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The Political Order and the Burden of External Relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Paul Y. Hammond
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Extract

One of the major questions about foreign policy concerns the level of effort: How much should the state extract from the internal political system in order to pursue its external objectives? As posed, the issue involves the control of resources, and although the resources it deals with usually include material resources, the limiting factors are political. It should not be stretching the meaning of political things (although it would be changing the frame of reference) to identify the issue as one of allocating political “assets” among several (in this case, two major) sectors to deal with political risks or threats. It is easy enough to identify this allocative function as a requirement of independent governments and quite another to establish what is required to achieve it.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , April 1967 , pp. 443 - 464
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1967

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References

1 The Comte de Saint-Germain, who as French war minister at the end of the ancien régime doubled the size of the French army, later wrote in defense of the way he had done it: ”It would be destruction to a nation if it were deprived of its best elements. As things are, the army must inevitably consist of the scum of the people and of all those for whom society has no use” (as quoted in Speier, Hans, Social Order and the Risks of War [New York 1952], 335)Google Scholar.

2 Beuchema, Herman, ”The Social and Political Aspects of Conscription: Europe's Experience,” in Clarkson, J. D. and Cochran, T. C., eds., War as a Social Institution (New York 1949), 119.Google Scholar

3 “Political Modernization: America vs. Europe,” World Politics, xviii (April 1966), 378.Google Scholar

4 A Letter on the Genius and Dispositions of the French Government (Philadelphia 1810), 5.Google Scholar

5 Walsh expresses the limits against which traditional orders were thrust as follows: “It was computed by the most celebrated writers of political arithmetic, that no state could maintain at one time, without absolute ruin, more than one hundredth part of its military population in arms” (p. 6). In his attack on revolutionary domestic and international politics, Ferrero has described the chaos that resulted in Europe as follows: “Crazed with fear to the point of violence, these regimes had completely ignored the limits beyond which force becomes suicidal. The guillotine, terrorization, tyranny by the police, the totalitarianism of the Consulate and the Empire—these were their methods of preserving internal order. And in their foreign policy they relied on war without rules, ephemeral victories, confiscations, unilateral annexations, oppressive treaties, despotic protectorates, wholesale manufacture of counterfeit republics, and, under the Empire, artificial monarchies” (Ferrero, Guglielmo, The Reconstruction of Europe [New York 1941], 57Google Scholar).

6 Ropp, Theodore, War in the Modern World, rev. ed. (New York 1962), 107, 110–11Google Scholar. Meeting the quotas for the army remained a problem from 1792 until 1814. It varied in difficulty depending upon the changing popularity of the regime and its changing fortunes in war. How expeditiously the draft quotas were filled was not simply a reflection of the sentiments of prospective recruits. Often it was more an indication of how energetically the department officials carried out their assignments. Desertions were a reflection of troop morale, and the French armies were, because of their new tactics, both peculiarly vulnerable to desertion and all the more dependent upon mass recruitment. Holtman, Robert B., in his Napoleonic Propaganda (Baton Rouge 1950), 222–36Google Scholar, has conscientiously traced the ups and downs of government popularity and of recruitment for and desertion from the army.

7 Historical findings on the state of the French economy during the period are summarized in Cobban, Alfred, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (Cambridge 1964), 68–80Google Scholar.

8 Gershoy, Leo, The French Revolution and Napoleon(New York 1964), 459–62Google Scholar; Cameron, Ronde E., France and the Economic Development of Europe, 1800–1914(Princeton 1961), 26Google Scholar.

