THE ECONOMIC BOYCOTT
The nations have a powerful non-military weapon.
In the discussion of an International Executive entrusted with powers to compel the fulfilment of treaty obligations, it must not be assumed that coercion can only be exercised by the employment of armed force. The boycott is a weapon which could be employed with paralyzing power by a circle of nations upon an offender against the public law of the world. No nation to-day, least of all the great industrial and military Powers, is or can become socially and economically self-sufficient. It depends in countless ways upon intercourse with other nations. If all or most of these avenues of intercourse were stopped, it would soon be reduced to worse straits than those which Germany is now experiencing. If all diplomatic intercourse were withdrawn; if the international postal and telegraphic systems were closed to a public law-breaker; if all interstate railway trains stopped at his frontiers; if no foreign ships entered his ports, and ships carrying his flag were excluded from every foreign port; if all coaling stations were closed to him; if no acts of sale or purchase were permitted to him in the outside world—if such a political and commercial boycott were seriously threatened, what country could long stand out against it? Nay, the far less rigorous measure of a financial boycott, the closure of all foreign exchanges to members of the outlaw State, the prohibition of all quotations on foreign stock exchanges, and of all dealings in stocks and shares, all discounting and acceptances of trade bills, all loans for public or private purposes, and all payments of moneys due—such a withdrawal of financial intercourse, if thoroughly applied and persisted in, would be likely to bring to its senses the least scrupulous of States.
But effective use requires co-operation. And a boycott injures also those who apply it.
Assuming that the members of the League included all or most of the important commercial and financial nations, and that they could be relied upon to press energetically all or even a few of these forms of boycott, could any country long resist such pressure? Would not the threat of it and the knowledge that it could be used form a potent restraint upon the law-breaker? Even the single weapon of a complete postal and telegraphic boycott would have enormous efficiency were it rigorously applied. Every section of the industrial and commercial community would bring organized pressure upon its Government to withdraw from so intolerable a position and to return to its international allegiance. It may be said, Why is it that such a powerful weapon of such obvious efficacy has never been applied? The answer is that the conditions for its rapid and concerted application have never hitherto existed. For in order that it may be effective, a considerable number of nations must have previously undertaken to apply it simultaneously and by common action. And, what is more, each nation must have confidence in the bona fides of the intention of other nations to apply it. For the detailed application of the boycott, in most points, must of necessity remain in the hands of the several national Governments. Here comes the practical difficulty. Every boycott has a certain injurious rebound. It hits back the nation that applies it. The injury of suspended intercourse is, of course, not equal, otherwise the process would be futile. If the whole circle of A’s neighbors boycott him, each suffers half the loss of his separate intercourse with A, but A suffers this loss multiplied by the number of his neighbors. Now if A’s intercourse with all his neighbors is of equal magnitude, each of them can probably afford easily to bear the sacrifice involved in the boycott, trusting to the early effect of their action in bringing A to terms. But if one or two of A’s neighbors are in much closer relations with A than the others, and if, as may be the case, they are getting more advantage from this intercourse than A, the risk or sacrifice they are called upon to undergo will be proportionately greater. They must bear the chief brunt of a policy in the adoption of which they have not the determinant voice.
Take, for example, the case of Germany. An all-round boycott applied to her would evidently cause more damaging reactions to Holland, Belgium, and Denmark than to any of the greater nations whose united voice might have determined its application. The injury to Holland, in particular, might in the first instance be almost as grave as that sustained by Germany, the supposed object of the boycott. It would evidently be necessary to make provision against this unequal incidence by devising a system of compensations or indemnity to meet the case of such a special injury or sacrifice.
A brief allusion to the other side of the objection will suffice, viz., the fact that any such boycott would be far less potent or immediate in its pressure against some nations than against others. While Great Britain would have to yield at once to the threat of such pressure, Russia, or even the United States, could stand out for a considerable time, and China might even regard the boycott as a blessing. But it is pretty evident that in the long run no civilized nation could endure such isolation, and that this weapon is one which the League might in certain cases advantageously employ.
Other difficulties.
