Nations in the Future: Organization for Survival

• Author: Lawrence H. Fuchs
• Published date: 01 March 1956
• Date: 01 March 1956
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591295600900102
• Subject Matter: Articles

NATIONS IN THE FUTURE:
ORGANIZATION FOR SURVIVAL
LAWRENCE H, FUCHS
Brandeis University
ORE
THAN
any others, two questions dominate the study of inter-
national organization. First, are nations now effectively organized
for survival? Second, if not, are they moving in that direction?
There is hardly room for controversy, in my view, in answering the first
question. Every nation,state is, of course, organized for its own security.
Since nation-states themselves cannot prevent international war, and since
another international war may bring total ruin to those who fight it, nations
are obviously not independently organized for survival. The principal inter-
national security organization is the United Nations, and it must be ac-
knowledged at the outset that the UN, as a league of sovereign states,
cannot prevent war between the major powers. The UN
is many things -
a promoter of economic and social health, a symbol of transnational loyal-
ties, a midwife at the birth of new political orders -
but it is not an organi-
zation for survival. In this world nations still depend for survival, however
foolishly, on their own arms and the arms and bases of allies, not on Dag
Hammarskj6ld and the five thousand members of his secretariat. At best,
the UN is a device for facilitating a lessening of tension among nations;
at worst, another instrument through which nations wage international
politics.
Only one kind of transnational organization can give the ructtions a rea,
sor~able assurance of survival, and that me world federal government.
Now for the second question: Are the nations presently moving in the
direction of organization for survival? In short, is the UN a step toward
world government and does each day bring us closer to the goal?
The answer to this question depends upon one’s reading of history as
well as on an interpretation of current affairs. It depends upon what the
process of political integration really is and has been. Specifically, under
what conditions and compulsions have many governments combined to
establish a common government in pursuit of common goals?
The answer to this last question is not clear-cut because the historical
evidence itself is ambiguous. We know that certain factors must underlie
political integration whether established through consent (federalism) or
wrought by force (imperialism). New symbols must emerge; an elite or
leading group is necessary; a certain amount of loyalty to or at least
acquiescence in the new and larger political institutions must be forth-
coming. How much loyalty and symbolic leadership? How large an elite?
It is impossible to say.
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Political integration through consent has been rare enough in history.
In ancient Greece there were the Achaean and Aetolian leagues. In
modern times the United States, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, and, in
more recent years, Austria and West Germany have emerged as federal
states.
The formation of our own more perfect union in 1789 is most often
portrayed as an example for those who urge world federation now. There
are two polar views as to what actually happened at the Constitutional
Convention in 1789. One interpretation, which I will label the gradualist-
functionalist view, is that after years of common political struggle, decades
of trading and working together, and a century of common usages in lan-
guage, religion, and law, Virginians, New Yorkers, and Pennsylvanians
became Americans. According to this view, the common heritage of the
vast majority of Americans made political integration virtually inevitable.
Confederation represented the penultimate step on the road toward
political integration and federal government.
The other interpretation, which, for want of a better term, I shall call
the decisive moment ® leadership view, holds that there was nothing
natural or inevitable about the creation of the United States, any more
than the failure of South American states to federate, after years of work-
ing together with a common language and religion, is natural or inevitable.
The proponents of this view ask: Suppose Hamilton had met with an
accident before the first meeting of the ratifying convention in New York
State? What if Connecticut’s Oliver Ellsworth and Roger Sherman had
remained true to their initial predilections against a strong national govern-
ment ? They point out that the change of just a few votes in the ratifying
conventions held in Virginia or Massachusetts would have made our Con-
stitution an historical curiosity.
According to the decisive moment-leadership view, an American federal
government might never have been created had it not been established in
1789. Mutual tension and suspicion among the states was growing. State
militias and navies were expanding. Tariff and border warfare was increas-
ing, not decreasing. As the years passed, cleavages between different regions
and states would have become more sharp. By 1815 federation between
New England states, under the leadership of Yankee-Episcopalian mercan-
tile and shipping interests friendly to Great Britain, and western states,
whose Scotch-Irish Presbyterian leadership was anxious for war against
Britain and the Indians, would have been impossible. Nor would the states
in either region have combined with the slave states of the South. The
great decision was made at the decisive moment in the history of the states
by a group of extraordinary men of high influence and over the indifference
and perhaps opposition of most of their constituents.

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