9 Aldington, Richard, The Duke(New York 1943), 382Google Scholar.

10 Faber, M., Sketches of the Internal State of France(Philadelphia 1812), 256Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., 212. For a concise statement, made before the development of twentieth-century totalitarianism, of the totalitarian scope of Bonapartism, see Fisher, H. A. L., Bonapartism(Oxford 1908), chap. 2.Google Scholar

12 Pp. 19–20.

13 Craig, Gordon A., The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945 (Oxford and New York 1956), 40, 41.Google Scholar

14 Reflecting a narrower meaning of “revolutionary” as due to domestic unrest, it has been more common to think of this problem as though Jacobinism at once taxed and created the internal limits on national response. Thus, Walsh writes that the state that France challenged had to “contend, at the same time, against external attack, and against the danger of internal commotion . . .” (p. 16). In Crane Brinton's judgment, “there was little danger that the French Revolution might spread to Prussia” (A Decade of Revolution, 1789–1799 [New York 1934], 77Google Scholar).

15 Palmer, R. R., “Frederick the Great, Guibert, Biilow: From Dynastic to National War,” in Earle, Edward Mead, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler (Princeton 1952), 55Google Scholar.

16 Both are quoted in Walsh, 10, 11.

17 P. 5.

18 Consider the following characterization of Austria's situation in 1809, after the Austro-French Treaty of Schonbrunn: “Here was the Achilles’ heel of the old dynastic state of Austria; that the centralized efficient institutions required by the times could not be introduced without risking the defection of the historic political parties” (Kraehe, Enno K., Metternich's German Policy, Vol. I, The Contest with Napoleon, 1799–1814 [Princeton 1963], 119)Google Scholar.

19 “For 25 years Europe had been convulsed by an effort to achieve order through power, and to contemporaries the lesson was not its failure but its near success. It is not surprising then, that in their effort to create an alternative, the statesmen in Vienna looked back to a period which had known stability and that they identified this stability with its domestic arrangements” (Kissinger, Henry A., A World Restored [Cambridge, Mass., 1957], 172Google Scholar).

20 An excellent source on the Austrian army during the early nineteenth century, which indicates both the limited amount of reform and a persistent concern with ethnic nationalism, is de Peretsdorf, Ravichio, Notice sur l'organisation de l'armee autrichienne (Paris 1832)Google Scholar. Peretsdorf (p. 117), as does Ropp (p. 147), indicates that army units were not normally stationed in their home provinces. Other sources on the Austrian army are Regele, Iskar, Feldmarschall Radetzky (Vienna 1957)Google Scholar; Presland, John, Vae Victie: The Life of Ludwig von Benedek (New York 1934)Google Scholar; and von Preradovich, Nikolaus, Die Führungsschichten in Osterreich und Preussen (1804–1918) mit einem Ausblick bis zum Jahre 1945 (Wiesbaden 1955)Google Scholar.

21 British internal political reactions to the French Revolution have been written about extensively. Of particular relevance to the present treatment are Cobban, Alfred, ed., The Debate on the French Revolution (London 1950)Google Scholar; Brown, P. A., The French Revolution in English History (London 1918)Google Scholar; Wheeler, H . F. B. and Broadley, A. M., Napoleon and the Invasion of England: The Story of the Great Terror, 2 vols.(London 1908)Google Scholar; and MacCunnan, F. J., The Contemporary English View of Napoleon (London 1914)Google Scholar.

22 Ropp, 148–52; Holborn, Hajo, The Political Collapse of Europe (New York 1951), 39–41Google Scholar; Brogan, Denis W., The French Nation, 1814–1940 (New York 1957), esp. 138–44Google Scholar; Zeldin, Theodore, The Political System of Napoleon III (London 1958), esp. chaps. 10, 11.Google Scholar

23 Thomson, David, Europe Since Napoleon (New York 1957), 100; Craig, 65–68Google Scholar.

24 See Hittle, J. D., The Military Staff: Its History and Development (Harrisburg 1949), 120–27, 152–58, 194–210Google Scholar; Goerlitz, Walter, History of the German General Staff (New York 1953), 97–98Google Scholar; Wilkinson, Spenser, The Brain of an Army (London and New York 1890)Google Scholar; Hammond, Paul Y., Organizing for Defense (Princeton 1961), esp. 13–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, Franklyn A., Defense by Committee (London 1960), 36, 48–50.Google Scholar

25 Vagts, Alfred, Defense and Diplomacy (New York 1958), 387–95.Google Scholar

26 Nickerson, Hoffman, The Armed Horde, 1793–1939 (New York 1940), 244Google Scholar; Challener, Richard D., The French Theory of the Nation in Arms, 1866–1939 (New York 1955), 106–7Google Scholar.

