LAWFUL POWER
By W. T. WELLS
It is a notable advance. To recognise the existence of a need is to take the first step towards meeting it, but though it is reasonable to hope that after this war there may be a genuine will in the most powerful States in the world to overcome the difficulties that barred the way to the creation of an international police force after the last war, those difficulties will still exist. In character they are both political and technical, but the basic problem is political. Nationalism, not internationalism, is the force that has inspired and knit together the resistance of the United Nations to Axis aggression. The Americans are fighting to preserve the American way of life ; the Russian war against Germany has evoked a wave of self-conscious patriotism probably without parallel in history ; Mr: Churchill has announced, without provoking any dissent in this country worthy of political consideration, that he will not preside over the liquida- tion of the British Empire. The rights that the great Powers have claimed for themselves they have recognised as the pre- rogatives of other nations ; in this respect the principles of the Atlantic Charter have been vindicated in Moscow and again in Teheran.
Control over its armed forces is the highest expression of a nation's independence, and forethought in applying a nation's brains to its own peculiar defensive problems has been the crux of national sur- vival, as with Russian development of artillery. weapons and British development of the Spitfire. In these circumstances the prospects of inducing the Powers to unlearn the lessons of self-help that ex- perience has so painfully taught, and of persuading them to encourage the best of their military and technical brains—and nothing less would suffice—to enter the service of some other authority, whose capacity to maintain the peace had not been tested, are remote indeed.
Experience before this war offers no solution to this problem. The nearest that the League of Nations approached to a practicable scheme was the Herriot Plan of November, 1932. This provided that the national armies of Europe, reduced to a militia level, should be deprived of bombing aircraft and of powerful mobile land material, especially heavy artillery and tanks such as were necessary for delivering attacks on permanent fortifications. But a restricted amount of powerful mobile material was to be retained by specialised contingents of long-term soldiers, who were to be maintained by each State, and held at the disposal of the League for common action against an aggressor."* The international character of these contingents would clearly be a farce ; and as for the restriction of " the powerful mobile material " that is to be at their disposal, the greater the deterrent power of the forces of a genuinely peace-loving State the better—particularly if it is in danger of being matched against a country with the vast industrial war-potential of Germany. The whole scheme has an air of unreality.
See W. M. Jordan's Great Britain, France and the German Problem (Oxford University Press) Ch. XIII,.p. 16'7.
The substitution of an international planning authority, with no control over any forces, but co-ordinating plans for international action to deal with specific emergencies, would be no more hopeful. It would provide commanders and staffs with none of the practical experience in the handling of international forces that would be so necessary in concerting effective action. , And it would involve either the artificial stimulation of a permanent opposition by the exclusion of certain Powers from consultation in the formation of plans, or else the promotion of a brisk trade in military secrets ; for example, Hungary would doubtless be happy to exchange the plans of action concerted against a hypothetical Bulgarian attack on Yugoslavia for knowledge of the plans prepared to oppose a Hungarian attack on Czechoslovakia.
If plans for an international force recruited from national contin- gents -and for an international military planning authority without control over forces until an erriergency arises and the well-disposed governments place them at its disposal, are both rejected, what possi- bility remains? At first sight only a permanent international force held at the disposal of the international authority. What would be the relationship of such a force to the existing national forces? How would it be recruited, where would it be trained, above all, how would it be equipped? What would be the prospects, in a highly nationalistic world, of the effective pooling' of technical secrets for the benefit of the international force?
Stated in this way, the problem can easily be made to appear almost insoluble, and the maintenance of peace, therefore, as un- attainable an ideal after the war as it proved to be before it. But it is highly qUestionable whether this is the right way to approach the problem at all. The war will have been won not only by the United Nations, but in large measure by the united forces of the United Nations. British admirals have served under American generals, and vice versa. Formations like the Fifth Army have been composed of British and American elements, while General Alexander's Eighteenth Army Group, which drove the Axis out of Africa, was composed of French as well as Btitish and American troops, and American aviators have served under the Chinese High Command. To meet this fusion of forces under what are, in fact, international commands, a whole new technique of military co- operation has been and is being evolved.
After the war it is likely that disordered conditions will continue to obtain in many parts of the world, and that it will remain neces- sary to keep relatively large forces in being to hold the situation in check. Every nation will be anxious to demobilise its forces so far as possible, and in these circumstances a distribution of duties between the United Nations is likely to prove acceptable and even popular. What will be necessary, as a step towards the creation of a permanent international force, will be to keep in being the international character of the United Nations' forces, and, if pos- sible, to foster and develop it. It may be hoped, for instance, that as a result of the decisions of the Teheran Conference and of their execution the Russians may be able and willing to share in the international chain of command. And the longer these inter- national forces are kept in being, and the more nations are brought within their scope, the more problems there will be to solve, and the more, in consequence, the technique of international military co- operation will develop.
On such a development of existing international force, not on the formation of a brand new international force organised on a priori principles, must rest the hope of the creation of an effective instru- ment of lawful power. To what point this development will ulti- mately lead it is not at the present stage fruitful to inquire. That at every stage it will be beset by difficulties is clear. The nature of the body that will control the operations and training of these international forces, which it is hoped will become a permanent feature of international lift, raises at once a problem of immense complexity. Equally difficult, and only less important, will be the financial provision that will have to be made for the employment of national units in international .forces for international purposes. The time to jump these fences will come, but at present we have not reached them. The immediate task is "to adapt the organisations that the war has created and to perfect the techniques that it has made necessary. And while the essential problem is political, to maintain the present unity of purpose, and to superimpose it on the keen national lines of the Allied countries, military co-operation is one of the best ways 'of encouraging a realistic approach to political problems. It is possible that, if in the transition period after the end of hostilities British and American troops help to garrison some parts of Eastern Europe, and Russians help to garrison disturbed areas in Middle, Eastern and Mediterranean countries, a number of fears and jealousies may be lulled to rest.
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