A Preliminary Survey of One Form of a Stable Military Environment

Lincoln P. Bloomfield

Prepared for IDA in support of a study submitted to the Department of State under contract No. SCC 28270, dated February 24, 1961

The judgments expressed in this Study Memorandum are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute for Defense Analyses or of any agency of the United States Government.

Special Studies Group
INSTITUTE FOR DEFENSE ANALYSES
1710 H Street, N. W.
Washington 6, D.C.

March 10, 1962

FOREWORD

This paper was prepared for project VULCAN, a study of Arms Control and a Stable Military Environment, which was made by the Special Studies Group of IDA for the Department of State under contract No. SCC 28270, dated 24 February 1961. Dr. J. I. Coffey was the Project Leader.

The author, Dr. Lincoln P. Bloomfield, a consultant to the Special Studies Group, has written extensively on the role of the United Nations in international politics. He is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Arms Control Project at the Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Judgments expressed are of course those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute for Defense Analyses or of any agency of the United States Government.

JAMES E. KING, JR.
Associate Director of Research

CONTENTS

 SUMMARY

CHAPTERS
I. INTRODUCTION
Framework of Study
Policy Background
Definitions

II. THE MODEL
Principal Features
Representation
Peaceful Change
Finances

III. ASSUMPTIONS
On Weapons and Technology
On the Political Environment

IV. NATIONAL VERSUS INTERNATIONAL FORCE
Balance of Forces

V. PRINCIPAL PROBLEMS IN ACHIEVING A WORLD ORDER
Community and Consensus
Disarmament
Universality
Finances
Revision of the United Nations

VI. EXPECTED PERFORMANCE OF THE MODEL
The Sources of Threat
Nuclear War – General and Limited
Conventional War
Proxy Aggression
Guerrilla War
Subversion and Psychological Warfare
Threats to Use Force

VII. CONCLUSIONS

SUMMARY
A world effectively controlled by the United Nations is one in which “world government” would come about through the establishment of supranational institutions, characterized by mandatory universal membership and some ability to employ physical force. Effective control would thus entail a preponderance of political power in the hands of a supranational organization rather than in individual national units, and would assume the effective operation of a general disarmament agreement. While this supranational organization — the United Nations — would not necessarily be the organization as it now exists, the present UN Charter could theoretically be revised in order to erect such an organization equal to the task envisaged, thereby codifying a radical rearrangement of power in the world.

The principal features of a model system would include the following: (1) powers sufficient to monitor and enforce disarmament, settle disputes, and keep the peace —including taxing powers — with all other powers reserved to the nations; (2) an international force, balanced appropriately among ground, sea, air, and space elements, consisting of 500,000 men, recruited individually, wearing a UN uniform, and controlling a nuclear force composed of 50-100 mixed land-based mobile and undersea-based missiles, averaging one megaton per weapon; (3) governmental powers distributed among three branches so that primary functions would exist in some recognizable form in a bicameral legislative organ, an executive organ, and an expanded international judicial network; (4) compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court for both legal disputes and legal aspects of political disputes; (5) approximately 130 political subunits, all nominally independent states, within the system; (6) continued jurisdiction over cosmetic affairs by the national governments; and (7) unrestricted international inspection of all states against violation of the disarmament agreement, with permament (sic) inspection of nuclear research and power equipment, strategic areas and industries, administrative policies and operations, and other key and strategic points in the national economy.

The system of representation in the legislative body of the model government would have to include all the constituent units, with the voting procedure reflecting the relative size, power, and standing of the units. In the absence of individual veto rights, legislative power would be exercised on a weighted basis which acceptably combined population and capacity to contribute to the power of the system. No less important, and of crucial practicality in the effective operation of the model government, would be the financial problems. Finally, underlying the whole enterprise must be a realistic comprehension of the historical requirements for peaceful change.

Clearly, the structure of the model itself can be perceived more easily than the fundamental building blocks of consensus and community which would have to underlie it; although, should such a system ever come into being, it would thenceforth have its own inner dynamic. It is, nevertheless, the question of feasibility which is central to the realization of this model order: it may be unattainable when needed, and unneeded when attainable.

