INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS: A SURVEY
By PROF. M. VENKATARANGAIYA
The
contemporary world continues to be a world of tensions. They are to a great
extent the legacy left behind by the second world war and they have not
weakened in spite of the lapse of seventeen years after the close of the war.
They centre themselves broadly round four problems–the problem of the cold war
between Soviet Russia and the United States, the liquidation of colonialism,
the disappearance of racial prejudice, and the modernisation of the
underdeveloped and the developing countries of the world. Any survey of
international affairs has to deal in the main with these four problems.
In
a sense the cold war is a war for world supremacy and it is similar to the wars
in which the European people indulged in the course of the last five
centuries–from the time that Columbus discovered America and Vasco da Gama
discovered the direct sea-route to India. Its proto-types are the Anglo-Spanish
and the Anglo-Dutch wars of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, the
Anglo-French wars of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, and the
Anglo-German wars of the present century. The rivals for world supremacy are
different to-day. They are the Soviet Union and the United States. It is true
that between them there are also ideological differences and that in a way they
are fighting to make their ideologies supreme over the whole world. But to the
extent to which they feel that the particular ideology for which each stands
can become supreme only when its own territorial supremacy is established one
should regard the real struggle as a struggle for territorial power.
A
new situation has now arisen in the history of the cold war. In the past it was
through the building up of powerful military forces and armaments that wars for
the acquisition of empires were fought. On the same analogy both the Soviet
Union and the United States have been piling up their arms all these years. But
these arms are not of the conventional type. They are in the form of nuclear
weapons which have unimaginable destructive capacity. They realise that if
there is to be war for settling disputes between them and for determining which
of them should become the sole world power it is bound to be a nuclear war.
Through their tests they have been perfecting these weapons and spending
fabulous sums on their manufacture. But there is now a doubt in them as to how
long they can go on spending such large amounts of money on armaments and
whether it is worthwhile doing so.
In
spite of the large increase in its national income Soviet Russia feels the
strain of the huge expenditure on armaments. The strain is all the greater
because though the standard of living of an average Soviet citizen is far
higher now than what it was in the days of the czarist rule it is considerably
below the standard in other Western countries and in the United States. There
is a large amount of clamour for less expenditure on defence forces and more on
the production of consumers’ goods. Even in the United States the limitless
expenditure on defence is causing much strain.
Apart
from this there is an increasing doubt in both countries whether it is
advisable to resort to war if it is to be a war with nuclear weapons which it
will surely be. Nuclear war, it is now recognised, will be suicidal to both the
parties because of the scale of destruction which it is sure to bring about and
the speed with which it would bring it about. In such a war there will be no
victor or vanquished. There is no guarantee that an effective anti-missile will
be invented for preventing the missiles directed against any country. A nuclear
war is considered to be a war in which there is really no defence against
attack.
This
has led to the conclusion that expenditure on armaments is not only too heavy
even for the richest country to bear but that it is also useless. If the use of
nuclear weapons is suicidal no man in his senses will resort to them. Why then
pile up these weapons when they are not going to be used at all? Such piling up
as is now taking place is also extremely dangerous because though no statesman
will deliberately use them there is always the risk that they may be
inadvertently used and thus create a situation which will bring about reprisals
and usher in a regular nuclear war.
It
has been estimated that the world’s arms bill comes to 120,000 million dollars
a year, equal to between eight and nine per cent of its annual output of goods
and services, and at least two thirds of the entire national income of all the
underdeveloped countries, and that seven countries–the
United States, the Soviet Union, Communist China, Britain, Canada, West Germany
and France–account for 85 per cent
of the world’s military outlay. If what is now spent on armaments is utilized
for developing the natural and the human resources of the
underdeveloped countries the primary poverty from which they are suffering can
be eradicated in a decade. There is of course no limit to the peaceful uses of
what is saved on armaments.
It
is this realisation, along with the fear that the stockpile of nuclear weapons
may precipitate a nuclear war, that has given urgency to the solution of the
problem of disarmament. In the last fifteen years the four world powers met in
several conferences to solve the problem; later on there were conferences of
representatives often states. And still later the United Nations set up a
committee of eighteen states including those belonging to the Soviet and the
Western blocs and also the nbn-aligned neutral bloc–to go into the subject and
make recommendations for disarmament. It is this committee that is now sitting
at Geneva and the whole world is looking to it with hope and expectation for
some solution for complete disarmament so that it would be freed from the fear
of war.
