Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

In the most general way, the period since 1947 has shown that the differences between any two of the three blocs are becoming less; the three methods for achieving policy shifts (just mentioned) are becoming increasingly similar in essence and in fact, however different they continue to be in law. Moreover, in the same years since 1947, the solidarity of both the West and the Communists has become increasingly less, while the unity of outlook, policies, and interests of the uncommitted and underdeveloped peoples of the intermediary zone between the two great Power blocs become increasingly unified.

The method of operation of this newly formed pluralist-managerial system may be called “planning,” if it be understood that planning may be both public and private and does not necessarily have to be centralized in either, but is rather concerned with the general method of a scientific and rational utilization of resources, in both time and space, to achieve consciously envisioned future goals.

In this process the greatest achievements have been by western Europe and by Japan. The latter, relieved to a great extent from the need to devote resources to defense, has been able to mobilize these for investment and, to a somewhat lesser degree, for rising standards of living, and has been able to achieve growth rates of gross national product of 7 to 9 percent a year. This has made Japan the only area of the non-Western world and of the underdeveloped countries able to pass into the higher level of industrialization capable of achieving substantial improvements in individual standards of living. These improvements, held back by the emphasis on reconstruction and investment in 1945-1962, have shifted slowly but steadily in the last few years toward consumers’ benefits, including such intangibles as increased education, sports, leisure, and entertainment.

Western Europe has had an experience somewhat similar to that of Japan except that its chief emphasis has been on improved standards of living (collectively known as “welfare”), with more emphasis on defense and less emphasis on investment than Japan. As a result, western Europe, especially West Germany, Italy, France, Scandinavia, and Britain, have, for the first time, come within striking distance of the very high standards of personal consumption found in the United States. In this process these countries have allowed the defensive power of their armed forces to suffer for the sake of their welfare goals, but have felt safe in doing so because of their reliance on American defensive power to deter any Soviet aggression.

In this process western Europe has achieved growth rates in gross national product (GNP) of 4 to 8 percent a year as a consequence of three basic forces. These have been: (1) the skillful (and perhaps lucky) use of financial and fiscal techniques which have encouraged both investment and willingness to consume; (2) the economic and technical aid of the United States, beginning with the Marshall Plan of 1946 and continuing with United States government military aid and investments of savings coming in from the whole Western world; and (3) the growing integration of Europe’s economy in the Common Market which has made it feasible to adopt mass-production techniques for a greatly enlarged market.

In this same process the achievements of the United States and of the Soviet bloc have been much less spectacular from a purely economic point of view. In the United States, where the standard of living has reached unprecedented heights of affluence, the burdens of being a super-Power have hampered welfare because of the conflicting claims of defense, governmental expenses, prestige, and other rivalries with the Soviet Union, and the desire to contribute to the growth of the underdeveloped areas of the world. As a result, growth rates of GNP have been from 2 to 5 percent a year, and the burden of the governmental sector, including defense and increasing demands for such welfare items as education, health, and equalization of personal opportunities, have put great pressures on the growth of the consumers’ sector.

The Soviet bloc as a whole, apart from the Soviet Union as the dominant member of that bloc, has been ambiguous in its economic growth. The demands of the defense sector and of other reflections of the Cold War, such as the “space race,” have combined with the continued failures of Communist agricultural practices and the intrinsic inefficiency of the Communist system as a whole to limit severely the rise in standards of living. To be sure, the standards of living of the Soviet Union itself have reached the highest in Russia’s history, while still lagging at only a fraction of those in the United States. But in the Communist bloc as a whole the picture has been far less happy. The non-Russian countries in the bloc have been exploited by the Soviet Union, have been treated as colonial areas (that is, sources of manpower, raw materials, and food based on claims arising from political relations), and have achieved little, if any, increase in GNP beyond that needed to sustain their increasing populations. In the cases of more western areas, such as East Germany, Hungary, and Poland, this has been reflected in absolute declines in living standards. The sharp contrast between this and the visible boom in West Germany has greatly increased the discontent in the European satellites.

The position of the underdeveloped nations has also been generally ambiguous. As a whole, lack of know-how and trained manpower, lack of capital, waste of resources by small privileged elites, absolute shortages of resources in some areas, the rapid growth of populations almost everywhere, and hopelessly unprogressive social structures and ideologies have combined to prevent any considerable improvements in standards of living. These have, in fact, decreased in much of Indonesia, the Near East, and Latin America, and have kept only slightly ahead of the growing population in India, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Only in Japan, as we have said, has there been success from this point of view, while the failure of these desires in China and in Latin America have tended to lead both of these out of their former alignments with the Soviet bloc and the Western bloc toward the more ambivalent political position of the uncommitted nations. In fact, in this process China’s enmity toward both the Soviet Union and the United States has tended to place her in a new position, apart from all the pre-1962 alignments of international politics, while Latin America’s growing discontent has tended to lead it, from many points of view, toward the position of the Near East countries.

XII THE POLICY OF APPEASMENT, 1931-1936

Introduction

The Japanese Assault, 1931-1941

The Italian Assault, 1934-1936

Circles and Countercircles, 1935-1939

The Spanish Tragedy, 1931-1939

Introduction

The structure of collective security, which had been so imperfectly built after 1919, by the victorious Powers, was destroyed completely in the eight years following 1931 under the assaults of Japan, Italy, and Germany. These assaults were not really aimed at the collective security system or even at the peace settlements of which it was a part. After all, two of the aggressors had been on the winning side in 1919. Moreover, these assaults, although called forth by the world depression, went far beyond any reaction to the economic slump.

From the broadest point of view, the aggressors of 1931-1941 were attacking the whole nineteenth century way of life and some of the most fundamental attributes of Western Civilization itself. They were in revolt against democracy, against the parliamentary system, against laissez faire and the liberal outlook, against nationalism (although in the name of nationalism), against humanitarianism, against science, and against all respect for human dignity and human decency. It was an attempt to brutalize men into a mass of unthinking atoms whose reactions could be controlled by methods of mass communication and directed to increase the profits and power of an alliance of militarists, heavy-industrialists, landlords, and psychopathic political organizers recruited from the dregs of society. That the society which they came to control could have created such dregs, men who were totally untouched by the traditions of Western Civilization and who were restrained by no social relationships at all, and that it could have allowed the militarists and industrialists to use these dregs as an instrument for seizing control of the state raise profound doubts about the nature of that society and about its real allegiance to the traditions to which it paid lip service.