Air Power and World Peace

by THOMAS K. FINLETTER

ANYONE reading about the Report by the President’s Air Policy Commission in the newspapers might get the impression that this was a warmongering document — that the Air Commission liked the idea of great armaments, that it looked with relish on the idea of great American air armadas poised and ready to drop atomic bombs on Russian cities at the earliest possible moment.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The Air Commission did consider the military situation of the country, and especially its ability to defend itself in the air; for such were our instructions from the President. We recommended that our air strength be greatly and immediately increased. We looked to the future and found that the present scientific revolution in applied science for destruction will soon make it possible for other nations to attack us by way of the air with atomic and other comparable weapons. We said also that we had to start now to create an air force able to meet such an attack and to strike back immediately and silence it.

But we also said that we did not like this preparedness program which we recommended. This is only a second-best way of doing things, forced on us by the international situation and by the current fantastic developments in the military art — especially in the fields of atomic energy and biological agents, of aircraft and guided missiles. We said that real security for this country lies only in the abolition of war, under a regime of world law, and that it is high time that the United States got busy to create such a world of peace. I wish to elaborate on this latter part of our report, which I am sorry to say was not stressed in the press.

It is my faith that the number one foreign policy of the United States must be to establish world peace.

If anyone wants some idea of what the next war will be, let him spend six months studying the things that will be used in it. Let him try to understand what preparations will have to be made in peacetime by the United States to be ready for such a war. Let him try to figure out whether it will be possible to maintain an adequate military establishment in the atomic age without bankrupting the country and making deep inroads on our civil liberties. He will end, I think, with the conclusion that we must speed up our foreign policy for peace. He will reach the further conclusion that considerably more can be done in this respect than is being done.

We must have a strong military policy. Whether we like it or not, the United States is the leader of Western Society and from Western Society must come the leadership for peace. A United States which is determined to be strong militarily will compel the respect of a world in which force is still the final way of solving international disputes.

Copyright 1948, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston 16, Mass. All rights reserved.

Only a strong United States can have any chance of persuading the rest of the world to give up force. Perhaps, if the world were not as it is, a spiritual leadership by the United States — a turning of the other cheek by a complete demobilization of all our instruments of war — might show the world the way to peace by the sheer force of our moral example. But that is not the way things are.

We must have in peacetime a force sufficient to command the respect of any nation which may take into its head the idea that war could be a profitable business. Our military establishment must be a shield behind which we can carry on a vigorous and positive policy for peace. And the shield must be of steel, not of straw.

Our military policy is, however, only the negative side of our foreign policy for peace. And by its nature it can be only a temporary policy. It will give us only a short time to do the positive things which will produce peace; for it is inflammatory. Time is running out, and we must make haste with our politics for peace. For we cannot long endure a world racing with itself in building new ways of destroying itself. Some day the weapons we build will go off, if we have not first created the institutions which will let us put these weapons away and use their power for other purposes.

2

How are we getting on with our policy of seeking peace behind the shield of these armaments?

We are, as I see it, following two lanes in our foreign policy for peace. The first is economic. We realize that Western Europe and Asia cannot remain on our side if they are starving. We therefore have decided to send to these areas food and the materials that will help them build up their ability to produce.

The purpose of this economic policy is in part charitable. It is part of the tradition of the United States to help those who are in distress. There is also of course a political purpose. It is to keep Western Europe and China on our side in the cold war.

Now this statement of the case should be enough to dispose of the argument that the Marshall Plan and the strong military establishment which the Air Policy Commission recommended are to some extent alternatives — that if you have one, you don’t need the other. They are not. They are complementary. A strong military establishment will not of itself produce peace. A Marshall Plan will not of itself produce peace. Nor will the two of them together produce peace. But they will help. And both must be carried out fully. If a second-best Air Force is almost as bad as none, so a second-best reconstruction program is almost as bad as none. It is not. much of a solution to let Europe half starve.

On the other hand, our military expenditures are in a measure dependent on the success or failure of the Marshall Plan. The recommendations in our air report were on the assumption that the Marshall Plan would be accepted at its full 6.8 billion dollars for the period through June 30, 1949. If the Marshall Plan were to be rejected, the rate of build-up of the Air Establishment which we recommended would have to be sharply increased.

