“National Sovereignty” Concept Cripples U.N.’s Mandate

 [In this third installment drawn from the July 22, 1945 entry, my father presciently identifies the problems the new United Nations organization will face, especially due to its adoption of the slippery concept of “national sovereignty.” In many ways, this entry foreshadows the rocky road that the UN has travelled since its founding, particularly the Cold War-era face-offs between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Whether it’s from China, Libya or the U.S. itself, the constant invocation of National Sovereignty by U.N. member countries shows no signs of dissipating.]

 July 22, 1945 (Ft. Jackson, S.C.), con’t.

…We may already have congratulated ourselves on the part we played in the drafting of the United Nations Charter at San Francisco, and on the part we now expect to play in whatever international organization is established under the charter. But our congratulations should be well-tempered with caution. The document on which we are preparing to set our Congressional stamp of approval is well booby-trapped with those supposedly rational words and phrases which technological developments have made largely obsolete in the modern world. We may bandy them about in good faith, but when we shape national policy on them, we’d better be damned sure we know what we’re talking about before we act.

“National sovereignty” was a phrase stressed more, perhaps, than any other at the Conference, and it’s by all odds the most dangerous. For what does “national sovereignty” mean in today’s world? The most common interpretation seems to be that the administration of domestic affairs is solely the concern of the respective national governments. This, at least, is the best that the delegates to San Francisco would allow themselves publically to express, though if they are the able men they’re supposed to be, they must all privately have realized that this interpretation is little more than a verbal evasion for the time being of a practical problem which must be faced repeatedly whenever the international organization begins to function. For it is simply a backhanded statement of isolationism (You let me alone, and I’ll let you alone), and  thus at the very beginning a flat admission that the nations are not willing to attempt to enforce that international law and order which could be their only justification for joining together in the first place.

Of course this is an overstatement of the situation. But it’s better to see it that way than to attempt to hide it or minimize it. Its most optimistic supporters admit that the charter is only a hopeful beginning. At least it gets most of the nations on the world peacefully together under one roof. What goes on after that admittedly depends on the willingness of the great powers, or the US and the USSR, to cooperate. But it isn’t clearly pointed out that international cooperation must inevitably mean a continuing compromise on matters which are still considered to be purely domestic in nature. Until “national sovereignty” is whittled down to about the present significance of “state sovereignty” in the US, no international organization will have a ghost of a chance of keeping the world at peace.

This is going to [be] a tough job of whittling, when most of it must be done by two nations of such divergent political opinion and practice as America and Russia. We want the Russians to come a certain distance towards democratic capitalism. We must then be prepared to move a certain distance towards democratic communism. I say this without meaning that Russian communism is at present markedly democratic. We believe that much is lacking in that respect, though we must concede that millions of Russians are apparently well-satisfied with their government, and convinced that we Americans are politically backward in certain respects. This is certainly not a situation which can be helped by name-calling. But we should insist on steadily expanding facilities for the interchange of unbiased news, as well as facts and figures on industrial production and military strength. Among nations which honestly desire to remain at peace with each other there can be no reason for suppressing such information, and its dissemination in reliable, public bulletins should have the effect of dissipating that unhealthful atmosphere of intrigue and distrust with which nations have habitually carried on their diplomatic relations. Texas doesn’t feel injured when Massachusetts knows how much oil it produces, or how many airplanes. The members of an international organization which means business should invite the publication of all such devious facts.

The possibilities of such forms of international cooperation are as numerous as the problems which the nations of the world share in common. But we will never see them realized if we place our hopes in the formal signing of documents and treaties, and the dispensation of high-minded advice. Ours is the potential power, and therefore the responsibility, to set practical examples of cooperation for the maintenance of international law and order. There’ll be no law and order in those places where people have no food and shelter and clothing. In those places it’s our responsibility to provide the essentials of life as far as our means allow without the actual deprivation of any of our own citizens of these essentials. Our business sense should tell us, if it’s as keen as we claim, that we won’t get something valuable without paying a good price for it. International order and peace in a world so terribly devastated by war comes at a high price. Millions of American men are still paying that price in the actual  waging of war. But most Americans have a chance to get off incomparably easy as compared with the peoples of the rest of the world. Near the all time material peak of their standard of living, in spite of the war, they have only consent to the slight cut in that standard which will be necessary to supply the peoples of devastated areas with the means of staying alive and starting a new community life from scratch.

Put didactically, as I have done it, this sounds like an easy thing to do. But put practically to Sam Jones and family, in the form of continued rationing so that our ships can cart off to foreign countries some of the things “we’ve been fighting for,” it will be near to a political impossibility. In the abstract, perhaps, it won’t be so hard to convince Sam that primarily we’re fighting for a peaceful world where all men will be able to enjoy a larger share of the things which make life more pleasant, – the beef steaks and the automobiles. But then tell him that he’ll have to wait a little longer than he expected for his own postwar beefsteak and automobile, and he’ll write to his senator: “Dear Bill: How much longer is this country of our going to play Santa Claus to those damned foreigners? Cut out sending them good stuff that American citizens can use right her and now!”

