn to consider and weigh with new understanding the methods, principles and results, as well as the leaders of international politics of the past. It is to be hoped that the reader of this book will also discover in it no small measure of this spirit of reserved and sober retrospection; illusionism has been sufficiently criticised in the foregoing pages. A dash of conservative thinking on this subject is a good counterweight to the dangerous overstatements of dilettantish or even doublefaced ‘idealism’ or ‘progressivism’, and a better knowledge of history never did any harm.

But it would be fatal to go from one extreme to the other. In making due concessions to a new realism in international politics, we should bear in mind that these must stop where a re-estimation of the past tends to relapse into the ‘realist politics’ of a machiavellian nature against which we have warned our readers. Sobriety, honesty, avoidance of phrase-making, a sense of reality, understanding of ‘politics’ as the sphere of compromise, a delicate investigation of the possibilities of a situation which should as far as possible be kept free from passion and vague emotions; respect for the lessons of history and the laws of organic growth; a serious endeavour to come to terms with the extraordinary complications of international life and a distrust of oversimplification, disassociation from every form of dilettantism with its good intentions and bad results – all this is excellent. Talleyrand, one of those masters of old diplomacy who cut such a poor figure in the text books, but who in our times has been justly recognized as a classical model of international politics, had just this in mind when he advised young diplomats, ‘Surtout, pas trop de zèle’. And Proudhon later expressed it more strongly, ‘Je ne connais pas de mouvement qui, né dans l’enthousiasme, ne se toit terminé dans l’imbécillité’. But from realism of this kind it is only a short step to cynicism, opportunism, nihilism and Machiavellism. And we should beware of this step, once again having in mind the master Talleyrand, who professed his faith in the classical principle of Montesquieu, ‘Le droit des gens est naturellement fondé sur ce principe, que les diverses nations doivent se faire dans la paix le plus de bien, et dans la guerre le moins de mal qu’il est possible’.

We should eschew empty phrases as we do impudent grins. In international politics there are final values and principles which to ignore would be to commit a betrayal which turns all so-called political success to dust – namely the precepts of humanity, truth and justice. We must drop phrases and, in a sober and humble spirit, honour these sovereign precepts with more honesty and conviction.

This attitude of mind will also help to preserve us from the error into which we might be tempted to fall if in disillusionment we turn back to the old style of international politics with its realism, its alliances, its compromises and makeshifts and its appeal to the stronger battalions, on whose side, according to the cynical words of Frederick the Great, God is to be found. Although we are not wrong in thinking that this old style was not quite so bad as we had assumed after 1914, after Wilson and the League of Nations, we should not forget that it did indeed end in the terrible catastrophe which divided two eras of world history.

With all due respect to Metternich and the Congress of Vienna, world history has, in the meantime, owing to the enormous development of the technique of destruction and the inalterable material interdependence of all nations, reached a point where the methods of the old international order no longer suffice and new and more comprehensive forms of international order must be found. This task is not so simple as was assumed in the days of jubilant enthusiasm and we have learnt how wrong we were to forget or to despise the experience of the past and much of the wisdom of the old diplomacy. But it is in the interests of the task with which we are faced today if, in a modest and openminded spirit, we compare our mistakes and failures with the honourable achievements of the past.

This leads to another consideration which recent developments make particularly appropriate. While, despite the revival of realism we definitely reject Machiavellism in every shape and form, we must, under present-day conditions, be particularly on our guard against an optimism, an illusionism and a moral simplicity which can only be of benefit to the threat to world peace presented by the extreme Machiavellism of the communist imperium of Russia. This brings us back to the remarks made earlier on a pacifism, which, preached today at the wrong time and in the wrong place, is only qualified to further the plans for war and conquest of the new aggressor.

It has always been difficult to understand how it was possible during the last decade that the slogan of ‘one world’ which is so at defiance with reality could take such hold of the popular mind, and, in view of the manifest incompatibility of the western and the communist worlds, a world government and the like could ever have been dreamt of, how the Statute of the United Nations could ever have been based on this fiction, and how, relying on the disarming effect of a genuine will to peace, the communist imperium could ever have been granted a position of power which has made a third world war a horrifying possibility. Today it sounds like a bad joke when one remembers how in 1942 one of the architects of this policy of illusion, Henry Wallace, who at that time was Vice-President of the United States, with unbounded guilelessness explained in a public speech that he had told the Russians, ‘The object of this war is to make sure that everybody in the world has the privilege of drinking a quart of milk a day’. The decent honest fool and the most cunning machiavellists in history – the historians of our times could wish for no more cruel contrast to prove that, to reverse the words of Mephistopheles, the pure and open heart is just ‘part of the power that would, still do good but still does evil’ (Faust I).

Not all such fools are so open and honest as this American in penitently acknowledging their mistakes today, and it would seem that even he does not recognize that the actual cause of his error was ‘social progressivism’, which I think I have discussed adequately in my book ‘Maß und Mitte’. When such fools – who in Europe display terrifying obstinacy – appeal in their inexcusable guilelessness to Christianity, they should recall Martin Luther, who in the ninety-second of his famous Theses declares, ‘Away with all the prophets who say to the people of Christ ‘peace, peace’, and there is no peace’.

The debt which communistic Machiavellism owes to this foolish illusionism is in truth enormous and unfortunately is growing from day to day. This innocence in the face of the blackest cunning is the most alarming example of the fact that there is a moralizing way of judging international politics, a way which is neither moral nor intelligent, the fateful upshot of which is that it furthers Machiavellism and its threats to peace. Such unenlightened innocence, in which reason is choked by emotion, such irresponsible ingenuousness, is a mere unsuspecting willingness to become a pawn in the game of an unscrupulous reckoner. The admonition that we are all sinners, otherwise so worthy of observance, becomes here, in the face of open evil, nothing but condemnable tepidity. Our rejection of Machiavellism must not be mislead us into evading the brave and honourable decision, which a sense of responsibility imposes upon us, to oppose a satanic policy with all our force and to expose its deceit and inhumanity. Not to do this would be immoral and unchristian.

We cannot dismiss this subject without, in conclusion, saying a few words about the Great Men of history2). Who are they? In what way were they great? Where does the dangerous idolatry begin which the nations and the ages carry on with these figures? By what methods is the popular vote cast over the centuries which awards the title of ‘Great?’ How is it that to some it sticks so closely, so that we cannot imagine an Alexander or a Charlemagne without this title, whereas with others we hesitate as to whether or not they deserve this lasting reverence, and in the case of others again find the title presumptious? A list of figures in world history who have been awarded the title of ‘great’, and an examination of the circumstances which in each individual case contributed to the bestowal of this temporal canonisation, would be interesting. Among other things it would reveal that only one scholar (Albertus Magnus) and only one hierarch (Gregory I) is to be found among them, and not a single discoverer or artist, while for the most part the list consists of famous rulers, always to be imagined as mounted on horseback with the haughty look of a Colleoni. And perhaps it is worth while reflecting that no new awards have been made for the last century and a half. The last one to succeed in carrying off the title of ‘Great’ was King Frederick II of Prussia.

