Pax Americana
THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD AFFAIRS 1954. By Richard P.
Stebbins. (Harper and Brothers, 48s.) UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY 1945-1955. By William Reitzel, Morton A. Kaplan and Constance G. Coblenz. (Faber, 32s. 6d.) THE NEW DIMENSIONS OF PEACE. By Chester Bowles. (The Bodley Head, 25s.) AMERICAN life sometimes looks like a continuous check-up. Tests and progress-reports are its punctuation, and the testers have not neglected foreign policy. Reappraising has been going on for a long time. The diligent searching of the diplomatic record is some- times done by politicians looking for electoral ammunition, but it also stems from a more general anxiety. America is now a world power, the old formula; are no longer sufficient guides, and Americans look about for ways of testing their success in their new role. One result has been a boom in the academic study of international affairs, and two new books come from quasi- academic institutions. The Council on Foreign Relations publishes Mr. Stebbins's survey of United States participation in world affairs in 1954. It is a useful annual handbook which, like some Chatham House publications, limits itself to the objective record- ing of events. The authors of United States Foreign Policy 1945- 1955 have tried to go beyond this. They aim to describe the main choices open to the policy-makers of the United States in the last decade.
The authors analyse two major adjustments in American foreign policy. The first was to a 'bipolar' world organised around the two Great Powers when the hopes of •1945 had faded. The second began recently, and is still going on. The ice of bipolarity is breaking up, or seemed to be. America's allies and the uncom- mitted nations were beginning to distrust American judgement, and to strike out for themselves again. Unfortunately, while this book is intelligent and sometimes penetrating, it is also pedantic, much too long, and almost unreadable. The authors have sought objectivity in a technical vocabulary, but the result is too often a stodgy jargon. Of the Pax Britannica they remark that it 'can be described as a unilaterally maintained worldwide system of peace and security, derived from and consonant with the real distribu- tion of power in the nineteenth century.' Indeed it can, but what does this add to our understanding? Sometimes the book is mealy- mouthed as well as confusing; one example of its dark, portentous prose must be enough. As a description of the choice before America in the handling of Asian nations seeking to act indepen- dently the aphors write of
. . . a &anon in which, while United States policy may con- tinue to propose, other states are more likely to dispose. There is one proviso to this conclusion, however : the United States may also be able to dispose, if its proposals are accompanied by alloca- tions of American power sufficient to accomplish the desired ends. Although this is always a possible solution to a problem of this kind, the evidence of the immediate past—not only the evidence of American decisions, but the development of the impediments to such a choice that have begun to show in the international situation—suggests tliat the choice is unlikely.
Mr. Bowles's book is unacademic, but is also preoccupied with the uncommitted nations. By a former American Ambassador to India, his own reappraisal prescribes a programme of unrepentant anti-colonialism and aid to needy countries. Mr. Bowles is a much more significant and traditional figure in the debate on American foreign policy than the academic analysts because he speaks with the authentic voice of American moral concern. His book is a plea for the ideals of the American Revolution, and his real opponents in the debate are not the colonialists, but realists like Mr. Kennan. But there is one kind of realism which has always hamstrung American idealism abroad. This is the realism of the Congressman who has to keep his seat. Only towards the end of this book are his difficulties considered. But at the beginning Mr. Bowles recalls how demobilisation fever struck Washington in 1946, when the Chief of Staff was 'ambushed by representatives of the "Bring Back Daddy" clubs. Angry women stormed after him, backed him up against a wall, and laid down a ten-minute barrage of complaints and demands that left him flushed, breath- less, and in his own words . . . "emotionally upset." ' The Chief of Staff was General Eisenhower, who has since had a much better chance to see how American foreign policy can be deflected
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