Other aspects of the social-economic boycott raise other difficulties. While certain modes and paths of intercourse lie directly under the control of the Governments of the cooperating States, others belong to private enterprise. Though postal, railway, and telegraphic intercourse could be cut off easily by agreements between Governments, private trading could not so easily be stopped. It is not found a simple matter to stop all trading between members of nations actually at war when national sentiment sides strongly with the legal prohibition. It might be much more difficult to prevent all commercial intercourse for private gain when there was no special hostility between the two nations in question. But this is, after all, only a minor difficulty. Provided that the respective Governments were prepared to use their normal powers of control over the principal modes of communication and of transport, the potency of the boycott so established would appear exceedingly effective.
It involves, however, a risk which needs recognition. The extreme pressure of the boycott might lead to forcible reprisals on the part of the boycotted State which would, in fact, precipitate a war. Declaring what would be in effect a blockade by sea and land, it might be necessary for the League to patrol the seas in order to stop “illegal traffic,” and to keep some force along the land frontiers for general purposes. A boycotted nation might, in the stress and anger of the case, begin hostilities against those of its neighbors who were most active in the operations of the boycott. In that event the economic boycott would have to be supported by armed pressure. This would also be the case where the breach of international law against which action was taken consisted, not in refusing to arbitrate or conciliate an issue but in an actual opening of hostilities. Such an act of war, directed necessarily against some one or more States, could not be met merely by a boycott. It would involve armed cooperation as well, the economic boycott forming an accompaniment.
International Bank would strengthen League.
There is another method of bringing financial pressure upon a law-breaking State which deserves consideration. It is put forward in the following terms by Mr. F. N. Keen in his able little book, “The World in Alliance”: “The States comprised in the international scheme might be required to keep deposited with, or under the control of, the International Council sums of money, proportioned in some way to their relative populations or financial resources, which might be made available to answer international obligations, and an international bank might be organized, which would facilitate the giving of security by States to the International Council for the performance of their obligations and the enforcement of payments between one State and another (as well as probably assisting in the creation of an international currency and discharging other useful international functions).”
The organized concentration of international finance by the formation of an international bank is a line of action which might immensely strengthen that body of pacific forces the rising importance of which Mr. Norman Angell has so effectively expounded. It might consolidate to an almost incalculable degree the effective unity of the International League by placing under it the solid foundation of world-peace, while the power which such an institution would wield, either for purposes of fiscal or financial boycott, would be enormous.
The international police force.
But however highly we estimate the potentialities of the boycott as a valuable adjunct to the pressure of public opinion in compelling obedience to treaty obligations, it is idle to pretend that the confidence required to induce the chief nations to rely upon the due performance of these obligations by all their co-signatories will be possible without placing at their disposal, for use in the last resort, an adequate armed force to break the resistance of an armed law-breaking State. Somewhere behind international law there must be placed a power of international compulsion by arms. If that force were really adequate, it is probable that it would never be necessary to employ it for any purpose save that of repelling invasions or dangerous disorders on the part of outsiders. Its existence and the knowledge of its presence might suffice to restrain the aggressive or lawless tendencies which will survive in members of the League. But in the beginnings of the organization of international society it is at least possible, perhaps likely, that some dangerous outbreak of the old spirit of state-absolutism should occur, and that some arrogant or greedy Power, within the circle of the League, might endeavor to defy the public law.
For the States entering such a League will be of various grades of political development: some may enter with reluctance and rather because they fear to be left out than because they believe in or desire the success of the League. It is idle to imagine that a society starting with so little inner unity of status and of purpose can dispense entirely with the backing of physical force with which the most highly evolved of national societies has been unable to dispense.
How constituted.
What form, then, should the required international force take, and who should exercise it?