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

FRAMEWORK OF STUDY

This paper is part of a larger study of Arms Control and a Stable Military Environment. We sketch out one particular form of a stable military environment — “a world effectively controlled by the United Nations,” that is to say, by supranational institutions instead of primarily by national governments as at present.

POLICY BACKGROUND

The notion of a “UN-controlled world” is today a fantastic one. That it is even thought of as a hypothetical framework for politico-military planning grows, curiously enough, out of contemporary doctrines on arms control. Political scientists have generally come to despair of quantum jumps to world order as utopian and unmindful of political realities. But fresh minds from military, scientific, and industrial life, as they focus on the increasingly irrational arms race, have sometimes found the logic of world government — and it is world government we are discussing here — inescapable.

The details of international political control have rarely been made explicit in American disarmament positions. The 1946 United States plan for the international control of atomic energy assigned the international agency managerial control or ownership of “all atomic energy activities potentially dangerous to world security,” plus “power to control, inspect and license all other atomic activities.” To carry this out would have required extraordinary powers at the center. But it was still a distance from that to the political control of the world as a whole implied in the present topic. Throughout the sixteen-year negotiating period, even when programs were advanced for drastic reduction and limitation of armaments, there is no record of any concrete suggestion or even mention of a supranational political organization which would “effectively control” the world.

However, recent exchanges in the great power dialogue have reopened the larger political question. On September 19, 1959, Chairman Khrushchev announced to the UN General Assembly his plan for “general and complete disarmament” within four years. The American response was given by Secretary of State Herter on February 18, 1960, in a speech to the National Press Club. Mr. Herter said that the first goal of the United States in the forthcoming disarmament negotiations was the creation of a “stable military environment.” To create such an environment he urged certain arms control actions, such as measures to guard against surprise attack and to curtail the spread of nuclear weapons.

The second stage of Mr. Herter’s counterproposal was that of general disarmament. Two American objectives existed within the disarmament stage. First, the creation of universally accepted rules of law, backed by a world court with effective means of enforcement — “that is, by international armed force.” The second objective was disarmament itself — “to the point where no single nation or group of nations could effectively oppose this enforcement of international law by international machinery.”

The theme set forth by Mr. Herter was carried into the two proposals made by the United States in the spring of 1960, on March 15 and June 27. Under the latter proposal an International Disarmament Control Organization would be established within the framework of the United Nations in the first stage of disarmament. The second stage would include progressive establishment of an international peace force within the United Nations sufficient to preserve world peace under disarmament. The September 1961 US proposals follow the same pattern.

Here, then, is the basis in recent American policy for the notion of a world “effectively controlled by the United Nations.” It was not made explicit, but the United States position carried the unmistakable meaning, by whatever name, of world government, sufficiently powerful in any event to keep the peace and enforce its judgments.

This paper is an attempt to sketch out the possible contours of such a system, followed by a discussion of the difficulties attending an enterprise of this nature. The question of feasibility seems so overwhelming in today’s world, and the common answer on the part of politically sophisticated people so invariably negative, that it may be wondered why the exercise is undertaken at all. It has three justifications. On policy grounds, it would be well to spell out with greater precision that to which this country has committed itself. On heuristic grounds, it may be worthwhile to apply analytical methods to a problem commonly approached on the basis of hunch alone.1 Finally, there is always the possibility that sophisticated people will turn out to have been wrong.

DEFINITIONS

Some definitions and boundaries are needed of a “world effectively controlled by the United Nations.” “World” means that the system is global, with no exceptions to its fiat: universal membership. “Effectively controlled” connotes government attributes — a relative monopoly of physical force at the center of the system, and thus a preponderance of political power in the hands of a supranational organization rather than in individual national units. “The United Nations” is not necessarily precisely the organization as it now exists. In theory a radical rearrangement of power in the world could be codified through revision of the existing UN Charter (as in the Clark-Sohn Plan); or a new constitution could be designed. Finally, to avoid endless euphemism and evasive verbiage, the contemplated regime will occasionally be referred to unblushingly as a “world government.”

