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243 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. vii (1946)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0243 and id is 1 raw text is: INTRODUCTION A WORLD society possessed of lim- itless destructive power on wings must be organized to serve the welfare and the freedom of the individual hu- man being or it will destroy itself. The disappearance of the center of Hiro- shima on August 6, 1945 put an end to any doubt about the capacity of our civilization to blast itself off the face of the earth. Concerning the alternative to destruction, however, how to pre- serve peace and avoid suicide, men and nations are far from seeing eye to eye. The first impulsive response to the menace of annihilation is to build up one's own national defenses-to strengthen spheres of influence, to reach out for distant naval and air bases, to increase armaments, to at- tempt to keep the secret of manufac- turing the atomic bomb while driving one's scientists to uncover, before some other nation does, new secrets of de- struction. However understandable, this traditional response remains what it always has been, the certain road to war. The far-flung bases of one power, even though established solely for its own protection, are seen by another power as the muzzles of so many guns. Competition in armaments inevitably demands ruthless competition for raw materials and markets-in short, eco- nomic war, with all that has meant in the exploitation of subject peoples. Most dangerous of all, the muddy atmosphere of international suspicion encourages and shelters the evil groups that really desire war. COMPETITIVE DEFENSE MEANS WAR Defense by competitive force belongs to the childhood of the race. It has al- ways invited war. Mastery of the air plus mastery of atomic energy now means that it will invite annihilation. The hope for peace and survival lies in putting an end to the possibility of pitting the people in one geographical area of this small globe against the peo- ple in another area. How primitive this business of war between geographical areas really is! The enemies of Ameri- cans are not the British or the Russians or the Argentines; they are not even the Germans or the Japanese. The real enemies of Americans, as of all other people on earth, are the forces of igno- rance, exploitation, and aggression, and these forces exist among every people. If it is to find peace, mankind needs a new alignment of forces; instead of the oposition of peoples facing each other across political boundaries, it must sub- stitute the opposition of men of good will everywhere against ignorance, ex- ploitation, and aggression everywhere, to prevent the latter from seizing power anywhere. Such a horizontal alignment exists in every democratic nation and explains the solidarity of a federation like the United States of America. To extend the alignment to all mankind means ultimately at least so much federaliza- tion as is involved, first, in interna- tional pooling and control of the means to make war, and, second, in co-opera- tive efforts to raise the standard of liv- ing everywhere. The United Nations Organization is quite capable of evolv- ing into the instrument of such a world federation. But there has to be some- thing more than organization. For any degree of federation to succeed, ma- jority opinion among the constituent peoples needs to share a common aim, a common sense of values. The crucial question, therefore, is whether such a common aim exists or can be developed. If so, why do the great powers cling so blindly to complete freedom of action, to the fatal national sovereignty of old? vii

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