Can it be that the popular idea of the Great Men of history contains a goodly portion of masochistic adoration of power, perhaps indeed a slight disturbing readiness to convert the shivers of horror and fear of the scourge of a national leader into feelings of worshipful submission and pleasureable admiration, and to enjoy the Great Men as heroic figures in the panorama of world history? Does not the danger increase the more the figures are recast by popular imagination into mythical characters – Barbarossa, Henry V of England (who, in spite of Shakespeare, was a cruel executioner), or Fredericus, so that they become part of the pattern of the brightly-coloured carpet which every nation tries to weave out of its own history? Although such queries are healthy and useful, and the suggested suspicions are justified, there is no doubt on the other hand that the political power which arouses our suspicions of the Great Men of history is that which made them characters of outstanding quality and force, to deny or belittle the importance of which would be to disembowel history of its meaning. There is a particular and deep-seated reason for the fact that history is to a large extent the history of international conflicts, in which the conception of power is a force which cannot be ignored. We do not doubt that Alexander and Charlemagne will always be termed Great because in their case the will of a single man was able to seize upon the right moment to divert the course of history with such immeasureable results that they continue to affect us all down to the present day, without, as we see it, there being any reason to consider their greatness seriously overshadowed by reprehensible actions.

Certain it is that among the Great Men in political history there are few rulers who, like Louis IX, also deserve the title of Saint. But even in this field, where it is almost impossible to be a saint, it is at least possible to be a really great man. If only it were not so difficult, more difficult than in any other sphere of human activity, to distinguish the great men of history from the false or the dubious ones, the nobility from the crook, the criminal on a colossal scale from the political master-builder, legitimate quality from ‘The abuse of greatness . . . when it disjoins remorse from power’. Above, lonely as the stars and of such mysterious rareness as the prime numbers of higher arithmetical quantities, stand the few saints and sages among the mighty ones, Asoka, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Louis, perhaps Alfred. But below these, on the level of earthly passions, the real great names of history deserve to be differentiated from the bringers of ruin, the self-idolatrists, the madmen, the Scourges of God and daemons of the nations. What the title is worth – whether clean or stained, whether convincing or dubious – is a question which can be debated the longer and the more indecisively the smaller the human figure is who has emerged as an instrument in history and the further away the century is which separates us from him.

This discussion will never end. But just as history as a whole appears in a different light in different ages, so are there certain periods when there is a particular reason or urge to re-examine the historical lists of honour. As in the 18th century, we are disposed to extreme scepticism and not inclined to look favourably upon what we consider an uncritical cult of greatness. The decisive factor here is probably the experience we have had with power in its most terrible form. We who know what tyrants and despots are, and what lies behind the glory of their ‘historical missions’, are bitterly determined to test the diplomas issued by historians or tradition with the accuracy of a criminal investigator, and are only prepared to accord reluctant recognition in exceptional cases.

We should however recognize that we are in danger of going too far and of regarding almost all the great figures of the past as no better than a Hitler or a Stalin. More urgently than ever before are we faced today with the task of defining and limiting historical greatness, perhaps most urgently in a country like Germany, which has produced a Hitler. In the midst of the terrible catastrophe which he has left behind him, a new outlook upon history must be found which, while condemning this man and his machiavellist policy, and criticising the historical stages which led up to it, loyally acclaims the more noble aspects of national tradition, to which a nation whose self-confidence has been so shaken will cling all the more closely.

NATION, SOVEREIGNTY AND A COMMUNITY OF NATIONS

After these necessary reflections on the final ethical questions of international order, we may sum up all the foregoing considerations by saying that humanity has now finally reached the point where unless future development succeeds in extending beyond the conception of the nation which has been regarded up to now as the final and highest form of social organization, the resulting punishment will be the downfall of our civilization3). What shape this organization must take if it is to be healthy, permanent and conformable to the principles of our civilization, will be primarily determined by its relation to national organization. Is this to disappear altogether? If not, to what extent should national sovereignty be limited, and how should an international community of nations be constructed which is to take the lead over nations restricted in their sovereignty? What kind of national consciousness – one of the strongest collective feelings which the 19th century taught us to take into account – will be considered possible as a prerequisite?

It is obvious that these questions all circle round the final point as to the place the nation and the national state are to occupy in the feelings and in the political organization of mankind in the future, and this suggests to us to examine without prejudice conceptions which have become second nature with us. The very fact, however, that only in the course of the last century have the nation and the national state become so important – taking due account of the differences between one country and another, above all between large and small states, – should make such a radical revision easier for us, and raises the question whether something which is of such recent origin could not make room for new formative forces. Surely the catastrophe of thirty years of world warfare which this paroxysm of national collective feeling brought upon us is the strongest proof we could have of the total madness in which this highly unhealthy trend has ended.

In order to clarify the task we have to fulfil it would be well first of all to formulate the dilemma in which we find ourselves. On the one hand we are all agreed that a supra-national organization is a necessity. On the other hand most of us would agree that the idea of an international organization which would degrade the individual nations to mere administrative areas is still more insufferable than the previous side-by-side existence of sovereign nations. We want neither latent or open anarchy of nations which are not subject to any binding and incontestable law, nor a Civitas Maxima of a continental or global nature. What we obviously wish is that due consideration should be given both to the individual life of the nation as well as to an international community. Neither should proliferate at the expense of the other; there should be a balance between them.

The same dilemma recurs at the next lowest level, however, when we consider the relations between the nation and its geographical sub-divisions. Here too neither the one nor the other is desirable, neither a centralized national state which degrades the smaller units to mere administrative districts, nor a luxuriating local egoism which we call Particularism. The ideal condition appears to us to be a balance between the dividing and the uniting forces. The growing clarity with which the people of today view this problem – especially in the highly centralized states – runs parallel with a corresponding realization in the international field. In both cases we are entirely in agreement that immeasurable damage results when one form of organization overbears another. Whether we are discussing the reform of the individual state or that of international interrelations, in both cases an overgrowth of the nation must be viewed with dismay, the only difference being that in the first case we deplore the detriment to the superordinate community and in the second to the subordinate one. Criticism in both cases concentrates upon the hypertrophy of nationalism, attacked in the one case from below, in the other from above.

The same ideas may be expressed by saying that the nation in its political organization is partly too large and partly too small. Too large for the evolution of genuinely free and neighbourly communal life and for true and permanent integration, which is able to exist without degenerating into nationalistic self-intoxication of mass-consciousness. Too small for those intellectual, political and economic relations which today can only flourish satisfactorily in an international community.

All that this amounts to is that nationalism (especially in the large centralized states), considered the greatest and most triumphant achievement of the 19th century, has reached a crisis which today affects us very deeply indeed. This is what we are discussing whether we speak of a new national or a new international order. In both cases there is only one solution we can suggest: Federalism. A federal structure permits of the weight of political power being so split up between the smaller and larger units within the state and in the relations between the states, that in each case only such tasks fall to the larger units as have proved too universal for the smaller. This structure preserves the individual rights of each member unit, without endangering the necessary combination in the respective overall associations.