1. Such plans for world government as do analyze in detail (Clark and Sohn, et al.) do not usually deal with feasibility, nor do they customarily appraise United States interests.

CHAPTER II: THE MODEL

The model described below is obviously but one of many possible forms. Equally obviously, it is susceptible to almost infinite variation. But in general, this is what “a world effectively controlled by the United Nations” might look like.

PRINCIPAL FEATURES

A limited would government has powers sufficient to monitor and enforce disarmament, settle disputes, and keep the peace. All other powers are reserved to the nations. It possesses enforceable taxing powers to finance its political organs, its disarmament policing agency, and its international military force, which includes a nuclear component. The nations are disarmed to police levels.

The international force, balanced appropriately between ground, sea, air, and space elements, consists of 500,000 men, recruited individually and wearing the UN uniform. It controls a nuclear force consisting of 50-100 mixed land-mobile and undersea-based missiles, averaging one megaton per weapon. The land force is stationed and deployed in territorial enclaves equitably allocated among continents and areas, for minimum temptation and likelihood of seizure by any single nation.

Government powers are distributed to three branches. Without assuming that the Anglo-Saxon mold would necessarily be imposed on the new system, it can be assumed that primary functions would exist in some recognizable form, that they would be to some degree separated, and that each would be carried on through some appropriate organs or agencies.

A bicameral legislative organ is empowered to make decisions, on a weighted voting basis, within the scope of the organization’s powers for peacekeeping.

The executive organ is operated by elected personnel, with administrative services carried out by international civil service personnel. The executive council gives special weight — but without individual veto — to the most populous, industrially developed, and strategically significant states. Safeguards in the form of political supervision and rotation of personnel discourage usurpation of power by "Praetorian Guards.”
 
All states are bound by compulsory jurisdiction of the World Court for both legal disputes and legal aspects of the political disputes. Justice is administered by an expanded network of international courts, with regional panels. States and international agencies, but not individuals initially, are subjects of international law. An equity tribunal system is created for settlement of primary political disputes, along with greatly expanded mediation, conciliation, and arbitration services, use of rapporteurs, and judgments by the courts ex aequo et bono. The constitution provides for the enforceability of decisions of the courts, for execution of the decisions of the executive, and for the carrying out of the laws passed by the legislature. The central authority itself can be sued, but like the US Government today cannot be forced to comply with court judgments. A human rights court modelled upon the comparable court under the European Community is empowered to hear individual complaints of violations of a covenant of civil rights which would accompany the constitution. Permissive and voluntary organs of cooperation exist in the economic, social, scientific and technological, and cultural fields as now, still without powers of compulsion except under special provisions dealing with essential services, health, public safety, and the like.

The model system contains approximately 130 political subunits, all nominally independent states (except such vestigial remainders of the colonial era as the Caribbean islands excluded from the West Indian Federation and the islands of Polynesia and Melanesia not subsumed under any possible federation or confederation succeeding the Trust Territory of the Pacific).

National governments continue to exist in these units, to make, execute and enforce domestic laws with respect to all areas presently in foro domestico except for the raising and provisioning of armed forces, the declaration and waging of war, and the unhampered research, development, and production of military material. These hitherto untrammeled rights are limited by the terms of the new international constitution to the right to maintain sufficient police forces to ensure domestic security. The formula for such forces is derived from the present size of local, civil, and state police, plus national law enforcement personnel such as federal marshals, customs agents, border patrols, law enforcement agents and investigators, and certain militia. (There are obvious discrepancies between states, depending on their internal security problems and practices.)

The states are open to international inspection against violation of the disarmament agreement, with permanent inspection of power and research nuclear reactors, accelerators and other high energy equipment, electronic industries, steel mills, aircraft and space vehicle production, ports, railheads, marshalling yards, major airports and rocket launching facilities, central budgeting, bookkeeping, accounting and auditing agencies, principal research and development operations and installations, and all other key and strategic points in the national economy.