What
are the prospects of this conference achieving success in a field where all
previous conferences failed? This is the question which all students of
international affairs are asking themselves. The absence of France from the
committee, though she is one of its members, and of Communist China, one of the
world’s great military powers, gives cause for pessimism. Moreover there is a
fundamental divergence between the Soviet and the American views on the
question of inspection and control without which no disarmament will be
effective. America stands for thorough inspection and control by an
International Agency to make sure that armaments are not secretly manufactured
and piled up. Soviet Russia is against it lest the agency should spy into her
secrets. But when once there is a sincere desire to effect disarmament there is
no question of military secrets or of spying into them. All the same the two
parties have not so far come to an agreement on this primary question.
There
are several factors, however, which give hope that the Geneva Conference may
succeed. A number of influential un-committed states like India are represented
on it. They are bound to throw their weight on persuading the two great nuclear
powers to come to some understanding on the points at issue. The threat put
forward by the United States, that unless a test-ban treaty is entered into
within two months she would resume her tests in the atmosphere, may also result
in making Russia come to an agreement on the issues involved. A more hopeful factor
is the emphasis which Krushchev has been placing on peaceful competition as a
better method of extending communism than recourse to war. It is now known that
Soviet society is much more politically mature now than in the days of Stalin.
The improvements brought about in the general economic conditions of the people
have made them less willing to be ruled arbitrarily by a dictatorial party and
the men at the top find it necessary to pay more attention to the wishes and
desires of the masses around. More important than this is the fact that it is
on the issue of war versus co-existence that a rift has arisen between
Kruschev and the Communists of China and he may therefore be in a mood to be
more reasonable in pleading for peaceful co-existence.
In
the history of every religion or faith sectarian viewpoints come to the
forefront sooner or later. Buddhism split itself into a Hinayana and a Mahayana
branch. Among the Jains there are the Digambaras and the Swetambaras.
Christianity became split up into a Greek Church, a Roman Catholic Church
and a Protestant Church. Differences rose between the Sunnis and the Shias
among the Muslims. It is no wonder that communism is also being split up into
an orthodox and a revisionist section. The former as represented by Communist
China stands for war–even a nuclear war–as the only method for settling issues
with the capitalist world. To her, peaceful co-existence is an impossibility,
and opposed to the basic principle of Marxism. Kruschev however has become more
conscious of the risks of nuclear war and pleads for the use of non-military
means to combat capitalism.
It is not possible here to summarise the views placed before the Geneva Conference by Soviet Russia and the United States on the details of the plan for disarmament. All those who have made an objective study of the question are agreed that, to be effective in preventing war, what is needed is not a reduction in armaments but universal and complete disarmament. It means that there should be no national military forces and that the only military force should be the world police force to be kept under the sole control of the United Nations Organisation. Such a disarmament will have to be carried out by stages. These stages must be, as one authority points out, long enough to ensure thorough verification, and short enough to demonstrate thorough progress–providing a guarantee that governments would not abandon the plan before its completion. There should also be an effective controlling and inspection agency for seeing that governments carry out the reduction in their armaments from stage to stage and that after complete disarmament is effected they will not secretly pile up arms. There will have to be several other details regarding the whole plan–details regarding the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, the agency to be entrusted with it and so on. And it will also be necessary to reorganise the United Nations, make it a sort of federal state with complete sovereignty on matters relating to war and armaments, and modifying the system of voting. All this shows that it will take several months, if not years, to work out a detailed plan for disarmament and that the Geneva Conference may have to sit long before completing its work. *
In
the solution of the problem of colonialism the world has made considerable
progress during the last seventeen years. Colonialism has been mostly
liquidated in Asia except for a few tiny outposts like Portugese Timore. Large
areas of Africa have also been freed from colonial rule. There is every
prospect that within a few more years the remaining British colonies like Kenya
and Uganda will become free. The seven years war in Algeria has practically
come to an end. General De Gaulle has shown statesmanship of the highest order
in coming to an agreement with the Algerian Nationalists. It is only the
Portugese that still hold on to their colonies in Angola and Mozambique. They
are not as yet in a mood to follow the example of the British or to learn any
lesson from what happened to them in Goa or what happened to the French in
Indo-China and Algeria. But here also there are two relieving features. Under
the influence of the Afro-Asian group the United Nations has taken a firm stand
on the early liberation of Portugese colonies. In addition
to this there is the growing pressure of the numerous independent African
states which it will not be possible for the Portugese to
resist. We may therefore conclude that colonialism of the type with which the
world has been familiar for the last four hundred years is practically dead.