This solution is so convincing that nothing remains to be added here to all that has been said about it from various sides in recent years. But the enormous difficulties should not be overlooked which stand in its way. Both in the case of national as well as of international federation these difficulties arise from the fact that it is the ascendancy of the national state which has to be reduced. We should realize the very great strength of the forces which impel the national state to hold its ground both against local autonomy within the country itself, as well as against a supra-national unification over its head, in the one case by means of the appeal to centralization, in the other to separation. What the national state is unwilling to grant to its member units, namely the autonomy which is their due, does it strive all the more obstinately to fight for on its own account. We should not be federalists if we did not accord our fullest sympathy to the last-named efforts, but at the same time we should not be champions of international federalism if our sympathy did not draw the line before the necessity of a supra-national community. Our ideal is that of a constant state of balance, in which the relations of the member units to the nation as a whole are similar to those of the nation to the supra-national organization.

A centrally-organized large state, however intense its internal crisis may be and however strong the forces of opposition within itself are, still presents a counterweight to all efforts towards international federation which will certainly not be easy to remove. The task is therefore a difficult one. It could probably be tackled more easily if international federation were undertaken at the same time as a reorganization of the centralized states on a federal basis, just as, vice versa, the second process would be helped by the first. The education in mutual respect for individual rights within the state which federalism effects would also have beneficent results in international relations and would further the same liberal outlook as we find today in the few really federal states such as Switzerland.

It is very certain that so close a union as international federation constitutes will require such a high degree of mental and moral integration between the nations that it would be an empty ambition to begin with too vast plans. The impatient motto of all or nothing might jeopardize the whole business. We must also consider between which states an adequate degree of integration might already be expected. The question of concrete geographical groupings which might be taken into account can not be discussed in detail here.

In what follows we shall concentrate upon the main task: the setting up of a European community.

EUROPE AS A COMMUNITY

We shall begin with a general consideration. Every age is dominated by certain slogans which sway discussion and also influence thought, even when they are not directly expressed. They characterize the ideals of a generation, which possess such directive force for the very reason that they are nourished from deep-seated sources of devotion, feeling and political intent which can neither be explained nor destroyed by reason. Their domination is as inescapable as is the fashion in clothes or the way of life which modern engineering has created. It will always be a moot point whether it is men who make history or anonymous forces of the masses, but one thing is certain, whoever makes history does it through the leading ideas of the time – with them and not against them. The mysterious course of history can only be really understood if the coming and going of these main leading ideas is followed.

Even the analyst, who, like the author, feels mainly qualified to examine economic questions and, equipped with this legitimation, embarks on a sober and critical investigation of the possibilities of an economic union of Europe (as will be given in the course of this book), will first reconnoitre the wide field he then enters and with certain hesitation will ask himself whether ‘Europe’ is so indubitably one of the great leading ideas of our age, as the noisy and confusing activity in this field appears to prove. Before speaking as an economist he will wish to prove to his own satisfaction how strong the magnetic forces are which operate here and what intrinsic worth he himself is prepared to accord them. He will begin by acknowledging that the economic unity of Europe can only exist as a part of general unity and that this general unity of Europe is more important than the specifically economic one. He will wish to protect himself from being suspected of blindness to a greater ideal, which perhaps cannot be restrained by any fetters of economic reason, and which his age passionately affirms.

We must therefore begin by asking whether ‘Europe’ is in sober truth one of the greatest and truest leading motives of our age. The mightly display of rhetoric and literature will make us as sceptic on this point as the succession of conferences, commissions and proclamations which claim to further the idea, but which up to now have brought its achievement scarcely one single step nearer. It is difficult to discover a genuine and strong historical force in a movement in which such readiness to self-deceit, wordiness and disregard both of political realities and logical ideas are to be found. If we recollect the saying of Talleyrand already quoted – a very European saying – and because we have learnt to mistrust deeply any effusiveness in politics, we shall be inclined to doubt whether an idea which suffers from such an obvious prevalence of overheated emotions over cool reason can ever prove to have any staying power. We might perhaps have less scruples if, in addition, it were not very often a question of feelings which are by no means of an elemental and original nature, such as love of one’s country and the brotherliness which springs from true fellowship, but rather one of lifeless conceptions drawn from literature and rhetoric, such as thrive best in the conditioned air of conferences. The fact, moreover, that so many politicians and intellectuals maintain themselves spiritually and materially in this way, does not dispose us more favourably towards it.

After saying all this with blunt honesty, however, the same honesty forces us to admit that even the worst we can say about the slogan of ‘Europe’ and the movement which rallies under this flag, cannot destroy the conviction that it is indeed one of the leading ideas of our age and one of historical force and urgency. ‘Europe’ is more than literature, catchwords, rhetoric and an empty excuse for congresses. Not unlike the national unity of the 19th century, continental unity has become a longing which must find fulfilment in a suitable and reasonable form, and perhaps its greatest significance is in overcoming the tendency towards national centralization which is so characteristic for the past. The centralized state has, indeed, doubly proved its insufficiency as already stated: being too large and amorphous to permit the growth of such true fellowship as can only thrive in smaller political units, and being too small and narrow for the great tasks of our age, which can no longer be solved even on the national level. We know already that the only answer to this problem of finding a form of organization which can at one and the same time do justice to two such contrary needs is federalism. This is the keynote we must always strike in discussing the economic problems of the European community.

If we examine the idea of ‘Europe’ more closely we see that there are two main qualities which give it vital force. The first may be described rather vaguely as ‘Europeanism’. By this is meant the urge, which can no longer be denied or suppressed, to take into account what Europe has in common, to emerge from the narrow confinements of national singleness, to offer a neighbourly hand to the other nations of Europe, to make our common spiritual heritage a living factor, and, with a sort of European patriotism, to hold our own in this field against what is not European, in short, a desire for spiritual and moral integration . . . We are becoming increasingly conscious of the need for Europeans to assert themselves with all their power and in all fields against the other continents, but they can only hope to do this in unison, not as a great cock-pit upon which the others look down, half in pity and half in contempt, and in which they stage their struggles for power. Since no great power is left in Europe which can match up to the great powers outside Europe, even a partial union of Europe would basically alter the set-up in its favour.

The more the non-European great powers emerge, and the civilizations of other continents begin to regard us with condescending self-confidence, the more it becomes both natural and necessary for the feeling of spiritual and moral homogeneousness among Europeans to increase powerfully. The more, thanks to modern improvements in transport, distances dwindle and Europeans come into closer contact both with one another and with the rest of the world, the more must the demarcation lines of national frontiers, language and religion, the dissimilarities between differing groups and national idiosyncrasies give place to internal unity on this continent, as the womb of the world-wide civilization of today. Its inhabitants should become all the more conscious of their common share in the same spiritual heritage, and the experience shared in common of the great phases of European history; from its origins in Greek culture, through the birth of Christianity and the Roman Empire, the interpenetration and final fusing of the Romanic and Germanic peoples and their cultures, the Crusades, the Age of Chivalry, the spread of the monasteries, the Papacy, the mediaeval Holy Roman Empire, Scholasticism, the foundation of the Universities, the heyday of the independent cities, the Renaissance, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, up to the latest stages of development, the dissolution of Feudalism, the Age of Enlightment, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the Romantic Age, the Industrial and Agrarian Revolutions, the evolution of national consciousness and the struggles for Liberalism, Democracy and Socialism.