I agree with the recent statement of the Secretary of Defense before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that without some program to aid European recovery we should have to spend at least as much for the national defense in a single year as the Marshall Plan is expected to cost in the full four years of its existence.

A Western Europe hungry and unable to produce enough for its needs, as would be the situation if the Marshall Plan were rejected, would greatly weaken our strategic military position and cannot be tolerated.

We have to spend this 6.8 billion dollars for the Marshall Plan one way or another — either by putting it to work to build up Western Europe and Asia, or Ivy increased military appropriations over and above those which have been recommended by our Commission.

But on the other hand, the voting of the Marshall Plan appropriations will not justify us in reducing our military appropriations. The Marshall Plan is not of itself a solution to the problem of peace. It is only one side of a many-sided attack on the problem.

Let us accept one fundamental fact which so often is neglected. The only final solution to the problem of peace anywhere must be a political solution. Economic policies and military policies may help or hinder, but it is the political policies which are decisive. And above all, let us understand that until there is a political solution, any reduction in our military establishment would be folly.

It is particularly depressing to find that, in the search for a political solution of the world’s ills, we have made the least progress. We are doing about a half job in our military policies. We are doing quite well indeed — assuming the success of the Marshall Plan — in our economic policy. But in our political efforts we have made no steps forward since V-J Day. Indeed, we have slipped back. We are further away from political solutions now than we were in August, 1945. This is by no means all the fault of the Russians. We in the United States simply are not putt ing our backs into this phase of our work.

If we want to understand how all-controlling is the political part of foreign policy, let us look at what is happening in Western Europe. In large part the reason why Western Europe is not producing enough to supply itself is the unstable political situation in each of the various countries.

Continental Europe does not yet know on which side it is going to end up. It knows the side it prefers. But it does not know whether the leadership of the West — which must come mainly from the United States — will be strong enough to hold it on that side.

Obviously this is no condition in which to work. How can France, for example, play its part in building a decent Europe with a Communist Party of the numbers and power of the French Communist Party constantly working against any rehabilitation of the French economy, and against any form of political stability? Before France can be stable economically, she must be stable politically; and she will never be stable politically until Europe is organized as a single political unit which will be a part of and will be defended by all the members of Western Society, and in particular by the United States.

The same is even more true of Germany. Germany will never play her part economically until a political solution is reached which will integrate her politically into Western Society and will make her feel safe in being a part of that Society.

Fortunately the political issues in Germany are so critical that they may force us to find this political solution for all of Europe. One immediate question that has to be answered very soon is: How can we withdraw the Allied forces of occupation and turn Germany over to an independent German government without running the risk that Germany will again go on the warpath or, almost as bad, fall under the domination of the Soviets?

Now for the first time — nearly three years after V-E Day — we are beginning to face up to this question. The simple truth is that we dare not turn Germany loose as an independent state. The risk is too great. Only if Germany were part of a larger political unit which she would not be able to dominate would it be safe for us or our allies to withdraw the troops of occupation. In short, nothing less than European union — a United States of Europe can make it safe for us to withdraw our troops from Germany.

This is gradually becoming accepted policy. With the failure of the London Conference of Foreign Ministers and the final rejection of the Four-Power Treaty as the keystone of United States policy toward Germany, the statesmen are looking for a new policy to take its place. And more and more we are hearing — in speeches from Mr. Bevin and Mr. Churchill, in the pending Benelux negotiations, and even in hints from this side of the water — about a United States of Europe as the only political solution for that unsettled and critical area.

If this may seem impossible to you — because oi the old traditions and historical antagonisms of Europe — then the answer is that we have to choose between impossibilities. For to leave Europe ununited and subject to being bitten off piece by piece by Russia is — if it can be said — even more impossible.

3

BUT even a political solution of Europe would not solve the problem of peace. It would be a regional solution — not a world solution to the problem of war. A political solution of Western Europe would still recognize and continue the balance of power as the controlling principle of international relations. And the balance of power, because of the very fact that it recognizes power and not law as the final authority, perpetuates war as the final way of settling international disputes. By very definition, as long as the balance of power is the governing principle of relations between nations, the United States will have to keep the strongest kind of military establishment — to be sure that the balance of power leans toward the West.

