The Function of Great and Small Powers in the International Organization

Abstract

To discuss function of smaller and of Great Powers in international organization is not easy. We are in a state of transition between a crumbling world and a world to be reorganized on what we hope will prove better foundations. Those foundations are not agreed upon yet and their chief characteristic so far is, as is understandable at end of this second world war, an unwonted emphasis on power, which in itself contains no principle of organization. The notion of function is at same time too sweeping and too narrow to express many differences in motives of action or in capacity for action which may be traced back to fact of being a smaller rather than a Great Power; smaller is a comparative word and the smaller is therefore a purely relative notion which does not denote a homogeneous group or category. All we can do today is to try to visualize a possible new international order, without having yet come to grips with, or even probed, all forces out of which new international order will eventually emerge. A few things we know already. We know that modern war requires huge spaces and an almost unlimited industrial capacity; that range and destructive power of new weapons are becoming almost infinite; that, with progress of technique, cost of preparation for war cannot be borne by any but very strongest financial units; and that materials needed for such preparation are widely dispersed in world. We know that war, now become total, has swept away many a distinction which was valuable in past, such as that between combatants and non-combatants. We know further that, as technique makes world increasingly smaller, war is bound to affect increasingly large parts of it soon after breaking out. Neutrality, therefore, no longer spells salvation; nor does even remoteness. It is only so long as Great Powers remain united that hostilities, should they begin anywhere, may be kept from spreading or quenched. This makes it a moral duty, towards themselves and towards world, for Great Powers to preserve unity. Failure to do so, even if none of Great Powers themselves begins hostilities will sooner or later inevitably open gates of war. This fact was not sufficiently taken into account in earlier attempt to create international order through League of Nations. It was thought that pressure of public opinion within League would always suffice. But there could be no such pressure on States which had left League either of their own accord or otherwise. It was also thought that, whatever