The Promise of American Life

by Herbert David Croly

The domestic condition of some of the Latin-American states presents a serious obstacle to the creation of a stable American international system. Such a system presupposes a condition of domestic peace. The several contracting states must possess permanent and genuinely national political organizations; and no such organization is possible as long as the tradition and habit of revolution persists. As we have seen, the political habits of the more important states have in this respect enormously improved of late years, but there remain a number of minor countries wherein the right of revolution is cherished as the essential principle of their democracy. Just what can be done with such states is a knotty problem. In all probability no American international system will ever be established without the forcible pacification of one or more such centers of disorder. Coercion should, of course, be used only in the case of extreme necessity; and it would not be just to deprive the people of such states of the right of revolution, unless effective measures were at the same time taken to do away with the more or less legitimate excuses for revolutionary protest. In short, any international American political system might have to undertake a task in states like Venezuela, similar to that which the United States is now performing in Cuba. That any attempt to secure domestic stability would be disinterested, if not successful, would be guaranteed by the participation or the express acquiescence therein of the several contracting states.

The United States has already made an effective beginning in this great work, both by the pacification of Cuba and by the attempt to introduce a little order into the affairs of the turbulent Central American republics. The construction of the Panama Canal has given this country an exceptional interest in the prevalence of order and good government in the territory between Panama and Mexico; and in the near future our best opportunity for improving international political conditions in the Western hemisphere will be found in this comparatively limited but, from a selfish point of view, peculiarly important field. Within this restricted area the same obstacles will be encountered as in the larger area, and success will depend upon the use of similar means and the exhibition of similar qualities. Very little can be achieved in Central America without the coöperation of Mexico, and without the ability to convince Mexican statesmen of the disinterested intentions of this country. In the same way any recrudescence of revolutionary upheavals in Mexico would enormously increase the difficulties and perils of the attempt. On the other hand, success in bringing about with Mexican coöperation a condition of political security and comparative stability in Central America would augur well for the success of the larger and more difficult attempt to perform a similar work for the whole American hemisphere.

The most difficult task, however, connected with the establishment of a peaceful American international system is presented by Canada. In case such a system were constituted, Canada should most assuredly form a part of it. Yet she could not form a part of it without a radical alteration in her relations with Great Britain. Canada is tied to the British Imperial system, and her policy and destiny depends upon the policy and destiny of the British Empire. She is content with this situation, not merely because she is loyal to the mother country, but because she believes that her association with Great Britain guarantees her independence in respect to the United States. Many Canadians cherish a profound conviction that the United States wishes nothing so much as the annexation of the Dominion; and the one thing in the world which they propose to prevent is a successful attack upon their independence. This is the natural attitude of a numerically weak people, divided by a long and indefensible frontier from a numerous and powerful neighbor; and while the people of this country have done nothing since the War of 1812 positively to provoke such suspicions, they have, on the other hand, done nothing to allay them. We have never attempted to secure the good will of the Canadians in any respect; and we have never done anything to establish better relations. Yet unless such better relations are established, the United States will lose an indispensable ally in the making of a satisfactory political system in the Western hemisphere while at the same time the American people will be in the sorry situation for a sincere democracy of having created only apprehension and enmity on the part of their nearest and most intelligent neighbors.

Under such circumstances the very first object of the foreign policy of the United States should be to place its relations with Canada on a better footing. There was a time when this object could have been accomplished by the negotiation of a liberal treaty of commercial reciprocity. If the commercial policy of the United States had been determined by its manifest national interest instead of by the interests of a group of special industries, such a treaty would have been signed many years ago. A great opportunity was lost when the negotiations failed early in the eighties, because ever since Canada has been tightening her commercial ties with Great Britain; and these ties will be still further tightened as Canada grows into a large grain-exporting country. But while it will be impossible to make an arrangement as advantageous as the one which might have been made twenty-five years ago, the national interest plainly demands the negotiation of the most satisfactory treaty possible at the present time; and if the special interests of a few industries are allowed to stand indefinitely in the way, we shall be plainly exhibiting our incompetence to carry out an enlightened and a truly national foreign policy. We shall be branding ourselves with the mark of a merely trading democracy which is unable to subordinate the selfish interests of a few of its citizens to the realization of a policy combining certain commercial advantages with an essential national object. Just as the maintenance of the present high protective tariff is the clearest possible indication of the domination of special over national interests in domestic politics, so the resolute opposition which these industries show to the use of the tariff as an instrument of a national foreign policy, suggests that the first duty of the United States as a nation is to testify to its emancipation from such bondage by revising the tariff. The matter concerns not merely Canada, but the South American Republics; and it is safe to say that the present policy of blind protection is an absolute bar to the realization of that improved American political system which is the correlative in foreign affairs of domestic individual and social amelioration.