The inescapable fact is that the United States must keep an increasingly powerful military establishment until a world-wide rule of law administered by the United Nations is established. And the future of the United Nations is now hanging in the balance of events that must be decided within the next few months.

Too often have we carried out our foreign policy outside of the United Nations. We pay lip service to UN, but when we want to get something done we refuse to put our trust in it. It is, of course, harder to get things done through the United Nations than by the usual methods of Foreign Office diplomacy. But we shall have to meet the issue. Either we use UN and put our confidence and hopes in it, or we shall, by by-passing it, kill it.

Two immediate issues will put our attitude toward the United Nations to an early test. The northern borders of Greece are being violated by the neighbors of Greece in open defiance of the United Nations. It will be a heavy blow to the prestige of the United Nations if this lawlessness is not immediately suppressed by armed forces of the UN — not armed forces of the United States, but armed forces of the United Nations.

And soon the British will withdraw from Palestine, leaving that area open to civil war. Again, unless the United Nations can build up an armed force to preserve law and order in that area, its prestige will be hurt beyond repair.

These are the test cases which will forecast the direction in which the United Nations will go. If it handles these, there will be ground to hope that UN, with the United States taking the lead, as it must, will go on to become the guardian of world peace under a regime of law administered by it.

If these hopes seem Utopian, let me point out that precisely such a development is contemplated by the United Nations Charter. The machinery is all there. What is needed is that the United States ask that a general conference of the members of the UN be called under Article 109 of the Charter. At this conference the United States should propose a general treaty covering (1) the armament of the United Nations and the corresponding disarmament of the member states, (2) the elimination of the veto in the Security Council, and (3) amendments to the statute of the International Court of Justice which will enable the United Nations to enforce a world law against war and against national armaments directly on individuals throughout the world.

I know all the arguments against these recommendations. I shall deal with only one of them — namely, that all this is impractical because Russia will not go along.

My answer is that it is time for a showdown on this business of organizing the world for peace. We have too long avoided facing up to the question whet her or not UN is going to work. We have been so tender of UN that we have already nearly killed it by keeping most of the great issues away from it. We have let Russia block every effort to give UN the military force which Article 43 of the Charter says it must have. We have gotten precisely nowhere in the matter of atomic or any other kind of disarmament. We have not been willing to push these and many other issues because we feared that if we did, Russia would pull out of UN.

But it does no good to have Russia a member of a UN which does nothing. Now is the time — before the damage is irreparable — to find out whether or not Russia and the West are going to work together in an international organization whose purpose is world peace. Moreover, it is better to have this showdown on a matter of principle — such as the future of the United Nations and the survival of civilization — rather than on something like a boundary dispute.

And when I say a showdown, I mean a showdown with ourselves as well as with Russia. For there is the devil within as well as the devil without. We ourselves have not made up our minds that we want peace so badly that we will give up our tradition of strict nationalism and put all the chips on the international way of doing things, of which the United Nations is the symbol and the instrument.

We must take a chance and try the United Nations way. The worst we can do is to fail — and then only in part. For, even if Russia will not come along, the outcome of any such general conference, if the United States really means business, would be to organize the Western world into a solid political bloc for peace. We could not, in such a case of partial failure, be able to disband or even reduce our military establishment. That we cannot do until all the world is united under one regime of law. But we would be able to use our air power and the rest of our military establishment as part of a total force for peace of the Western world, in aid of a great principle.

But let us stop talking of the possibility of failure.

The lesson that the current political and military scene teaches is not merely that we must be ready to make the sacrifices, in money and perhaps civil liberties, necessary to maintain a great military establishment, but also that we must really seek a political solution to war. This must be the primary plank of our foreign policy. All other policies must be subordinate to and in aid of this great political objective.

If our Air Report is to be of any service to the country, it will, I hope, make it doubly clear that present world political institutions and relationships are completely intolerable; that the United States must stop thinking in terms of what cannot be done; and that it must instead focus its entire foreign political policy on eliminating war as an institution of human affairs.