Collective and Economic Security

Abstract

POLITICAL and Economical Planning (P E T) has issued two broadsheets dealing with the economics of collective security and instruments of economic security. In the former, relations between economic policy and a fresh effort to realize collective security are discussed and the necessity of military support for economic collaboration is emphasized, and the importance of ascertaining how far geography and the balance of strategic forces would permit military assistance if needed before inviting smaller countries into a system of collective economic security. The maintenance of peace through collective political and economic security involves the application of principles similar to those which would be appropriate in time of war. The measures of self-defence now required of a system of collective security may be classified as those required for preserving and promoting the free exchange of goods and services between members of the system; steps needed to ensure that the advantages of participation in economic relations on those terms should no longer be available to nations which do not subscribe to the conceptions inherent in the free exchange system and which now only participate in that system to destroy; and measures for extending assistance to neutral countries to enable them with safety to enter the orbit of the free system. Civilization's resources, it is urged, should be used to maintain civilization, and the main economic implications of a policy of collective security are discussed in some detail, including the question of reciprocal aid, the utilization of limited resources, the difficulty of overvalued currencies, the possibility of organizing markets and Nazi political and economic exploitation. If civilization is to be preserved it cannot be in isolation. Its basis is international, and there is no alternative to collective measures.