J. A. Hobson, “Toward International Government,” pp. 90-100.
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.