The proposal to endow some executive international body with the power of levying and maintaining a new land and sea force, superior to that of any Power or combination it may be called upon to meet, scarcely merits consideration. Apart from the hopelessness of getting the Powers to consent to set up a Super-State upon this basis, the mere suggestion of curing militarism by creating a large additional army and navy would be intolerable. Nor is it any more reasonable to expect the Powers to abandon their separate national forces, simply contributing their quota towards an international force under the permanent control of an International Executive. No such abandonment of sovereign power, no such complete confidence in the new internationalism, could for a long time to come be even contemplated. Each nation would insist upon retaining within its own territory and at its own disposal the forces necessary to preserve internal order and to meet at the outset any sudden attack made from outside. It is evident, in other words, that the forces required by the International League in the last resort, for the maintenance of public law and the repression of breaches of the treaty, must be composed of contingents drawn upon some agreed plan from the national forces and placed for the work in hand at the disposal of an international command. Such armed cooperation is, of course, not unknown. Several times within recent years concerted action has been taken by several European Powers, and though the Pekin expedition in 1900 cannot be regarded as a very favorable example, it illustrates the willingness of Powers to act together for some common end which seems to them of sufficient importance. Is it too much to expect that the nations entering the Confederation will realize with sufficient clearness the importance of preserving the integrity of their international agreement to be willing to entrust a permanent executive with the duty of commandeering the forces necessary to achieve this purpose when they may be required?
Armies and navies must be held in trust for the world-community. Each nation would get more security at less cost.
It will doubtless be objected that there is a world of difference between the occasional willingness of a group of Powers to take concerted action upon a particular occasion, for which each reserves full liberty of determination as to whether and to what extent it will cooperate, and the proposal before us. It is absurd, we shall be told, to expect that States bred in the sense of sovereignty and military pride will seriously entertain a proposal which may bring them into war in a quarrel not specifically theirs and compel them to furnish troops to serve under an international staff. But many events that have seemed as absurd are brought to pass. A few decades ago nothing would have seemed more absurd than to suppose that our nation would be willing to equip an Expeditionary Force of several million men to operate upon the Continent under the supreme control of a French general. Whether, in fact, such cooperation as we here desiderate is feasible at any early period will depend upon two factors: first, the realization on the part of Governments and peoples of the civilized world of the supreme importance of the issue at stake in this endeavor to lay a strong foundation for the society of nations; secondly, the diminution in the influence of militarism and navalism as factors in national life that is likely to occur if sufficient belief in the permanence and efficacy of the new arrangement is once secured. If nations can be brought to believe that national armies and navies are too dangerous toys to be entrusted to the indiscretion of the national statesmen and generals, and are only safe if they are held in trust for the wider world community, this conviction will modify the surviving sentiments of national pride and national pugnacity and make it easier to accept the new international status. Moreover, if, as the first-fruits of the new order, a sensible reduction of national armaments can be achieved, this lessening of the part which armed force plays within each national economy will be attended by a corresponding increase in the willingness to place the reduced forces at the international disposal. For the root motive of the international policy is the desire of each nation to get a larger amount of security at a smaller cost than under the old order. Those, therefore, who confidently assert that States will not consent on any terms to entrust their national forces to an international command for the maintenance of the treaty obligations under the proposed scheme in effect simply assert the permanency of the reign of unreason in the relations between States.
For though the general agreement of States to submit their disagreements to processes of arbitration and conciliation with pledges to abide by the results would be a considerable advance towards better international relations, even if no sanction beyond the force of public opinion existed to enforce the fulfilment of the obligations, it would not suffice to establish such confidence in future peace as to secure any sensible and simultaneous reduction of armed preparations. No Government would consent to any weakening of its national forces so long as there was danger that some Power might repudiate its treaty obligations. This being the case, the burdens and the perilous influences of militarism and navalism would remain entrenched as strongly as before in the European system, advertising, by their very presence, the lack of faith in the efficacy of the new pacific arrangements. So long as these national armaments remained unchecked the old conception of State absolutism would still survive. There would still be danger of militarist Governments intriguing for aggression or defense in new groupings, and new efforts to tip the balance of armed power in their favor.
It is ultimately to the dread and despair of this alternative that I look for the motive-power to induce nations to make the abatements of national separatism necessary to establish an international society. Whether the end of this war will leave these motives sufficiently powerful to achieve this object will probably depend upon the degree of enlightenment among mankind at large upon the old ideas of States and statecraft.
J. A. Hobson, “Toward International Government,” pp. 90-100.