Suchergebnisse

The United States has for some time been com mitted to European political union. The policy was and is to federate western Europe in a union about equal in power to our own federal union and to link the two so that they would balance each other yet, without separating, exercise their combined weight in world affairs. This has been known in State Department circles as Operation Dumbbell. The ex pression is apt, also, in the slang sense, for the policy is self- defeating and dangerous. The United States commitment to European political union is so deep that the only way to limit it prudently is to replace Operation Dumbbell with a policy of Atlantic federal union. A policy of Atlantic federal union would recognize that any other bond—alliance or confedera tion—would be too frail to be depended upon to hold such heavyweights together. Time is working against eventual union slowly achieved by degrees; everything in our time moves at revolutionary speed. What the United States is aiming to do in western Europe can be done on an Atlantic scale by transforming NATO as it is into a federal government, by transferring to the Atlantic union power over foreign policy and defense, by establishing a common market, a common cur rency, and a common citizenship, and by doing so in the way that has been shown to be successful, the pattern of federation as achieved through the United States Constitution.—Ed.

NATO as presently constituted is proving too weak to meet present and future needs. Its legislative, executive, and judicial powers are ineffective, not to say nonexistent. There is a pressing need for a strong Atlantic union to meet political and economic as well as military demands of today's world. In this NATO has proved unequal to the task and in times of crisis has been com pletely by-passed. Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that NATO is a union based on units of diplomacy or sovereign nations rather than being a more demo cratic federal union based on sovereign citizens. The body politic is an arti ficial unit, hampered by national rather than international allegiances. A strong and effective Atlantic federal union must, therefore, be built up by first splitting up these bodies politic and then reuniting these men into a greater and more internationally minded organization.—Ed.