The desirable result of the utmost possible commercial freedom between Canada and the United States would be to prepare the way for closer political association. By closer political association I do not mean the annexation of Canada to the United States. Such annexation might not be desirable even with the consent of Canada. What I do mean is some political recognition of the fact that the real interests of Canada in foreign affairs coincide with the interests of the United States rather than with the interests of Great Britain. Great Britain's interest in the independence of Holland or in the maintenance of the Turkish power in Europe might involve England in a European war, in which Canada would have none but a sentimental stake, but from which she might suffer severe losses. At bottom Canada needs for her political and commercial welfare disentanglement from European complications just as much as does the United States; and the diplomacy, official and unofficial, of the United States, should seek to convince Canada of the truth of this statement. Neither need a policy which looked in that direction necessarily incur the enmity of Great Britain. In view of the increasing cost of her responsibilities in Europe and in Asia, England has a great deal to gain by concentration and by a partial retirement from the American continent, so far as such a retirement could be effected without being recreant to her responsibilities towards Canada. The need of such retirement has already been indicated by the diminution of her fleet in American waters; and if her expenses and difficulties in Europe and Asia increase, she might be glad to reach some arrangement with Canada and the United States which would recognize a dominant Canadian interest in freedom from exclusively European political vicissitudes.

Such an arrangement is very remote; but it looks as if under certain probable future conditions, a treaty along the following lines might be acceptable to Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. The American and the English governments would jointly guarantee the independence of Canada. Canada, on her part, would enter into an alliance with the United States, looking towards the preservation of peace on the American continents and the establishment of an American international political system. Canada and the United States in their turn would agree to lend the support of their naval forces to Great Britain in the event of a general European war, but solely for the purpose of protecting the cargoes of grain and other food which might be needed by Great Britain. Surely the advantages of such an arrangement would be substantial and well-distributed. Canada would feel secure in her independence, and would be emancipated from irrelevant European complications. The United States would gain support, which is absolutely essential for the proper pacification of the American continent, and would pay for that support only by an engagement consonant with her interest as a food-exporting power. Great Britain would exchange a costly responsibility for an assurance of food in the one event, which Britons must fear—viz., a general European war with strong maritime powers on the other side. Such an arrangement would, of course, be out of the question at present; but it suggests the kind of treaty which might lead Great Britain to consent to the national emancipation of Canada, and which could be effected without endangering Canadian independence.

Any systematic development of the foreign policy of the United States, such as proposed herewith, will seem very wild to the majority of Americans. They will not concede its desirability, because the American habit is to proclaim doctrines and policies, without considering either the implications, the machinery necessary to carry them out, or the weight of the resulting responsibilities. But in estimating the practicability of the policy proposed, the essential idea must be disentangled from any possible methods of realizing it—such as the suggested treaty between the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. An agreement along those lines may never be either practicable or prudent, but the validity of the essential idea remains unaffected by the abandonment of a detail. That idea demands that effective and far-sighted arrangements be made in order to forestall the inevitable future objections on the part of European nations to an uncompromising insistence on the Monroe Doctrine; and no such arrangement is possible, except by virtue of Canadian and Mexican coöperation as well as that of some of the South American states. It remains for American statesmanship and diplomacy to discover little by little what means are practicable and how much can be accomplished under any particular set of conditions. A candid man must admit that the obstacles may prove to be insuperable. One of any number of possible contingencies may serve to postpone its realization indefinitely. Possibly neither Canada nor Great Britain will consent to any accommodation with the United States. Possibly one or more South American states will assume an aggressive attitude towards their neighbors. Possibly their passions, prejudices, and suspicions will make them prefer the hazards and the costs of military preparations and absolute technical independence, even though their interests counsel another course. Possibly the consequences of some general war in Europe or Asia will react on the two Americas and embroil the international situation to the point of hopeless misunderstanding and confusion. Indeed, the probabilities are that in America as in Europe the road to any permanent international settlement will be piled mountain high with dead bodies, and will be traveled, if at all, only after a series of abortive and costly experiments. But remote and precarious as is the establishment of any American international system, it is not for American statesmen necessarily either an impracticable, an irrelevant, or an unworthy object. Fail though we may in the will, the intelligence, or the power to carry it out, the systematic effort to establish a peaceable American system is just as plain and just as inevitable a consequence of the democratic national principle, as is the effort to make our domestic institutions contribute to the work of individual and social amelioration.

III

DEMOCRACY AND PEACE

A genuinely national foreign policy for the American democracy is not exhausted by the Monroe Doctrine. The United States already has certain colonial interests; and these interests may hereafter be extended. I do not propose at the present stage of this discussion to raise the question as to the legitimacy in principle of a colonial policy on the part of a democratic nation. The validity of colonial expansion even for a democracy is a manifest deduction from the foregoing political principles, always assuming that the people whose independence is thereby diminished are incapable of efficient national organization. On the other hand, a democratic nation cannot righteously ignore an unusually high standard of obligation for the welfare of its colonial population. It would be distinctly recreant to its duty, in case it failed to provide for the economic prosperity of such a population, and for their educational discipline and social improvement. It by no means follows, however, that because there is no rigid objection on democratic principles to colonial expansion, there may not be the strongest practical objection on the score of national interest to the acquisition of any particular territory. A remote colony is, under existing international conditions, even more of a responsibility than it is a source of national power and efficiency; and it is always a grave question how far the assumption of any particular responsibility is worth while.