27 As quoted in Earle, Edward Mead, ed., Modern France: Problems of the Third and Fourth Republics (Princeton 1951), 40–41Google Scholar.

28 Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton 1959), chap. 1.Google Scholar

29 Fay, Sidney Bradshaw, The Origins of the World War (New York 1931), 40–41Google Scholar.

30 In a badly neglected field, two published accounts of some utility on economic mobilization problems—both in pre-Keynesian terms, of course—are Bonn, M. J., German War Finance (New York 1916)Google Scholar, and Clough, S. B. and Cole, C. W., Economic History of Europe (Boston 1941), chap. 21Google Scholar. The latter is an excellent summary of economic mobilization in World War I, although, as it is without useful footnotes, it is a dead end for the historian.

31 The historiography of the war has done a disservice to this issue. In their concern to achieve balanced judgments about premeditation (after earlier efforts to prove devil theories), historians have been at pains to show accurately how limited were the war objectives with which particular states entered the war. See, e.g., Gatzke, Hans W., Germany's Drive to the West (Baltimore 1950)Google Scholar. If one must find someone to blame or exonerate, the presence or absence of premeditation is a good way to do it. But judging premeditation has limited utility to the understanding of statecraft in this particular situation. Gatzke and other historians neglect to consider the political vulnerability of a regime that is dependent upon quick victory for its own war plans. Once the quick victory fails to occur, the state is forced into raising war aims to counteract internal political disappointments. Exporting the costs of the war then enters a new phase. In World War I historiography, the significance of the limited character of the war aims should be discounted in the light of the gamble to shift war costs to the other side. A country willing to run that risk was willing to raise its war aims if the risk failed. Some substance is lent this view by the militancy of public opinion at the outbreak of the war and for at least several years before it. For an excellent recent summary of the militancy of public opinion, see Howard, Michael, “Lest We Forget,” Encounter (January 1964), 61–67Google Scholar.

32 Hertzberg, Sidney, “Can Old-Time Diplomacy Check Soviet Power? Mr. Kennan and the Politics of Containment,” Commentary, in (April 1952), 336–43Google Scholar. Hertzberg argues that Kennan is a “classical reactionary.” A similar theme is developed in Whelan, Joseph G., “George Kennan and His Influence on American Foreign Policy,” Virginia Quarterly Review, xxxv (Spring 1959), 196–220Google Scholar.

33 See, e.g., Thompson, Robert, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam (London 1966)Google Scholar.

34 Kaufmann, William W., The McNamara Strategy (New York 1964), chap. 2Google Scholar. For a detailed account of Franklin D. Roosevelt's maneuvers to evade the pressures from his own staff to tie him down, see Hammond, Paul Y., “Directives for the Occupation of Germany: Th e Washington Controversy,” in Stein, Harold, ed., American Civil-Military Decisions (University, Ala., 1963), 380–82, 397–400, 408–17, 420–21, 425–26.Google Scholar

35 George Kennan and Walter Lippmann are eloquent proponents of this viewpoint, but others are equally to be associated with it, though each approaches it from his own premises.

36 Stanley Hoffmann makes this point in his “Discord in Community: The North Atlantic Area as a Partial International System,” in Wilcox, F. O. and Haviland, H. F. Jr., eds., The Atlantic Community: Progress and Prospects (New York 1963), 11Google Scholar. Although he is often identified with another viewpoint, Karl W. Deutsch makes a similar point in his “Toward an Inventory of Basic Trends and Patterns in Comparative and International Politics,” American Political Science Review, LIV (March 1960), 46Google Scholar. See also Nye, Joseph S. Jr., “East African Economic Integration,” in International Political Communities: An Anthology (Garden City 1966), 436.Google Scholar