The international inspectorate also monitors the atmosphere for clandestine explosions, for underground nuclear tests, primarily through robot seismic stations combined with on-site inspections of suspicious events, and against tests in outer space through sensing devices in internationally operated solar satellites. In general, space technology remains in national and in some cases (communications, broadcasting, transportation, messenger service, etc.) private hands, but under international inspection. The international authority owns and operates only those space vehicles required both as a military deterrence system and to monitor enforcement of the disarmament agreement. Satellite observation vehicles are equipped to observe optically, electronically, and with infra-red and other sensing and detection devices, and serviced by an internationally controlled ground detection and tracking network.

Largely because of the requirements of the disarmament program, a significant “UN presence” exists in all countries. The secondary aspects of this presence provide dissemination of impartial factual information as well as continuous liaison with local and national authorities.

There is no attempt here to spell out all the details of the proposed system. Three points, however, require elaboration. The system of representation is among the most difficult problems. The financial problem is of crucial practicality. And the whole enterprise rests on a comprehension of the historical requirements for peaceful change.

REPRESENTATION

A legislative body representing all of the constituent units would, as indicated, “make the laws.” It can be deducted from this that a voting system would have to be devised that would reflect the relative size, power, and standing of the constituent units. The present system of one-nation-one-vote in the UN General Assembly is not appropriate to a system commanding decisive military (and therefore political) power. It is excessively utopian (if shadings can be distinguished in the present exercise) to believe that under foreseeable historical circumstances representation largely proportionate to population alone would be politically acceptable to the principal powers. The legislative power would thus be exercised on a weighted basis that acceptably combines population and capacity to contribute to the power of the system. Such a formula must assure the United States (and presumably everyone else) that vital decisions would not be made by any but the most substantial majorities, including the United States.

Thus, while there can be no individual veto, the great power veto will in this partial sense be extended into a limited world government. The precise formula for ensuring appropriate weight to the principal contributors while protecting the rights of the smaller nations has many possible variations, some of which were embodied in the voting arrangements in the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council. A bicameral legislature excels, through its upper house, at protecting the rights of the smaller units, while a unicameral body can do the same for the larger members by means of a dual vote.

Under this model, a qualified majority — two-thirds or three-fourths or even four-fifths — would be necessary to avoid control by a numerical majority that commanded only a minor fraction of the world’s industrial power, financial ability, cultural level, etc. Further protection to the now vulnerable principal powers might take additional forms: for example, a legislative council in which the major nations would have a predominant vote (but no individual veto); a system of separation of powers between the branches of government as in the United States; and emphasis on the special position of the major nations on the executive branch.

The one design, however, which could not be applied successfully would be the Calhoun concept of the concurrent majority (in this case between the central authority and its constituencies) with its implied right of secession. “Effective control” has to mean the power to maintain the union.

PEACEFUL CHANGE

Little understanding exists of the problem of civil war under a world government. The new regime will be faced with a continuous agenda of problems stemming from political ambition, inequalities, avarice, irrational behavior, the inhumanity of man to man, and the use or threat of violence to achieve political or social ends. This prospect can be ruled out only by the untenable assumption that history will have run its course and an end put to its dynamic, refractory, and otherwise troublesome qualities. Thus a world government, even if it could be created, would be subject to continuing pressures, the most clamant of which could lead to civil war on an international scale, accompanied by unbalancing evasions of the disarmament agreement.

In our model the crucial trick is to ensure that no large-scale civil war could take place to test the “union.” For war on major scale would gravely threaten the system. It would revive production and, given the instability of such a situation, the probable use of weapons of mass destruction. In any event such a war would be no more tolerable under a world government that it would be today, and for precisely the same humanitarian reasons.

If there is a single answer, it is in the realm of peaceful change. In terms of its viability and durability, the compelling need for the world authority will be a rather more exigent version of the problem that pervades all modern history — the need for adequate provisions in the international system to accommodate the dynamic forces making for change, without allowing them to lead to war.