Already this outcry is rising like an Anvil Chorus throughout the nation’s newspapers. And no doubt it’s rising to a roar in Congressional mail. That’s public opinion. The poor Congressmen have little choice. Cut down UNRRA shipments. Stop feeding civilian populations in liberated and conquered countries. Relax rationing at home. No foreign loans without guaranteed security….

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“Irrational” Governments Doomed to Failure

 [In this excerpt, a continuation of the long journal entry he made on July 22, 1945, my father makes the case that tyrannical, nihilistic and “irrational”  governments — including Nazi Germany — must inevitably fail, though they may take decades to do so. His exposition is interesting both for its historical perspective as World War II neared its conclusion, and for its current relevance to the popular uprisings against tyrannical regimes now occurring throughout the Middle East. When he writes of the American government that “Irrational elements weaken it, and a preponderance of irrationality, long prolonged, will destroy it,” it seems a caution tailor made for our current political landscape, where right-wing rhetoric and policy — on topics ranging from climate change to the “threat” posed by public employees’ unions — long ago dispensed with hard facts and rational discourse.]

 July 22, 1945 (Ft. Jackson, S.C.), con’t.

… Thus total military victory in this war will not be a total vindication of American government. On the contrary, it will be a dearly-bought opportunity to reorganize our government in such a way that America’s undoubted power may be used to improve living conditions generally for all the inhabitants of the world. This isn’t dreamy-minded altruism, but an historical imperative of any government any time in history. A government of any description is a social organization entrusted with the maintenance of law and order which are at the foundation of any civilized society. This is a responsibility which is automatically commensurate with the government’s power. When a government shirks, or neglects, or makes a mockery of this responsibility, it that far limits its power. And despite age-old traditions, and constitutions, and armed forces, it will eventually be discarded if it continues to fail of fulfilling its primary responsibility of maintaining law and order.

I don’t speak of “law and order” in a narrow legalistic sense; the Nazi government had its law and order, but in such a form that violence was done to ineradicable aspirations of millions of human beings for economic and intellectual freedom. Tyranny and persecution are not legitimate functions of any government from the point of view of the people being governed, and the deadly opposition of tyrannized and persecuted peoples is as sure the recurrence of the seasons. Total annihilation of these slave peoples would be the only method of stilling their rebellion, and total annihilation of a continental population is not yet a perfected human technique, though the Germans did make a promising advance in that direction. My guess, however, is that the regenerative powers of the human race will continue to outrun its destructive techniques for some time to come, at least as long as will concern anyone now alive. Persons who hold a contrary point of view, of course, and hope to see the entire human game played out to a finish in the twentieth century will continue to devise political and mechanical means of implementing their nihilistic theories, whether or not they have the inspirational guidance of such a leader as Hitler. And they won’t all be Germans or Japs.

Persons, on the other hand, who believe that this nihilism is leading the world down a blind alley, and this presumably includes the great majority of the men governing our country, should be interested in means of combating this abortive trend, and of getting the world pointed towards the goals named or suggested in the United States Constitution, and other documents which are professed still to be the foundation of American government.

This is a peculiar world we have today, in the sense that the words and phrases we have used to describe the relationships of its various peoples are now often quite inadequate for that purpose. Vocabulary, of course, like all things human, shows evolutionary changes, but it is, nevertheless, just about the most conservative of our departments. Words and phrases are naturally intended to supply our minds with ideas, which are necessary as a starting point for our rational actions. (And human civilization, of course, differs from animal societies only in its rational, and irrational, elements. Beavers, for instance, have never shown a development among themselves of the principle of the division of labor, which we may call an example of human rationality, nor have they seized on certain victims among themselves, to be slowly dissected to death, which is solely a triumph of human irrationality. Beavers, like all created beings with the exception of man, are strictly non-rational; and so spend no time worrying about how to improve or degrade themselves.)

Irrationality, therefore, doesn’t indicate the absence of mind, but simply, according to civilized standards, the misuse of the mind. Naturally no civilization can tolerate an irrational government such as the Nazis attempted. Insofar as such a government succeeds in perpetuating and extending its power, chaos and bestiality are the inevitable results. The fact that civilization has historically always asserted itself over chaos, has always, in the long run, dissolved predominantly irrational governments is sufficient proof for most of us that things were meant to be that way, so we may as well cooperate to the best of our ability.

Our philosophers concluded fairly early that, according to the conclusion of social experience to date, the Nazi government was highly irrational, and consequently not long for this world. And the American people, a bit slower than their philosophers, nevertheless soon gained an understanding that Nazi aggression on human rights challenged their way of living, which respected those rights, and they inevitably joined the opposition to the Nazis. And the defeat of the Nazis was inevitable, though it might well have taken sixty years rather than six.

If we want to save ourselves a repetition of this world misery in the not so distant future, now is the time for us to remember that our government operates under the same historical laws which applied to the Nazi government. Irrational elements weaken it, and a preponderance of irrationality, long prolonged, will destroy it. We’ll not be wise to forget that we must carry a large share of the blame for the original Axis aggression because of our irrational behavior, as a nation, in the past….

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