International Politics

C. Delisle Burns

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781138182097
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317295471
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Originally published in 1920, International Politics provides a general introduction to the subject by looking in detail at the international political situation at the time of writing as well as key issues that frequently appear in these situations. Conclusions are then drawn on which aspects of politics could be improved upon and the function of public opinion as well as providing economic facts to illustrate these points. This title will be of interest to students of politics and political history.

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

CHAPTER I

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AND THE PAST

THE average man is not often troubled about foreigners. The Englishman eats the oranges grown by Spaniards, the Frenchman drinks coffee from Brazil or Java; but neither thinks of the foreign peoples whose labour has produced the food he uses, for the commodities of the world are more truly international than are the minds of men. Our clothing, our food and our houses, our railways and our telephones are all international, because the material necessary for making them is contributed by men speaking many different languages and living under many different forms of government: and the internationalism of modern life is not merely material, for the structure of our telephones and even the cut of our clothes is partly due to ideas which have come from abroad. Our medicine and surgery are the results of an interchange of ideas between many nations and no art is so national as to be untouched by foreign influence. The religious, political and social habits we have acquired are due in part to the influence of foreigners; and indeed there is no section of life which is isolated from the action of international interchange.

All this, however, is commonly ignored. The average man no more thinks of the source of his coffee or his medicine or his shirt than he thinks of his digestion—until it goes wrong. When the oranges and the coffee cease to come or when fares on the railways go up because boiler-tubes no longer are produced abroad, then the average man shows an interest in international affairs: but the character of his interest is like that of his interest in indigestion. He feels aggrieved.

He is offended that the machine does not work: and he is easily led to suspicion and hatred of what he cannot understand. Therefore the most common attitude towards international affairs is apathy when the machine works and a sort of political dyspepsia when it does not.

The superior person meantime, despising the average man, is often more hopelessly savage, since his passions, being based upon arguments, survive even an acquaintance with the facts. The superior person has a theory about foreigners: either they are deluding us into buying their coffee or their boiler-tubes for their own interest or they are undermining our character by strewing our path with their orange peel. There is, indeed, another type of superior person who regards the foreigner with a benign condescension: but both types agree in thinking of international affairs as a conflict of interests, while the average man does not think of them at all. The facts of international interchange, however, are of increasing importance to the average man; and the chief elements in the present international situation are so recent in origin that our inherited ideas are inadequate to describe the complexity of modern life. An analysis of the facts, therefore, is necessary.

The first requisite for a knowledge of these facts is the attainment of a point of view from which they can be seen. It is only by moving out from his cave that the savage can distinguish a beast from a boulder; and when he has come out of his cave, he will find it convenient not to lie behind one rock all the time nor to climb only one tree. But—what happens at meetings of the representatives of different nations? Each sits behind his own rock or each ascends his own tree and argues violently from his own point of view. The representative of France argues for the Rhine frontier, the representative of the United States argues for the Munroe doctrine, the representative of Great Britain for freedom to blockade: and the result is either confusion or an agreement which covers with meaningless words irreconcilable opposites. In domestic politics, however, another method has been developed. The representative of Muddleborough presents his view of the national interest as a whole, and so does the representative of Little-Puddle-in-the-Bog. They are elected not simply to serve local ends but for the sake of some national policy, which is viewed from different angles but is the same object of vision. There is disagreement between electors and disagreement between representatives; but at least they are looking at a common object, whereas at a Congress of diplomatists or at a Peace Conference, each representative looks at a separate interest and the international point of view is commonly regarded as either unpatriotic or out of place. The chief problems of international politics, therefore, arise from an absence of the international mind in the conduct of practical life: and it is not likely that we shall solve any of those problems until we can think habitually of international affairs as we do, in our different towns or counties, of the common interests of the whole nation. The defect is universal. There is no country or people which is now able to take a world-view and consequently no representatives, even if they wished, would dare to take action based upon anything but a more or less enlightened selfishness.