In 1962 nuclear weapons have temporarily suppressed a significant fraction of the pressures which in other times might well have expressed themselves violently. Without that kind of deterrent situation, violence could become the order of the day unless there existed effective provisions for peaceful change. Flexibility and capacity to adapt to change in time and with foresight would be particularly needful in view of the proposed nuclear monopoly in the hands of the central authority. Otherwise the nightmare prospect is of world order at the price of world tyranny — a kind of global Holy Alliance to preserve the status quo. The system must, through its legislative action, its executive implementation, and its judicial interpretation, allow for changes in fact, in law, and in the system itself.

FINANCES

No attempt is made here to cost the model. But some orders of magnitude can be suggested by comparing the present annual cost of the UN system — roughly $320 million — with the figure used by Clark and Sohn as a sample budget for limited world government in 1980 — $36 billion (a figure well below their own estimate of maximum available UN revenue, $52 billion, calculated on the basis of 2-1/2 per cent of every nation’s Gross National Product). The Clark-Sohn plan assumes a UN Peace Force of 400,000 with a reserve of 900,000 costing some $9.6 billion per annum. Other costs of the organization they estimate at $2 billion. To this they add approximately $25 billion for economic development purposes.2

Some figures of a lesser magnitude were recently developed by Colonels Cannon and Jordan. They estimate the cost to the UN of international military personnel per man per day with minimum equipment as eight to ten dollars. A lightly armed brigade of 7,000 men would cost $25 million per year, not including capital costs for bases, etc.3 A balanced force of half a million could well cost up to the Clark-Sohn figure of $9 billion if it must buy, build, maintain, and modernize a broad arsenal of equipment and personnel for world-wide missions.

2. See World Peace Through World Law (2nd Edition, Harvard, 1960).

3. See “Military Aspects of a Permanent UN Force” in A United Nations Peace Force,    William R. Frye (N.Y., Oceana Publications, 1957), pp.161-71.

 Finally, technical developments could revise upward the Clark-Sohn $2 billion figure for operating costs, which include those of maintaining disarmament agreements. Recent estimates today speak of a cost of $2.5 billion to install inspection machinery for a test ban alone, and $500 million per year to operate it.

CHAPTER III: ASSUMPTIONS

The picture we have sketched out, even with self-conscious efforts to be conservative, strains our credulity. But it would be beyond all reason without certain basic assumptions.

Continuing in as conservative a vein as can plausibly be applied to the topic, let us make explicit the basic assumptions that underlie our model, both as to the technical state of the art, and as to the political preconditions.

ON WEAPONS AND TECHNOLOGY

To make the problem manageable, it is assumed that at the time the new regime comes into being there has been no technical breakthrough such as would make meaningless the centralization of effective power. This assumption rules out devices that would enable a single individual or small group to terrorize the world, i.e., such potentially unbalancing developments as the controlled use of antimatter, the creation of a Kahn-type Doomsday machine, or the achievement of universally effective magical powers through psychological or biochemical means.

But it must also be assumed that direction of modern science and technology is essentially irreversible. It can perhaps be slowed down or even stopped, either by some universal catastrophe or under a disarmament agreement that curtails the intensive allocation to armaments of economic and human resources. But the processes of fission and fusion, the cultivation of viruses of high toxicity, and the design of engines of delivery cannot be unlearned. Moreover, assuming as we must that atomic power may become economical and fusion power when harnessed even more so, all of these technologies will be practiced under total disarmament in their peaceable aspects. So however comprehensive a disarmament agreement, however much political power is transferred to a world government, and even if no significant manpower is actually working on nuclear, chemical, and bacteriological weapons, or on constructing military aircraft, ships, rockets, or space vehicles, there will always remain implicit in technically advanced societies the capacity to turn again to the production and fabrication of engines of war, probably with fair rapidity.

ON THE POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT

On any count, it is unsafe to assume that the ideological and power struggle between communism and the West will not continue indefinitely. This assumption of course throws into question any program requiring that both sides subordinate to a supranational authority themselves, their power, and their ambitions. This is the central dilemma of world politics today, and it applies with ultimate force to the proposition of world government. The logical trap is completed with the familiar paradox: given a continuation unabated of communist dynamism, the subordination of states to a true world government appears impossible; but if the communist dynamic were greatly abated, the West might well lose whatever incentive it has for world government.