We Europeans, conscious of our individuality, our common history and standard of values cling with a deep emotion of our own to the spots in our landscape with which our history is particularly associated. Whether we gaze from the Parthenon on to the deep blue Bay of Salamis, where two and a half thousand years ago the fate of Europe was decided for the first time; whether, standing on the lonely castled hilltop of Carthage, we wonder what would have become of Europe if Carthage and not Rome had been victorious; whether we stand on the Kahlenberg with Vienna at our feet, where, thanks to the bravery of the Poles, the fate of Europe in the face of assault from Asia was decided on another occasion; whether we bend over the venerable document in the Federal Archives in Switzerland in which the original Swiss Cantons confirmed their confederacy against the spirit of tyranny; whether, on the dyke at West Kapelle, the strongest human bulwark on the coast of Europe against the inroads of the sea, we look across the broad landscapes of the Dutch painters; whether we reverently enter the room in Weimar in which Goethe died – wherever it may be, we are always overcome by the same consciousness of the deep ties of our common and unspeakably precious heritage. It is the same feeling which during the last war caused us to tremble for the fate of Rome, Athens, Florence, Paris, Cologne or Munich as for the issue of a decisive battle, and to mourn equally for all historic buildings which were destroyed as for something irreplaceable.

And as Europeans do we not know that in spite of all our differences we share in common with all others on our continent a certain way of living and thinking. However much of this we may have handed on to other continents, our way is a western way, which today more than ever must hold its own against every other. This European way of life is, however, only legitimate if it can assert itself out of self-loyalty and not in enmity and self-glorification and can face everything strange and new with an open mind and that reason which has been given to all men alike. The destruction of mediaeval cathedrals is a terrible disaster, particularly when it is not due to the chances of war or to unavoidable strategic necessity, but to wanton indifference, but Europe itself stands unshaken as long as it remains the home of humanity, tolerance, reason and religious veneration.

Many possibilities both good and bad are contained in this Europeanism. As long as it is restrained by moderation and humanity, it represents healthy European self-confidence, a proud but also a tolerant profession of its individual creed and the indispensable sense of separation which is unquestionably essential to the political and economic integration of Europe. No human community – from the smallest to the greatest – can exist without such feelings, and when we see today the readiness with which Europeans seem to be prepared to abdicate inwardly before the non-European world, it would seem that the danger of too little European self-confidence is greater than the opposite danger of too much. Europeanism can, however, also mean the dangerous tendency to exclusive continentalism which transfers the arrogance, impatience and enmity of nationalism on to a higher geographical level. This degeneration would, as we shall see, find its economic expression in a tendency to form autarkic blocs on a continental basis and to create new areas of self-sufficiency, the fatal effects of which we know only too well.

However ambiguous and indefinite the first of the three motives of Europeanism may be, there is no doubting the grim and unyielding inevitability of the second: the necessity of uniting all political and spiritual forces in Europe in elementary defence against the imperialism of world Communism as organized and directed by Russia. The spiritual and economic integration of Europe may be aims which admit of various interpretations, just as the ways by which they are to be attained may be seriously disputed. The political integration of Europe, however, is an aim which not only can be unequivocally defined, but which is also generally acclaimed in spite of differences of religion, philosophy and economic convictions, always excepting the Communists and their conscious or unconscious fellow-travellers. Irrespective of the degree to which this union of the spiritual and political forces in Europe takes place in this hour of acute danger, or of the form it assumes, the motto is, really and truly, ‘s’unir ou périr’. This inexorable decision, which mortal danger from without forces upon Europe in a manner unknown since the time of Ogdai Khan, embodies the strongest historical force which gives the idea of European union the character of a genuine and inescapable leading idea of the time, as to unite has become a vital commandment upon which the existence and the civilization of the West depends. This is where phrase-making at last stops and the matter becomes deadly serious. Here we face the direct, simple and vital aim which can no longer be disputed with more or less ingenious theories. Hannibal ante portas, this is the common ground for all those who do not stand in the camp of the Punicians of today, and this is the situation which compels us to take it as a measure of all things and to relate everything to it. It is obviously difficult to separate this political integration of Europe from spiritual integration. All the more so since the main weapon of the new world conqueror is mental confusion which he tries to evoke by means of undermining psychological tactics, until the resistance of the West has become paralysed by a process of mental and moral softening – by the untimely pacificism which we have already condemned, by ‘Neutralism’, by illusions regarding possibilities of a compromise, by having public attention side-tracked to alleged neo-fascist dangers, by the cat-and-mouse game of notes and conferences – until the final military decision is only the finishing stroke.

The will to united self-assertion is given its real strength and deep significance through the spiritual tradition which for us is linked with the idea of ‘Europe’, and through the forms and values of a civilization which is characterized by its irreconcilable opposition to every kind of mass-despotism and by the consequent determination to resist it. Political self-assertion, therefore, presupposes that this tradition is indeed regarded as a common and inestimable spiritual and moral heritage, which is not to be sold for a mess of pottage. In the conviction, however, that the ‘open society’ of Bergson, i.e. the community of free human beings, is the main object of defence for the West, this consciousness – and here we strike another keynote of our later economic considerations – must also recognize that the economic system must be in accordance with this system of society if we are not to sacrifice the aim to the means, or, according to Juvenal’s saying, propter vitam perdere causas vitae.

To make this clear, certain precise statements need to be made.

Firstly: it would be entirely illogical, as we have already said, were one to challenge Europe to combine its forces in self-defence and at the same time grudge Europeans the indispenable minimum of ‘European patriotism’ necessary for it, instead of actually welcoming the same. It would be equally irrealistic were we to expect that in the near future anything like such a degree of pan-European community spirit will develop as would entitle us to speak of a European nation in the precise way that we speak of a French or a German nation. As we shall see later, many ideas of European economic integration come to grief over the fundamental error of assuming that such a degree of spiritual and political integration exists, and of trying to apply the experience gained in economic planning inside a nation on the European level, without asking whether this experience does not rather rely upon the spiritual and political set-up of the national state, and whether it can, without a with-your-leave-or-by-your-leave, be transferred onto a pan-European scale.

Even while sharing Montesquieu’s view of Europe as a ‘nation de nations’, and counting upon a growing European consciousness, it would be pure illusionism to build any plans on the expectation that this continental community consciousness will in general and in the long run become stronger than the national one or even be able to counterbalance it, whenever and wherever the two come into serious conflict with each other. The integrating effect of a common peril is once again likely to show also in the case of Europe, that great political amalgamations usually come about through pressure from without and not through a free decision from within – in defiance of something and not in favour of something. But anyone who knows the special character of Europe and who avoids any hidebound rationalism can have no doubt that, despite the pressure from without, national consciousness and the self-will of the national states will continue to exist to a degree which will necessitate extreme tact and caution. To brush this aside and to complain would be the very opposite of a constructive policy.

It is indeed possible that the suppression of national consciousness in favour of a continental consciousness might constitute a serious danger to the resistance power of Europe, namely when the strivings for European integration dull the sense of responsibility which rests upon every nation to defend itself against Communist-Russian aggression, and instead becomes a screen behind which inactivity and indecision hide under the motto ‘ut aliquid fieri videatur’. What we said earlier on about false internationalism should be taken to heart, and it should be considered that the will to defence in Europe cannot be stronger than that of each individual nation. How do matters stand here?

