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Power Politics and World Organization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

John H. Herz
John H. Herz
Affiliation:
Howard University
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Extract

Le Pouvoir est la manifestation supreme de la peur que l'homme fait à luimême par ses efforts pour s'en libirer. Là est peut-être le secret le plus profond et obscur de l'histoire. Ferrero, Pouvoir, p. 43.

The current discussion of a future world order has made it plain that the problem of coming international relations is of a magnitude surpassing even that of winning the war. It is not intended here to add to the rising tide of concrete plans in this field, but rather to elucidate certain proposals in the light of some basic features of the present system of international relations and, starting from a clearer picture of what is, to seek to discriminate between what is desirable and undesirable, possible and utopian. Wrong concepts of the forces underlying the present system have too often produced “peace plans” built on the sands of wishful thinking, and therefore bound to be wrecked on the rocks of reality. Disappointment caused by the failure of ill-conceived devices, in turn, is apt to produce a “realism” which ridicules any attempt to discuss international relations in terms of a possible evolution toward a more integrated stage.

Power, in modern international relations, has been the ultimate means of deciding issues and adjusting relationships among the units constituting international society. The states have regarded themselves as “sovereign” entities, not subordinated to any superior political power nor guided in their power politics by considerations of an a-political, i.e., power-alien, nature.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 36 , Issue 6 , December 1942 , pp. 1039 - 1052
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1942

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References

1 Cf., for example, the very thorough investigations of the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace, results of which have been published in Nos. 369 and 379 of International Conciliation (Apr., 1941, and Apr., 1942). An excellent bibliography is contained in the Bulletin of the Commission, Vol. 2, Nos. 5 and 6 (May-June, 1942), prepared by Hans Aufriebt.

2 Among these we need not include proposals which, though sometimes under high-sounding new names such as geopolitics, are nothing but elaborations of the existing system of limitless power politics. It is significant that Geo-Politik has been the ideological basis of Nazi foreign policy. Its adoption by the victors of this war would not make the system any different from what it was when Haushofer inspired Hitler. However, it must be recognized that such proposals contain the only realistic alternative to a more integrated international system. Future wars for supremacy would be wars between a few super-powers organized in Grossräumen. There is no going back to the system of sixty independent nation-states.

3 Schwarzenberger, G., Power Politics (1941), p. 271.Google Scholar

4 This would probably appear first of all in the sphere of military organization' regarding the control of the “international army” or “federal police force,” which after all, must be stationed somewhere, with ultimate command emanating from somebody, etc.

5 The foregoing discussion has been concerned with federalism as a proposal for world government, and not with the various plans propounded for one or another regional federations of existing states. Such schemes may be entirely practicable, but obviously would leave the major problem, that of competing power units, unsolved.

6 The problem of identifying the aggressor has to be distinguished from the question of who, with respect to the underlying conflict, is right or wrong. This latter problem involves that of how “fair” and “just” decisions of international disputea can be obtained—a question touched briefly at the end of this article.

7 S. de Madariaga.

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