Towards an enduring peace

by Unknown

ECONOMIC COERCION

There must be effective penalties for aggression.

I want to suggest here that the forces of Europe will not be readily deterrent of aggression until the following conditions at least are fulfilled: (a) The forces placed behind a policy the first object of which shall be to deter aggression; (b) aggression so defined as to have no reference to the merits of a dispute between two nations or groups, but to consist simply in taking any belligerent action to enforce a State’s claim against another without first having submitted that claim to international enquiry; (c) the economic pressure which is an essential part of military operations rendered effective by the cooperation of States which do not necessarily give military aid at all; (d) economic pressure so organized as to be capable of prolongation beyond the period of military operations; and (e) the penalties attaching to aggression made so plain as to be realized beforehand by any people whose government tends to drift towards aggression.

If the new Congress of Vienna is effective, these conditions will be fulfilled.

Offending nation could be outlawed.

Any arrangement which includes them would partake of the nature of a league of mutual guarantee of integrity, and would be one in which there would be fair hope of economic pressure gradually replacing military force as the compelling sanction. Economic pressure might be that first felt if the outstanding feature of the arrangement were that any constituent State resorting to hostilities as the result of a difference with another, not previously submitted to an international court of enquiry, by that fact caused boycott or non-intercourse to be proclaimed and maintained against it by the whole group. This would not prevent certain members of the group from carrying on military operations, as well, against it. Some of the group would go to war in the military sense—all in the economic sense; the respective rôles would be so distributed as to secure the most effective action. From the moment of the offending nation’s defiance of the international agreement to which it had been a party, its ships could enter no civilized ports outside its own, nor leave them. Payment of debts to it would be withheld; the commercial paper of its citizens would not be discounted; its citizens could not travel in any civilized country in the world, their passports being no longer recognized.

Thus, the outlaw nation could neither receive from nor send to the outside world material or communication of any kind—neither food nor raw material of manufacture, nor letters, nor cables. Money due to him throughout the world would be sequestrated for disposal finally as the international court’s judgment should direct; and that rule would apply to royalties on patents and publications, and would, of course, involve precautionary seizure or sequestration of all property—ships, goods, bank balances, business—held by that nation’s citizens abroad.

It is doubtful whether at the present stage of international understanding this arrangement could be carried beyond the point of using it as a means to secure delay for enquiry in international disputes. Its use as a sanction for the judgments of international tribunals will probably require a wider agreement as to the foundations of international law than at present exists. But a union of Christendom on the basis of common action against aggression would be a very great step to the more ambitious plans.

Terms of outlawry: the Fabian plan.

It has, however, been suggested (by the Fabian Society) to use this method as a sanction for the judgment of an international court in the following terms:

In the event of non-compliance with any decision or decree or injunction of the International High Court, or of non-payment of the damages, compensation, or fine within the time specified for such payment, the Court may decree execution and may call upon the Constituent States or upon some or any of them, to put in operation, after duly published notice, for such period and under such conditions as may be arranged, the following sanctions:

(a) To prohibit all postal, telegraphic, telephonic, and wireless communication with the recalcitrant State;

(b) To prohibit all passenger traffic (other than the exit of foreigners), whether by ship, railway, canal, or road, to or from the recalcitrant State;

(c) To prohibit the entrance into any port of the Constituent States of any of the ships registered as belonging to the recalcitrant State, except so far as may be necessary for any of them to seek safety, in which case such ship or ships shall be interned;

(d) To prohibit the payment of any debts due to the citizens, companies, or subordinate administrations of the recalcitrant State, or to its national Government; and, if thought fit, to direct that payment of such debts shall be made only to one or other of the Constituent Governments, which shall give a good and legally valid discharge for the same, and shall account for the net proceeds thereof to the International High Court;

(e) To lay an embargo on any or all ships within the jurisdiction of such Constituent State or States registered as belonging to the recalcitrant State;

(f) To prohibit any lending of capital or other moneys to the citizens, companies, or subordinate administrations of the recalcitrant State, or to its national Government;

(g) To prohibit the issue or dealing in or quotation on the Stock Exchange or in the press of any new loans, debentures, shares, notes, or securities of any kind by any of the citizens, companies or subordinate administrations of the recalcitrant State, or of its national Government;

(h) To prohibit all imports, or certain specified imports, coming from the recalcitrant State, or originating within it;

(i) To prohibit all exports, or certain specified exports consigned directly to the recalcitrant State, or destined for it.

Co-operation must be organized as part of international law.

It should be noted that if the future European coalition means business at all in giving permanent effect to its settlement provisions, the chief Powers would be committed, during any period of war, by virtue of their military obligations, to everything contained in the plan just outlined. All that the project under discussion involves in addition is that (1) certain States interested in the observance of public right, but which, by their circumstances, are not suited to military cooperation, should give economic aid by taking part in the embargo arrangements. They should not be neutral, but should refuse intercourse with the recalcitrant State while according it to the others. (2) That such cooperation should be duly organized beforehand by public arrangement and be recognized as part of the normal measures of international public safety and, being duly recognized in this way, should become part of international law—an amended law in so far as the rules of neutrality are concerned. (3) That the arrangements should include provisions for prolonging embargo or discrimination against an offending State after the period of military operations had ceased.

Boycott would threaten offending nation after the war.

The first point that occurs to one, of course, in considering such a plan is that it has proven ineffective in the present war since this condition of non-intercourse is exactly that in which Germany now finds herself, and it is not at all effective.

To which I reply:

1. That Germany, as already pointed out, is not yet subject to a condition of complete non-intercourse, since from the beginning of the war she has been receiving her mail and cables and maintaining communication with the outside world, morally an immensely important factor. Nor is it entirely moral. Large supplies have, despite the naval blockade, come to her through Scandinavia and Holland.

2. That, though of slow operation, it is the economic factor which in the end will be the decisive one in the operations against Germany; as the ring tightens and a necessary raw material like cotton is absolutely excluded, the time will come when this fact will tell most heavily. If the non-intercourse had been world-organized the effect would have operated from the first. Incidentally, of course, America and England, between them, control the cotton of the world.

3. The effect of the suggested embargo, boycott or economic pressure would be most decisive as a deterrent to aggression, not so much by what it might be able to accomplish during a war as by what its prolongation would mean to the aggressor afterwards.

Norman Angell, “The World’s Highway,” pp. 318-324.