In a famous debate in the English House of Commons just before the outbreak of the first world war, the Irish leader Tim Healy defined the nation as ‘a thing for which people are ready to lay down their lives’. This is obviously inadequate as a definition but it does undoubtedly stress a necessary aspect of the nation. It is a disquieting question whether we may assume without further ado that all European nations are prepared to make this extreme sacrifice in view of the Communist Russian danger, disquieting not because they are permeated with Communism, since (in contrast to France and Italy) this does not apply to Germany, one of the countries in greatest danger, but above all for the reason that their will to self-defence has been weakened by illusions, fear and hopelessness. The justification for this question is demonstrated by the apparently insuperable disinclination of most European nations today to consider military defence as an obvious duty which primarily concerns them and for which it is unavoidable that sacrifices must be made. Instead of this they show a regrettable tendency to push this duty on to the United States and to play the part of the tired onlooker.

Under these circumstances is the possibility to be entirely rejected that the present efforts towards the political integration of Europe may just become an excuse for avoiding national action and the growth in conferences, European plans and organizations may just correspond to a shrinkage in natural self-assertion on the part of the individual nations. And is it only fear of a bogy to think that perhaps nothing decisive will take place either on a national or on a continental plane in the time that is still left to us? That Europe will try to lean upon the individual nations and the individual nations upon Europe? That national patriotism no longer suffices and continental patriotism does not yet suffice for the maximum resistance which is necessary? Only if in the eagerness to attain a European community it is not forgotten that this can only be built upon the foundations of strong nations, do these anxious questions become unnecessary.

We see therefore that the degree of European patriotism must be carefully weighed both with regard to its possibility and its desirability. On the other hand a warning must be uttered against the tendency to drive this community consciousness so far that Europe becomes detached from the cultural and political union of the West, and the higher level is ignored at which Europe links up especially with the United States of America in a union which today has become a matter of life and death. To those fools who may still think that Washington is spiritually and politically scarcely less far removed from us than Moscow, James Burnham, a clever American, has recently given the right answer when he said with grim humour, ‘Coca-cola may be a horrible drink, but it is not nearly so horrible as a Russian concentration camp’.

This leads to a second important realization. It is that not only would any idea of European neutralism be suicidal today, but that it has also become increasingly evident that the spiritual and political integration of Europe – i.e. the combination of its forces and the expansion of its powers of resistance – only makes sense as part and parcel of a higher combination and organization of the resistance potential of the entire western world on both sides of the Atlantic. Anyone who reflects that if it is at all possible to speak of Europe today this is exclusively due to the protective power of America, must accept these ideas as a matter of course. It may thus be said that developments have already far outrun the original conception of a European union and that this conception is becoming increasingly supplanted by that of an Atlantic union, which, as the greater of the two, embraces the European union as well.

We now come to the third consideration. There is some justification for saying that the idea of a European union, including the economic consequences, has to a certain extent grown out of date through the trend of events. In a double sense it comes too late. In the first place it has come too late to prevent the self-laceration of the continent, since this disaster has taken place to such an appalling degree in the second world war that today the European nations have not even the strength any more to attack one another. A new war between them can only be imagined as part of a world dispute which would sweep across Europe. Seen in a clear light, therefore, the sense of a European community can no longer consist in the preserving of peace between the peoples of Europe – this should have been thought of while there was yet time. Its meaning lies rather in organizing the defence of Europe against the danger which threatens from the East, and in preventing individual European nations, even though unwillingly, from finding themselves in the wrong camp. The idea of a European union comes too late on the other hand for the reason already stated that, even under the most favourable conditions, Europe can no longer defend itself alone, but only in association with the organized resistance of the entire West and under its protection. Without the American war and economic potential our continent is hopelessly lost. The forces of Europe must however combine for a twofold reason, firstly to increase this potential to the maximum, and secondly to preserve within this all-over organization of the West the spiritual and political individuality of Europe, which otherwise threaten to become stamped out in the struggle between the Titans.

This special character of Europe – and here we come to our fourth consideration – must above all be taken into account in determining the form which the union of the continent is to take if this is to be viable and permanent and able to subsist on its own without the aid of constant propaganda, force or some other artificial means. We would wish for something which is neither a form of imperialistic bloc, an elaborate construction of civil or military bureaucrats, window dressing for ideologies which shun the light, an unending succession of congresses and conferences, nor a new field of experiments in economic planning. The nearest approach to the goal is made by those who point to the example of Switzerland, which in its federal structure demonstrates how unity in variety, and how freedom of the individual members within the order of the whole is possible. But not all those who desire the ‘Helvetianising’ of Europe have grasped that Switzerland is the product of slow and organic growth which could only take place in a soil which had been purposefully and patiently enriched by historical traditions and human relations. If we are agreed that Europe can only grow under the aegis of a principle which we call federation, then we must also realize that federalism, if it is to be more than a mere phrase, is not just a matter of administrative technique, but must be rooted in a definite philosophy.

For Europe too, federalism means a cohesion of the whole which comes about naturally through the co-operation of the parts, in a spirit of whole hearted union with the small group in which we have grown up and at the same time with respect for the other groups with whom we come together at the higher level to fulfil those tasks which can only be carried out in common; and in the community spirit which develops from this. If we aim at European federation it must be with the recognition that the nation is indeed an indispensable stage of political organization which cannot be dispensed with, but that it can neither do without the sub-national stages if it is not to freeze into a bloc which strangles human beings and their genuine communities, nor can it remain any longer in sovereign isolation and ignore the higher supra-national stage, if the problems of our age, which far surpass the powers of the national unit, are to be solved.

This great work demands a spirit which is directly opposed to that of modern mass civilization and – let it be said – to the spirit of many advocates of the European community, who in their hearts are Jacobin centralists with no idea whatsoever of federalism. Neither on the national nor on the international plane is it possible to be a federalist in the upward direction and a centralist in the downward one. One must make up one’s mind. The fact that many disciples of European federation – including economic federation – avoid this decision, or perhaps have never even realized that it must be made, threatens to side-track the whole movement, which then becomes reduced to a dubious paradox, which we shall come across again when we consider the details of the economic side of European federation.

INTERNATIONAL ORDER AS THE SELF-ASSERTION OF THE FREE WORLD AGAINST COMMUNIST IMPERIALISM

Already in the first German edition of this book, which appeared at the end of the war, attention was diverted, with an outspokenness which at that time was understood by only a few, from the recently overthrown totalitarianism of the Axis powers to the new threat to peace and international order presented by the last remaining totalitarianism of Russian Communism4). This danger has meanwhile grown so enormous that all questions of international order today must be considered in its perspective. This fact emerged very clearly in the foregoing section. Everything is of a temporary nature, everything is in a state of constant tension, everything is doubtful, as long as the world is overshadowed by this danger. What is the nature of this danger, and how can it be abolished? A book which deals with the fundamental problems of international order must at least give some indication of the lines along which these questions which weigh so heavily upon us are to be answered, if it is not to lack the foundation of hard and fast reality which the middle of this century demands.

