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International Prestige, Competition and Peaceful Coexistence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Amitai Etzioni
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Extract

There is room for unilateral action to improve international relations in areas other than nuclear test bans, the cessation of bomb production, or general disarmament. One such area—the subject of this article—concerns the effects of international competition for prestige on peaceful coexistence.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , June 1962 , pp. 21 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1962

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References

(1) “Dulles made it his first order of business to secure for his person and policies the support of the Congress and of public opinion at large; in this endeavor, he was eminently successful. But as a result something happened to him that had never happened to Mr. Acheson: he became the prisoner of a public opinion—in good measure created by his own words and deeds which limited his freedom of action…” Morgenthau, Hans J., Prospect for a New Foreign Policy, Commentary (02 1961), p. 107.Google Scholar

(2) Herz, John, International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York, Columbia University Press, 1959)Google Scholar. See also Etzioni, Amitai, The Hard Way to Place: a New Strategy (New York, Collier, 1961), ch. VIII.Google Scholar

(3) This in part the case because the two camps had some shared values to begin with, such as the stress on technological and scientific achievement. But this does not necessitate or explain the acceptance of specific evaluations of the other, e.g. which particular technological achievement is “higher”.

(4) The same point holds in intra-polit-ical systems. The most stable coalition governments are composed of parties which attach different significance to various policy spheres, for instance, religious and secular parties. This allows each party to make concessions in matters which are less important to it and of much importance to the other party, and demand in exchange concessions in those matters of greater import to it than to the other coalition partners. When there is consensus on the saliency of the various policy spheres such concessions are impossible. This point is spelled out in the author's “Kulturkampf or Coalition: The Case of Israel”.

(5) Not all non-violent activities enhance place. For instance a disarmament competition is not necessarily a highly desirable one. Russia and the United States “competed” for a while over sire of cuts of military manpower, but this led only to a greater reliance on nuclear bombs in war plans.

(6) This is attained in bi-partisan foreign policy; in cases in which the legislature is controlled by the majority of a party other than that which holds the executive power; through coalition governments; and through the very change of the party in office.

(7) In particular in cases they have a shared or coordinated representation such as those E.E.C. has in the Wester Union; the Nordic Council ins. G.A.T.T.; or the West often has in the General Assembly or political committees of the U.N.

(8) The editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, summarizing the opinions of 18 scientists participating in a special issue on space explorations [April 1961] stated: “The talk of ‘dominating Earth by dominating space’, of military Moon bases, of the strategic importance of Mars and Venus, not to speak of the colonization of other planets […], has little or no relation to the realities of military balance of power in the foreseeable future […] The Soviet spaceships as well as the great variety of miniaturized American satellites should be looked upon entirely as feats of scientific exploration whose only non-scientific implications are in accretions to national prestige” (170). A similar position was taken by Dr Jerome B. Wiesner, now chief science adviser to President Kennedy, in a report to President Eisenhower.

(9) Ralph E. Lapp suggests that a moon trip will yield a pinch of moondust which would be an “astronomical rosetta stone”; evidence of life in space would have philosophical repercussions as profound as those which followed Copernicus' and Galileo's conclusions that the earth was not the center of the universe (Man and Space, New York, Harper, 1961).Google Scholar

(10) “It would be insane for Britain to devote any considerable part of her resources to such an adventure, while our people remain so largely uneducated, our slums so great a national disgrace and our contribution to the welfare of the underdeveloped nations so miserably inadequate”; Kingsley Martin, Reflections on Outer Space, New Statesman, 08 27, 1960.Google Scholar

* This article was written while the author was on the staff of the Institute of War and Peace Studies.