For purposes of this exercise, we assume that, if the communists would agree, the West would favor “a world effectively controlled by the United Nations.” The remaining question is then how to transform and tame the forces of communism, in any event to the point where the present international system might be radically reshaped. Such a transformation is theoretically possible, but only under two conditions: first, that through evolutionary processes communist doctrine becomes drained of its messianic quality, foregoes its imperialistic ambitions, and comes to accept the notion of a higher authority — a notion traditionally anathema to its doctrine. The other condition, which puts the possibility within a more foreseeable time span, is a crisis, a war, or a brink-of-war situation so grave or commonly menacing that deeply-rooted attitudes and practices are sufficiently shaken to open the possibility of a revolution in world political arrangements. The assumption has to be made here that one or the other of these conditions has come about and that the communists have consequently been brought to a significant mitigation of their doctrine.

Thus we assume a world in which relations between East and West are characterized by significantly higher degrees of mutual trust, internationalist spirit, and unaggressiveness. But there is little in history to justify the belief that, without the communist threat in its present form, the world political environment would be inherently stable. We have postulated by necessity a willing acceptance of limited world government by the great powers. We then further postulate either acceptance by or imposition on all other nations of such a regime. This at once sets up future instabilities. Today the foci of instability are in third areas, centering on economic disparities and nationalistic strivings for independence, which of course Soviet and Chinese policies purposefully exploit. There is no reason to assume the disappearance under limited world government of the dynamic factors — the intergroup competitions, the racial and ethnic tensions, and the gross economic inequalities — which permeate human history and create the conditions for political upheaval. History, short of catastrophe, is not discontinuous. To modify von Clausewitz, limited world government is a form of international conflict carried on under other institutional arrangements than unlimited state sovereignty. Thus, as the framework for international stability becomes established under a benign form of world order, the detailed disputes of a chronic or secondary nature can confidently be expected to re-emerge.

A crucial feature of the system would be its universality. The inclusion of all presently divided countries could come about in one of two ways: through their unification or through alterations in the issues that had once divided them. These conditions would have to apply across the board. It is conceivable that a world order could embrace divided Germany, Korea, and Vietnam, the Arab states still at war with Israel, Formosa and mainland China still in conflict, and apartheid remaining South Africa’s policy. But what has to be assumed as a condition sine qua non is that the parties to such conflicts have either explicitly or tacitly concluded not to attempt to settle them by force. In the case of the lesser powers, there must be the conviction that they will not be permitted to settle their disputes by force. It might be argued that this reasoning is tautological: that “effective UN control” is impossible without solution of the most acute political disputes or, conversely, that such centralization of power automatically ends such disputes. No such assumption is made here, on the ground that a limited world government, to be even theoretically practical, must be embodied in a realistic environment in which old unsolved problems still exist, along with a host of new ones. Above all, we are assuming that it is not historically impossible to transform one kind of international system into another, profoundly different kind, characterized by the centralization of effective power.

For the United States, as well as for the other countries, a threshold will have been crossed from one historical condition to another, drastically different one. However many stages it takes, however tacit or explicit the labels, however gradual or violent the process, there is a Rubicon that divides the Gaul of basically untramelled national sovereignty from the Tuscany of meaningful supranational authority. Nothing could be more dangerous to sound thinking and planning than to elide this fundamental truth.

By whatever process, and under whatever name, the agency that is to “effectively control” world affairs requires in the most important ways the design customarily associated with government. A central authority with effective powers in the realms of disarmament and the settlement of international disputes, and with the capacity to deal effectively with breaches of the peace and acts of aggression, and above all in possession of the most vital attribute of government — a preponderance of military power — is a government, however limited. But it need not be assumed that the organization would have to take on all or even most of the functions of government, particularly in the economic and social realm. The United States Constitution, while granting great powers to the Federal Government, reserves to the states the powers not explicitly delegated. Our model does the same. After physical security and integrity, the most sensitive areas of national sovereignty usually involve such matters as economic and trade policy, immigration practice, civil rights, social welfare, education, and the like. Our model excludes those matters traditionally barred from international cognizance as being essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the constituent states.