It would be acting with complete irresponsibility were we to try to answer questions on the nature of the Russian Communist danger and the possibility of abolishing it in an optimistic or even a semi-optimistic manner. That there is no international organization of states which could unite both the Communist Russian bloc, which in a military and political career of unexampled success has already absorbed the two continents of Asia and Europe with the exception of their southern or western fringes, and that world which is most justly termed free, in any form at all which would finally put an end to the struggles for power between the nations, is a conviction shared today by all reasonable persons capable of learning from the overwhelming experiences of the past. The dream of ‘One World’ has come to an end, and although we would not wish to say that there is no purpose at all in the organization of the so-called United Nations which was constituted in 1945, this purpose – apart from certain undeniable successes – can only be conceived as at least maintaining contact between the two camps and keeping everything undecided as long as the unforeseen contingencies of historical development remain open, including the possibility that fundamental changes may take place inside the Communist bloc which would abolish the present irreconcilable antagonism of the two worlds. How deep the cleft is today, however, is shown by the fate of that international organization in which formerly the universal humanity of the civilized nations expressed itself most strongly over and above all contests for power, i.e. the Red Cross, with the parallel organization of the Red Crescent, for which, even under the banner of simple brotherly love, the gap has grown too wide to be bridged.

If therefore the dualism of world order today–by which it has become a world disorder – cannot be surmounted, is there at least not the hope of stabilizing this polarity for an indefinite period? Anyone who whishes to build on this hope must begin by admitting that in some parts of the world the course of the dividing line is such that stabilization cannot be seriously considered until a regulation of this line has been effected.

The most neuralgic points are found in those countries which are cut in two by this dividing line i.e. Germany and Austria. A stabilization of world polarity which would improve upon the present state of cold war would therefore presuppose that the dismembered unity of these unhappy countries – in particular that of Germany, where the dismemberment is the more ruthless and insupportable – should be restored. As every thinking person must admit, however, with the world in its present state this reunion can only be conceived as taking place through a shift of the West-East frontier either eastwards or westwards. There is no third possibility, which means that the improvements required to stabilize the condition of the world entail in themselves such an alteration in this condition as amounts to a decision in the war of the titans for or against one or the other bloc. The illusion that a third way might be possible is all the more dangerous for the West, which alone succumbs to it, because it affords Moscow the possibility of holding out the enticement of a compromise at a price which seems acceptable to the illusion-seeking West, whereas according to the inherent nature of Russian policy it can be nothing more than a deception which more or less cleverly conceals a victory in Germany, Austria or elsewhere.

The important thing is to recognize this inherent nature of Russian policy. It may be deduced from the character of this totalitarian regime, and all the foregoing experience which the West has undergone with the Soviet Government proves definitely that this is not just theoretical speculation. It is a policy of expansion, of challenge, of conquests by every possible means, which excludes the assumption fostered by many people that it is a policy fed by defensive fear, which can be quietened with concessions, with the payment of a ‘price’, with the satisfaction of ‘final territorial demands’, in short, with a western policy of appeasement. If fear can be spoken of here, then it is the offensive fear of a government which is convinced that no static balance is conceivable between the world of liberty and that of slavery. No less a price than world mastery, however, will suffice to quieten an offensive fear of this kind.

I think I have dealt with the most important aspects of the inherent nature of the Soviet regime and its world policy in a chapter of my book ‘Maß und Mitte’. The attempt made there to define the sociology of Communism is the basis of the following remarks:

Not a single discussion should be started on the Russian Communist Empire and the resulting problems for the West, no one who speaks on this subject should even be listened to, no single suggestion which promises to solve these problems should be made or considered, above all things in Central Europe, before two things have been made quite clear. Firstly: we are dealing with a real empire, and the aim of its rulers, which has been openly stated, which is the conclusive outcome of its nature, and which has been openly stated, which is the conclusive outcome of its nature, and which has been more than adequately proved by the way they have behaved, is to expand this empire to actual world domination, and that by every means possible. Secondly: this empire which unrelentingly strives for world domination is a pseudo-religion within the shell of the Russian State, a sort of secularised Islam, a social creed which is militant to the highest degree and which therefore advances on two fronts at once, the military and the ideological. The unsuspecting guilelessness with which so many people in the non-Bolshevist world allow themselves to be misued as pawns in the Russian game without ever wishing or knowing it, would not be possible to the alarming extent which is the case today were these two facts generally known, above all in leading and educated circles. Their blindness and ignorance are not the most insignificant weapons with which the Russian Communist Empire has up to now achieved its enormous triumphs, and hopes to achieve further ones.

This is the underlying reason why a stabilization of the world dualism of today – which in any case would be contrary to all historical experience – is not a possibility on which any responsible western policy can even reckon. What remains?

To this depressing question two answers have up to now been given, which in a way appear to be at the two opposite ends of the scale. The one is called containment, the stemming of the Russian Communist flood by the dyke of a western world which can finally match up to the East on the political, moral and military levels. The opposite answer is that only a war can put an end to the present tension, a purely military decision, regarded as both a necessary and adequate condition for the final solution of the problem of world peace which Soviet Russia has created, a gigantic struggle along fronts which, according to the traditional rules of warfare, would not only cut of the Russian Government from the West, but with it the people of Russia. Only historical importance can be accorded to containment as a remedy today. In the period succeeding the war containment was a necessary phase, firstly to put an end to the disastrous policy of capitulation and secondly to organize a defence against a series of provocations. Nec plus ultra was all very well as a beginning. In the meanwhile every thinking person must have become convinced that it is impossible to stabilize world peace on the basis of a status quo which indubitably gives the Soviet Union, clearly bent on world domination, the possibility of keeping the West in permanent suspense through its vagaries and through utilizing its position on the ‘inner line’ to bring western economy into constant disorder and thereby finally to exhaust it.

Containment today means that the West is to be satisfied with a vestigial Europe which bears an alarming resemblance to the Byzantine Empire which by the later Middle Ages had been compressed by the Turks into a small territory, a Europe that in its longing for quiet abandons Eastern and Central Europe and China to slavery. This is discrediting its own political and moral principles and dangerously blunting the propaganda weapon of liberty. Anyone who today considers that a policy of containment alone can suffice shows that he has not yet grasped the gigantic motive power of the Communist Pseudo-Islam. The worst is, however, that after the United States have incomprehensively allowed the great burst in the dyke to take place in China it has become very questionable whether mere repairs to the dyke, here, there, and everywhere, will avail, and whether, above all in Asia, the flood does not threaten to assume proportions which begin to give a tragic aspect to the idea of stabilizing the status quo. To choose a more homely symbol: if the water pipes in the house are rotten through and through, and the water pressure is increased to the maximum, there is no longer any point in panting up and down stairs from the cellar to the attic trying to keep one’s thumb on all the holes. One must make up one’s mind to turn off the main. In addition, it is difficult to accept the fact that one whole floor is already under water.

There is, therefore, no escaping the unpleasant conclusion that the West must find some way of shifting the present status quo in its favour, as well as of so altering the nature of the Russian regime that it will cease to flood the world. Does this mean that no other alternative is open to us than the opposite desperate idea of a purely military decision? It is of the very greatest importance that the answer to this should definitely be no! A purely military decision is neither necessary nor adequate, because the final result depends upon decisions taken inside Russia and the countries under its subjection.

The purely military decision is not necessary, as long as there is hope that changes or sweeping landslides may take place inside the Communist sphere of influence which may remove the totalitarian regime in an unforeseen manner, or which may create a state of affairs in which the desire for, or at least the possibility of a continued offensive policy is reduced to a degree which would suffice for stabilization. It would be very short-sighted of the West to repeat in Russia’s case the mistakes made with regard to the former German totalitarianism, and to fail to see in the Russian people their most natural ally in the struggle against their own Government, an ally which must be mobilized by means of a constructive programme for the time when their country will be liberated; not to speak of the inhabitants of the subjected countries.

