The Problem of Security

Abstract

IN spite of all the movement of public opinion in this country both for and against the League of Nations and the World Court, it is doubtful if the central problem, that of peace itself, is fully or clearly understood eveninthose circles which discuss most frequently the problems of international politics. For we have an inherent obstacle to the understanding of even the elements of the problem and that obstacle lies in the fact that the problem has not been a real one in our own national history. International peace rests upon national security. There can be no sound progress towards international peace so long as nations live under the fear of aggression from their neighbors. Under those conditions there is only one thing which responsible statesmen can do, and that is prepare for defence. The French have long been trying to teach us the simple lesson that there must be security before there can be disarmament, but it is a lesson which we find hard to learn, simply because we have security and do not need to arm, at least by land, to maintain it. All that we need to do is to make sure that the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans are not dried up. There are two kinds of security, natural and artificial: that which is supplied by geographic frontiers, by protecting distances, or strategic location, and on the other hand that which states create, embodied for the most part in the fighting services and the organizations of military and naval supply. So long as the political world remains an unorganized assemblage of national states such as we have now, the barriers which consist of fighting services are just as vital and as legitimate as those which consist of oceans or mountain ranges. But it is just this legitimacy of defence which has created the chief problem in the field of security, for defence whatever one may say of it theoretically is also potential offense. The fundamental differences between the natural and the artificial means is that the latter tend to create other dangers. So long as these historical elements of the problem are all we have, there is no other way to lessen the danger of war, once it has broken out, than to insist strongly upon the rights of neutrals in case of conflict; trusting by this insistence to narrow the field of the disturbance and so protect the other states from its contagion. The World War changed all this. It is henceforth clear that in a world entangled in the interlacing credits of modern capitalism,-not to speak of other interests,-the localization of a conflict among the Great Powers at least is henceforth practically impossible. The scope of modern war, extending as it does throughout the whole sphere of economic and industrial activities, involves other nations inevi-