This,
of course, does not mean that it will not be replaced by a new kind of
colonialism. After all, the essence of colonialism consists in the exercise of
either direct or indirect control by one people over another primarily in its
own interests. It need not necessarily take the form of conquest. The control
which Soviet Russia has over Eastern Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary etc., is
a form of colonialism. This is the new imperialism which is based on the creation
of satellite states. Over several areas of the Carribean and South America this
kind of control is exercised by the United States. There is keen competition
among the bigger powers to exercise similar control over several of the newly
freed states in Africa. It is a matter for speculation whether so long as
extremely big and rich states exist by the side of very small and poor states
such control can be avoided unless there comes into existence a world
organisation which ensures effective equality for all states.
The
problem before the states in Africa and other parts of the world which have won
freedom from colonial rule in recent years is of a double character. In the
case of the bigger of them like the Cango it is the problem of creating a sense
of national unity out of the traditional loyalties of the people to their
tribes. This is a problem even in the somewhat advanced countries like ours. It
is much more so in the backward areas of the world. The second is the bringing
together into a single federal or regional group the numerous small states like
Ghana, Guinea, etc., which are in the neighbourhood of each other so that they
may in union accomplish tasks which they cannot accomplish singly. In the
present day world with the rise of states like the United States and Soviet
Russia even strong national states like England and France are finding it
difficult to maintain their freedom and integrity unless they come closer
together. The European Common Market, the Council of Europe and the North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation are the inevitable consequences of the
unsuitability of small nation states in a world where bigness is the test of
survival. As a writer on political revolution has pointed out, it appears as if
the world is now passing away from the era of national states, which became the
fashion in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, into the era of
“Regional States.” The proposed federation of Malayasia and of a
federation of Arab States points in the same direction. The achievement of
freedom from colonial states solves one problem but it brings in numerous other
problems in its wake.
Where is the World now in solving the problem of
racial prejudice? What progress has been achieved in solving it? Unfortunately
one has to confess that the progress has not been appreciable. Force had to be
used in Algeria to compel the dominant French race to treat the Algerians as
their equals. In the Central African Federation the tension between the small
minority of whites and the large majority of Africans has been on the increase
in recent months. The Africans are prepared to resist the whites even by having
recourse to violence. Welensky, the Premier of the Central African Federation,
is seeking a mandate from the white minority to force federation, on the
Africans of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, to which they are thoroughly opposed. All the difficulties have
arisen owing to the unwillingness of the whites to see that the non-whites are
their equals and that they deserve to be treated as self-respecting men
and women. It is however in South Africa the home of racial prejudice that the
situation is becoming worse. There is a determination to pursue the policy of
Apartheid to its logical limits. Indian Settlers are to be segregated in
particular areas and they are to confine their business, trade, industry etc,
to those areas and not have any kind of dealings with the rest of the
population. This policy has already been applied to the native Africans. How the two million whites are going to keep
under control for all time the eleven millions of non-whites is a problem. The
situation is explosive. No one can say what is going to happen now that the
non-whites are politically conscious and have the sympathies of the rest of
Africa on their side. While in countries like the United States racial
prejudice shows signs of weakening, it is to be regretted that it is growing
strong in South and Central Africa.
In
the post-war world the problem of the underdeveloped countries has come to the
forefront. Nearly two-thirds of the world’s population live in them. They are
the countries of Asia, Africa and South America. The majority of them are still
in the agricultural stage. There are no large-scale industries to maintain the
growing population. The prices of the raw materials which they produce and on
which their prosperity depends-materials like rubber, tea, cocoa, coffee
etc.–depends on the conditions in the world market over which they have little
control. Naturally their poverty is of an appalling character.
They lead lives of semi-starvation. Freed now from the political control of the
West they have become conscious of the contrast between the misery and
suffering to which they are subject and the prosperity of the people in the
advanced countries. Their problem is the problem of the modernization of their
economic, social and political life.
They
are unable to solve it unless they get a large amount of help in the shape of
capital and technical skill from the richer countries of the West. The latter
have been extending their aid to them but the aid is inadequate. This is only
one aspect of their problem.
The
other is a more complicated one. Peoples in these areas have not as yet been
able to devise for themselves a political system which can hold them together
without becoming dictatorial and totalitarian. Though several of them have
opted for democracy it has not yet taken root in their midst. The latest
instance of this political instability is Burma where a military dictatorship
has taken the place of democracy. All these countries are passing at one and
the same time through an economic, a social and a political revolution. Most of
the complications are due to this. What the West took four hundred years to
accomplish, these peoples are anxious to accomplish in a generation or
two.
It
is therefore no wonder that the pace of development is rather slow. We will
consider on another occasion how this pace can be quickened and how even the
prosperity of the richer nations and the general stability of the world depends
on this quickening.
* Readers may refer to
Grenville Clark and Louis B. Sohn: “World Peace Through World Law” for a
comprehensive and thorough study of disarmament from all points of view.