The West would be well advised not to let itself be carried away with hate against the Russian people in its horror of the Communist regime, but rather on their part to do everything possible to encourage internal resistance inside the Russian sphere of influence. It is characteristic of a totalitarian regime that it is able to exploit the obvious contradictions within the free world, while concealing its own far greater ones. To reveal these, to bring out into the light the inner weaknesses of such a rule, and at last to turn the tables in the third world war, which has already broken out in the form of mixed military and psychological strategy chosen by Moscow, that is the task which lies before the West, and which has already been clearly recognized by the more far-seeing of its leaders. The extensive programme of possibilities which this opens up cannot be described here. While the West gazes spell-bound, and with a fear which Moscow makes full use of, at atom-bombs, tanks and jet-fighters, it forgets that the other type of warfare, the psychological-political, which in its one-sidedness is far more dangerous for the West, determines the field in which Moscow seeks the actual decision. Here war has long been declared upon the West, and the purpose of the programme sketched out here is to urge the West to take up this challenge.

If the military decision is not a necessary condition of stabilized world order, this does not of course mean that it can be avoided under all conditions. It remains an eventuality for which it is the primary duty of every responsible government of the West to be prepared today. Should it take place, however, it will become evident that a military decision is not only unnecessary, but also that it is inadequate for the stabilization of world order. History will repeat itself here and will show, as has long been clear in the case of German totalitarianism, that everything depends upon what takes place inside the conquered country and what becomes of it. The internal future of Russia and its sphere of influence, therefore, becomes a problem which in the interests of international order cannot be considered too early.

Only a fool will demand that the success of such a policy be guaranteed in advance. But one of its greatest advantages is that it does not interfere with a policy of maximum and energetic military alertness and realistic stubborness and watchfulness with regard to the tyranny of Moscow, but can ally itself with it, and by showing the way can give actual force and accuracy of aim. At the same time it preserves it from a too brutal and warlike callousness, which otherwise might bring about a world catastrophe and overpower the West also with the poisonous atmosphere of mere military encampment. The most human way is also the wisest way here, and wherever fortune points to an opportunity there should be no hesitation in taking it. It is no easy psychological task, to be sure, to assemble all the forces of the West against the Soviet regime and to demand that the greatest sacrifices be made in the economic and military struggle against a government whose own subjects are made its operating tools, without at the same time making use of the emotion stirring poison of hate propaganda against the other people. In the struggle against the totalitarianism of the Axis powers the West unfortunately did not succeed in this task, with fatal results. In the struggle today against the new totalitarianism its success should be all the greater because the need is recognized more clearly.

The two extremes mentioned – with which the policy recommended here may be favourably contrasted – both containment and the policy of a military decision, falls, each in its own way, into the error of ignoring the peculiar nature of totalitarianism. The ‘containers’ and ‘stabilizers’ are blind to the vulcanic nature of such a regime, which is incompatible with the idea of a status quo. The others, who conceive of the dispute as a purely military and national affair, fail, on the other hand, to see that this totalitarian imperialism necessarily rests upon a tremendous tension between the government and the population which it keeps in physical and mental slavery, so that old-fashioned ideas of diplomacy and warfare have become out-of-date and inapplicable. One extreme fails to recognize the external driving power of totalitarianism, the other its internal force. The only right policy is one which takes account of both.

The task with which the West is faced, of gaining an influence on the internal mental and political development of the Soviet sphere of influence, which is sealed hermetically against the outside world, and of speeding up and guiding the internal ferment both in these countries and in their ideologies, presents difficulties to which no special attention needs to be drawn. But it would be asking too much to expect that there should be an easy, certain and safe way out of the extremely difficult position into which the West has been brought, largely through its belief in easy solutions. On the other hand the task has been simplified by an event which from every other point of view constitutes an enormous triumph for Moscow and an equally great danger for the West, namely the penetration of the Soviet regime into the heart of Europe. However much the West regrets the decisive aid it rendered Moscow at the time, it has on the other hand become evident that extraordinary opportunities for a spiritual and moral counter-drive are offered, and nowhere are these opportunities greater than in Germany, where East meets West, as it were ‘Unter den Linden’.

In the famous ‘Maximes et Pensées’ of Chamfort the following very true remark is to be found: ‘L’âme, lorsqu’elle est malade, fait précisement comme le corps; elle se tourmente et s’agite en tous sens, mais elle finit par trouver un peu de calme. Elle s’arrête enfin sur le genre de sentiment et d’idées le plus nécessaire a son repos’. This is exactly the way the western world behaves towards the nightmare of Communist imperialism. If it is not to be paralysed by perpetual fear, worry and uncertainty, or not to be plunged through unconsidered hastiness into adventures whose outcome cannot be foreseen, we must wish that it may acquire adaptiveness, that its agitation may be quietened and its equalmindedness preserved. To be able to save and invest, without a look of hunted fear, to be able to sow without thinking that the hailstorm of tomorrow will destroy the crop; to be able to concentrate one’s powers in trust that the future contains, not only the worst, but also the best chances, and to live without panic leaving the end in God’s hands. A life on friendly terms with the worst danger in our history must, however, find its limit where it results in watchfulness being relaxed, and in a cocoon-like existence of illusions, selfish indifference, blindness and pleasant dreams, from which the awakening will be all the more terrible. Readiness is all.

 

NOTES

 

5. (p. 33) Machiavellism:

In spite of all the objections to it, MACAULAY’S famous essay ‘Machiavelli’ (first published 1837, later in his ‘Critical and Historical Essays’) still stands out among the older literature. The most penetrating contemporary discussion is probably ‘La fin du machiavélisme’, in ‘Sort de l’Homme’ by J. MARITAIN, Neuenburg 1943, pp. 97 foil, cf also: KANT, Zum ewigen Frieden, Königsberg 1795, Anhang; HANS BARTH, Fluten und Dämme, Zürich 1943, p. 168 foll.; G. FERRERO, Niccolò e il ‘Principe’, published by B. RADITZA, Colloqui con Guglielmo Ferrero, Lugano 1939. Note following resumé by Maritain (see above p. 141): ‘1° Il suffit d’être juste pour gagner la vie éternelle; il ne suffit pas d’être juste pour gagner les batailles ou des succès politiques immédiats. 2° Pour gagner ces batailles ou pour remporter des succès politiques immédiats, il n’est pas nécessaire d’etre juste; il peut être, à l’occasion, plus avantageux d’être injuste. 3° Il est nécessaire, quoi-qu’il ne soit pas suffisant, d’être juste pour procurer et promouvoir le bien commun politique et la prospérité durable des communautés terrestres.’

Despite the slanderous legend of the 18th century, TALLEYRAND, referred to in the text, is an excellent teacher of foreign politics, who knew where to draw the line sharply between ‘Realism’ and Machiavellism. This hard-headed realist hated nothing more than war, and for nothing did he fight more honestly and determindly than the peace of Europe. The way in which he reprimanded the Machiavellist Napoleon for the knavish trick of Bayonne, is as impressive as is the funeral oration for the French diplomat Reinhard, which he held towards the end of his life in 1838, and in which he extols trust and good faith as important conditions of successful diplomacy (quoted by DUFF COOPER in ‘Talleyrand’).