* * * * * *

Under the first of our alternative roads — the pacific evolution of the Communist world, including China — it is difficult to foresee a limited world government within twenty-five years at the earliest, fifty years more conservatively. If, however, it came about as a result of a series of unnerving trips to or over the brink, it could come about at any time. The assumption here, chiefly for logical convenience, is a time period of five to fifteen years from now.

CHAPTER IV: NATIONAL VERSUS INTERNATIONAL FORCE

What is the basis for the apportionment of forces earlier suggested between center and parts? Strategic analysis supplies the tentative answers.

“Effective control” connotes a relative monopoly of political power, accompanied by preponderant military force, at the center of the system. The world (sic) “relative” indicates that the power relationship between the center and the parts is one of degree. Some examples illustrate the equation. In the United States the people have the constitutional right to “keep and bear arms”; the government monopoly is legally abridged to this extent. In the Congo Republic the central army is, or was, in fact overmatched by provincial forces; there was thus no effective central government. In Kuomintang China the military power of the National Government was often balanced by the military power of the warlords; the writ of the government thus could not extend uniformly through the country.

So under a supranational government the degrees of relative power as between center and parts can occupy a wide range. This range can be more systematically illustrated along a scale of military power on both sides (as in figure A.).

Figure A.

SCALE OF RELATIVE NATIONAL-INTERNATIONAL POWER

    UNITED NATIONS                                GOVERNMENTS

 a)    Nuclear only                                           Conventional
 b)    Nuclear and conventional                       Conventional
 c)     Modest conventional and nuclear           Police
 d)     Large conventional                                Small conventional
 e)    Low conventional                                   Police
 f)     Police                                                      Police

BALANCE OF FORCES

Six main types can be seen:

(a) At the minimal level of supranational power, the system could conceivably be in a fine balance: central authority might be able to exercise “effective control” on the basis of its sole possession of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction (a variant of the case under the 1946 Acheson-Lilienthal-Baruch plan), with the constituent nations retaining conventional armaments up to present high levels or even higher. The principle of control would be one of almost pure deterrence, based on the theory that the absence of war is due to the threat of nuclear retaliation.

However, as the doctrine of massive retaliation demonstrated rather quickly, such a scheme labors under great handicaps stemming from two factors. One is that under an umbrella of fear of general war, all sorts of mischief can be made by powers who ordinarily have no such leverage. The second classic flaw is the unpromising prospect of vast devastation as the only available response to assaults on the integrity of the system. In this sense the United Nations would only be taking the place of the United States in attempting to enforce the peace, with the same drawbacks plus the additional one that failure to enforce its writ would undermine the whole system. The questions of credibility of threat and of rigidity of both doctrine and means combine to rule out this solution.

(b) The central authority might possess both a nuclear and conventional capability, while the constituent national units would also possess conventional forces. This situation for the UN would be to some degree analogous to several situations today: the US vis a vis Communist China and West Germany, or the Soviet Union vis a vis China.

Such an apportionment of power does not seem sufficiently stabilizing to add up to “effective control.” Given equally balanced conventional forces, the only difference is at the margin, in the possession of nuclear capabilities. Again, the self-deterring nature of such power encourages the constituent parts of the system to frustrate its effective working. In this case, however, the destabilizing factor is not the central authority’s possession of nuclear weapons. It is the retention of significant conventional forces in the hands of the constituent units.

(c) Next in line would be a combination of modest conventional and nuclear capacity at the center, with disarmament down to internal security levels among constituent nations. This is commented on at the end of the section.

(d) This and the next two possible combinations would involve the total elimination of all nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, but retention of some military power both at the center and in the parts, yet of significantly different orders of magnitude. In the first such case, the central authority, unlike Chiang Kai-shek in Nanking (and Chungking), would by its preponderance of conventional forces hold a decisive edge over any predictable combination of “provincial” forces (always subject to the possibility of civil war in the shape of sufficiently widespread defection from the central authority). In theory, such an arrangement would bring the world back to prewar conditions, but with two significant differences. For the first time there would exist a central authority with at least an initial preponderance of force. Second, the Pandora’s box of nuclear (and viral and bacterial and radiological) knowledge will still be no guarantee against hidden stockpiles. Thus this scheme would provide no deterrent whatever to the commission of nuclear crimes after secret preparations.

