The Insecurity of States

• DOI: 10.1177/106591295100400301
• Author: Norman J. Padelford
• Date: 01 September 1951
• Published date: 01 September 1951
• Subject Matter: Articles

The Western
Political Quarterly
THE INSECURITY OF STATES
NORMAN J. PADELFORD
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
HE
SEARCH for national security has long been one of the chief
t
preoccupations of states. Today, when the rising clash of ideologies
―
and the mounting conflict between the great powers threaten to
engulf the world in a new war, security has become the primary concern
of states throughout the community of nations. There are few states that
feel genuinely secure. Armaments, military training, assistance arrange-
ments, balances of power, and &dquo;security&dquo; organizations are piled like Ossa
on Pelion. Yet &dquo;security&dquo; seems to remain elusive. Numerous sources
contribute to the sense of insecurity which afllicts states. Some arise from
facts and conditions present in interstate relationships. To a certain extent
the sources of national insecurity are also traceable to international
political behavior and are by no means new phenomena. But some are
consequences of modern social and technological developments; and a
part of today’s insecurity stems from the fact that the two most powerful
nations in the world-the United States and the Soviet Union-are
facing each other for the first time with their antipathetical ideologies.
The problem of security is in part a problem of mind. Peoples feel
insecure because of their attitudes, emotional responses, and suspicions.
Men can exert some control over these personal reactions, sublimating
them to reason and constructive action under certain conditions. More-
over there are large areas of national behavior and interstate life, involving
group dynamics, in which individual feelings and actions are swayed by
elemental motivations over which there is less control once concepts of
mass insecurity begin to multiply.
The degree of insecurity felt by states varies with circumstances, time,
and place. When a powerful aggressive force is operative in the inter-
national scene, as it is today, states feel a larger measure of insecurity
than when world affairs are relatively stable; and their attitudes are
affected by their own degree of strength, as well as by their geographical
positions and their relations with other states.
387

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388
I
The facts of geography and demography have a strong bearing upon
the sense of security or insecurity. Belgium, for example, set by geography
in the path of hostilities between Germany and France, knows that she
can defend herself only for a matter of days against the might of either
neighboring country. Similarly, Denmark, Norway, and Finland with their
small populations and limited resources know that they cannot match
the power which the Soviet Union can bring to bear if it so chooses.
The central location, resources, and large population of Germany,
greater by more than half that of France, give a united Germany a clear
excess of power over metropolitan France. Hence, the deep-seated feeling
of insecurity in France ever since the tremendous losses of man power
which she suffered in World War I. France is aware that the power of
Germany and, even more, that of the Soviet Union, may be held away
from her land only as France can bring to her aid the military might and
economic means of others. After the bitter experience of 1940, however,
France has harbored doubts about extracontinental allies providing an ade-
quate equation of strength in Europe’s mainland at a moment of crisis.
Although nature has given the Soviet Union security assets in its
vast space, its protected arctic and southern frontiers, its fertile soils,
abundant resources, and massive population, geography has left the
U.S.S.R. with a widely exposed boundary at two vulnerable places. The
western borders of the Soviet Union touching Poland and Romania are in
flat country easily accessible to foreign armies. Russians cannot forget the
Napoleonic invasion and the Crimean War in the nineteenth century or
the German armies that twice in the present century overran their borders.
In the Far East, Japan has held control of the sea passages off Russia’s
Siberian ports, and has been able to dominate Korea, Manchuria, and
North China thereby offering a menace to the Siberian interior.
England with its insular position, crowded population, and inade-
quate natural resources knows that unless a given tonnage of specific com-
modities flows into the British Isles every month, it will be stripped of
its power and its security will be gone.
The United States, striving to &dquo;contain&dquo; Soviet imperialism, feels
insecure as it is confronted with the Soviet Union’s larger and more
tightly disciplined population, its backlog of untapped resources, and
particularly its advantageous geographical position enabling the Soviet
Union to thrust at will over contiguous land areas into Europe, the Middle
East, and Asia. Security demands that strong friends and allies be main-
tained in the rimlands of Europe and Asia, lest the sea and air spaces
leading to the United States become avenues of attack upon Amer-
ican cities.

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389
There was a time when the United States and other countries could
feel reasonably secure in following policies of isolation. Such a situation,
however, has not existed since fascist and communist states have embarked
upon programs of territorial and political aggrandizement...