6. (p. 41) The Great Men of History:

‘Die wirkliche Größe ist ein Mysterium’, writes Jacob Burckhardt in his essay on ‘historische Größe’ which still remains the classical discussion on this question which is forever cropping up. Among the latest literature, the study by EDITH EUCKENERDSIEK, ‘Größe und Wahn’, Tübingen, 1950, deserves close attention.

The questionable nature of acclamation by popular plebiscite becomes very clear in the most recent case of Frederick the Great. If ever there was a cynical machiavellist, then it was the author of ‘Antimachiavell’, and all the same he earned his surname, with the approval of Europe, strangely enough, not through his considerable peaceful achievements, but through his military successes in the Silesian war, the clearest case of a war of conquest. How this was possible is an interesting question, in the answering of which we should forget neither the gratitude of the English, the admiration of the military specialists, the propaganda of the Paris claque of d’Alembert and Diderot, the enthusiastic impression of youthful impetuosity made on the youth of the time in particular, including no less a person than Goethe, nor the malicious relish of the ‘century of enlightenment’ over the humiliation of the ‘old-fashioned’ and ‘bigotted’ Empress Maria Theresia by the clever and unbelieving rationalists. Despite Frederick’s personal charm and his dramatic life, it is important, above all in consideration of his mythical force, to draw due attention to his unsuitability as a pattern of political action. Not all those who attack the neighbours they consider defenceless get away with it so easily, just as, on the other hand, those who have got into trouble through their own fault frequently lack the greatness and philosophical insight which makes Frederick so fascinating even to those who have no wish of succumbing to his personality.

7. (p. 43) The Crisis of the Nations:

In subjecting the exaggerated conception of the nation which grew up in the 19th century, to a criticism for which the present time has grown ripe, we are resuming contact with the best tradition of the 18th century (cf my ‘Gesellschaftskrisis, Part I, Chapter 1). See on this subject: W. KAEGI, ‘Historische Meditationen’ Zürich 1942, pp. 249 foll.; J. HUIZINGA, ‘Wachstum und Formen des nationalen Bewußtseins in Europa bis zum Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in ‘Im Banne der Geschichte’, Basle, 1943; HANS ZBINDEN, ‘Die Moralkrise des Abendlandes’, 2nd edition, Bern 1941; L. MISES ‘Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft’, Vienna, 1919. A complement to this chapter on the nation is to be found in my book ‘Maß und Mitte’, Erlenbach-Zürich 1950, pp. 241-258.

8. (p. 57) Communist Imperialism:

In addition to the chapter of my book ‘Maß und Mitte’ referred to in the text, reference should above all be made to: J. MONNEROT ‘Die Soziologie des Kommunismus’, Cologne 1952; J. MONNEROT ‘La Guerre en question’, Paris, 1951; G. KENNAN, ‘Amerika und Russland’s Zukunft’ in ‘Der Monat’, July 1951.

• 1. (p. 25) The Sociology of War:
• 2. (p. 27) War of Conflict and War of Aggression:
• 3. (p. 31) The inadmissable over-simplification of the peace problem:
• 4. (p. 57) Communist Imperialism:
• 5That the various factors are interwoven with extraordinary intricacy becomes particularly evident in the dramatic catastrophe of international interrelations which we call war). One of the moral perversities with which our age is afflicted was to deny at times the supremely catastrophic character of war, until two world wars brought disillusionment – let us hope for ever. For centuries the time-honoured belief existed that war was, as a rule, one of the incomprehensible evils of the world system, which – like the other Horsemen of the Apocalypse – Pestilence, Hunger and Death – had to be borne with resignation. Pacifism, in the sense of a mass movement directed towards the abolition of war, only became possible after the beginning of the modern age, when war, like all other things alleged to be the Will of God, came to be regarded in the light of critical and ameliorative reason, and, together with other social institutions, as a work of man which it would be quite possible to alter. Thus instead of being a subject of theology, war became a subject of sociology. Has it in this way become entirely comprehensible? To be honest we must admit that we are still very far from understanding it. Although men have at all times pondered over the phenomenon of war, and although recent generations especially have amassed a gigantic literature on the sociology of war, all that progress adds up to is that we possess a fairly complete list of the possible causes of war and that we realize the extraordinary intricacy which links these causes and which excludes any monistic theory of war sociology. Only a separate and comprehensive volume could do justice to the epistemology which results.
• 6In order to understand in detail what an international peace based on justice must accomplish, the various categories of war must be distinguished. Above all a difference must be made between two types of war, the importance of which is not lessened by the fact that they have often been combined with each other in the course of history and that there are borderline cases in which it is not easy to say whether the one or the other type predominates. A war may arise either through a conflict over concrete claims, which may be compared with a case under civil law (war of conflict), or through an act of violence which corresponds to a breach of the peace under criminal law (war of aggression) ). Whereas individual legal disputes arising from contentions of personal honour or material claims are finally settled by judicial decision, international conflicts of this kind may easily lead to war, as long as a decision by force of arms, which corresponds to the ordeal of the Middle Ages, is not abolished through obligatory international legal procedure, and before this is the case we shall continue to regard war rather as a tragic chain of events than as a vicious action. From their very nature such wars of conflict make it difficult to clarify the question of guilt, provided one of the warring parties – as is however often enough the case – does not misuse the conflict as an excuse for a war of aggression, or does not oppose the readiness of the antagonist to come to an understanding with inexcusable intransigence. This last applies on the whole to the case of the first world war, whereas we should not hesitate to characterize the second in its origin and in all its phases purely as a war of aggression, after it had already been preceded by the wars of aggression in China and Abyssinia.
• 7Is not then the solution of the war problem in reality very simple and only dependent upon the firm determination of the governments and the peoples? If this were our opinion we should be contradicting ourselves, since earlier on we termed just such thinking ‘internationalism’ and warned our readers against it. In actual fact this contradiction is only an apparent one. To explain it we should consider that the problem can be regarded from various angles. In formulating the solution of the war problem so sharply and smoothly above, we were regarding it from the juridical angle. Here in fact everything appears much simpler than it actually is. To be content with such considerations is to lapse into that monistic way of thinking which may be termed legalism and which is no better than economism or any other one-sided outlook. In indicating the legal solution the question has still not been answered as to the conditions under which the peoples and governments would be prepared to accept it firmly and undeviatingly. This question however brings us back to the higher level of the sociological, ethical and political considerations with which we started).
• 8Already in the first German edition of this book, which appeared at the end of the war, attention was diverted, with an outspokenness which at that time was understood by only a few, from the recently overthrown totalitarianism of the Axis powers to the new threat to peace and international order presented by the last remaining totalitarianism of Russian Communism). This danger has meanwhile grown so enormous that all questions of international order today must be considered in its perspective. This fact emerged very clearly in the foregoing section. Everything is of a temporary nature, everything is in a state of constant tension, everything is doubtful, as long as the world is overshadowed by this danger. What is the nature of this danger, and how can it be abolished? A book which deals with the fundamental problems of international order must at least give some indication of the lines along which these questions which weigh so heavily upon us are to be answered, if it is not to lack the foundation of hard and fast reality which the middle of this century demands.