(e) Still lower down the relative force scale would be a central authority equipped with a modest level of conventional forces vis a vis national units completely disarmed down to the levels of internal security contemplated by typical proposals for general and complete disarmament. The same disabilities apply.

(f) Lowest on the scale would be a totally disarmed world in which no significant military forces were in being at any level. This was the first inference that could logically be drawn from the September 1959 proposal of Premier Khrushchev (as well as the 1927 and 1933 Soviet antecedents of the proposal). Presumably, under such a scheme there would be police-type forces at both levels, lightly armed with nothing of higher caliber than machine guns, plus riot-type devices. (At true zero on the scale there might be nightsticks, perhaps supplemented by bottles of itching powder, tanks of laughing gas and mild dysentery germs, and airguns designed to shoot pellets of tranquillizing drugs.)

* * * * * *

On the basis of the assumption made earlier, the conclusion is inescapable that the central authority, in addition to its conventional military capacity, will have to offset the inherent possibility of evasion by being equipped with nuclear weapons, along with delivery systems adequate to deal with the realistic possibilities of violation (i.e., alternative c). For the very logic of “effective control” requires placing in the hands of the central authority military forces adequate to deal with breaches of the peace and acts of aggression, through whatever means are necessary to preserve a preponderance of power at the center, even against the contingency of clandestine production of nuclear weapons. Ex hypothesi, the central authority would need to retain a nuclear capability adequate to deter any reasonable expectation of clandestine violation and consequent attempt to destabilize or even destroy the new system.

It can be seen that even under a radically designed system of authority in a disarmed world, the problem of deterrence will persist, including some of the features that characterize it today. The situation facing the central authority would not be too different from that confronting the United States in its need to be equipped with forces, both conventional and nuclear, adequate to deter any likely combination of hostile forces. Indeed, this is the problem inside any society. But the special feature in the new situation would be an element of profound uncertainty. Today, defensive forces are designed to deter known quantities or qualities of war-making capability. But our postulated regime, even with a good inspection system, will be to a degree uncertain whether nuclear weapons are hidden or being secretly made, some highly potent nerve agent being developed in an isolated biological laboratory, or some commanding weapon secreted illicitly into the payload of a communication, weather, navigation, and other satellite. These possibilities, however statistically improbable, would pose anew the problem of deterrence in a different calculus, both for the general authority and for individual states such as the United States in making its own calculations.

One mad tribal ruler in a future Congo might not be able to bring the rest of the world to its knees. But twenty-five rockets, with megaton warheads previously secreted or secretly produced in Soviet or Chinese facilities, could supply to those nations an inordinate amount of political and strategic power. Adequate inspection would of course be designed to preclude such a development. But deterrence from the center is the second line of defense, the ultimate safeguard: deterring in the first instance from clandestine production, in the second from political threat, and ultimately from actual military use.

To sum up — a world government must be in a position to deter the unknown possibility of clandestine evasion. This means that the central authority must have a nuclear capability. (It might well also mean maintaining stockpiles of chemical agents, much as national governments have done in the past, against the possibility of a future “gas attack — or its late twentieth century counterpart.) Otherwise, given the low base point (zero) from which honest nations start in a disarmed world, a nuclear capability that at 1962 levels would be marginal, scarcely useful as more than a political irritant, would come to assume incommensurate proportions in terms not only of destructive capacity but as a potent means of psychological warfare.

The problem of deterrence, in short, will exist under a disarmament agreement even if the religious wars of our age come to resemble less the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and more the seventeenth and eighteenth.

The appropriate degree of relative force would, we conclude, involve total disarmament down to police and internal security levels for the constituent units, as against a significant conventional capability at the center backed by a marginally significant nuclear capability.