There is, however, a large field in which the international mind might work, without regard to the conflicting interests of the different peoples. All peoples are equally concerned in the increase of available commodities, the improvement of transport, and the development of the resources of the world. All peoples are the gainers if there is an increase in productivity. These statements do, indeed, imply that industry and commerce are not forms of war, and that the only reasonable trade competition is a competition in service; but the proofs of this need not be given here, for the attitude so expressed is not uncommon among those who think at all on such subjects. It would follow that, so far as economic wealth is concerned, the international mind would set itself to organise the resources of the world for the use of all men. But there is a further step to be made in international politics: for as in the case of wealth so also in regard to order and liberty, all peoples gain from the increase of these. This implies that the representatives of every state in an international congress should desire and work for order and liberty in every other state, but that the understanding of these terms should be somewhat more subtle than when they are conceived by the inhabitant of Muddleborough to be embodied in the habits and customs of his village. As things now stand the words order, liberty and justice are on the lips even of statesmen; but war is the principle upon which international politics rests and war implies that each people desires in a rival state disorder and discontent, not order and liberty.

Even national interests, however, if selfishness were sufficiently enlightened would compel attention to international problems. It should be easily seen that the consideration of the resources of the world and their full development in order and liberty are vital interests of every nation; although it is still imagined by many that the interest of their own nation is best served by the impoverishment or enslavement of other nations, and only the actual effects on themselves of ruin abroad will ever persuade the unintelligent to think internationally. Disease crosses frontiers, disorder spreads; and impoverishment abroad means smaller markets and more unemployment at home. The political world is, therefore, sufficiently inter-connected over the whole surface of the earth for men to understand that even their own national interests cannot be attained without some consideration of the common interests of all men: and this consideration is a part of international politics. The interests of all are not, however, in international politics understood either in a humanitarian or in a Positivist sense. The idea of human brotherhood or the unity of the human race is too indefinite to be a basis for practical action or even for analytical thought. The different common interests of men, therefore, must be distinguished; and they must be worked for not merely by the inculcation of good will, but by the discovery of the many different means of attaining them. International interests in regard to non-material “goods” such as justice and liberty depend upon the fact that the more each man or group of men has of such goods, the more there is for others. That is obvious in the case of justice: but liberty needs to be defined and the kinds of liberty distinguished in order to see how each man gains from the liberty of others. With regard to material goods such as food and clothing, it is an international interest that there should be more of them, for what one has another must lack: but it is also an international interest that each man and each group of men should have enough, and policy should therefore aim at some international principle of distribution not the mere “foreign” policy based upon the taking of all by the strong and the lack of all by the weak: for, as in the contacts of individuals so in the contact of peoples, the strong gain most from a system which gives enough to the weak. Such are the principles which affect the international view of the contact between nations.

Before analysing the facts it is necessary to define more precisely the kind of facts to be dealt with. Politics may be taken to mean that activity of man which concerns government and parties, law and administration as the means and, as the ends or purposes of action, order and liberty or justice. Politics, therefore, includes all that refers to states or local government and excludes what refers to churches or to the supply and distribution of commodities, which is usually called economics. A part of politics is domestic and a part international, since there is a distinction between the state as a separate unit and the state as an element in the world of states, governments or peoples.

The principles of justice are not different in regard to domestic and international politics; but their application differs; and therefore the principles of international justice have to be thought out not in the abstract but in reference to the problems which arise from the contact of governments or peoples. Again, the fundamental interest in domestic and international politics should not be regarded as different, since both should be concerned with men, women and children—the happiness and fuller lives of these, and not the mere instruments—the states, churches and economic organisations, which should serve men. But the happiness of men in terms of domestic politics concerns housing, drainage and education, whereas this happiness in terms of international politics concerns peace and war, foreign trade and national traditions.

The distinction, then, between domestic and international politics may be best understood by classifying familiar ideas. Domestic politics is concerned with such subjects as taxation, local government and electoral methods: international politics is concerned with tariffs, armaments, treaties and the other relationships of states or peoples; but there is obviously a field in which subjects are to be found which are partly domestic, partly international, as for example, racial minorities, trade regulation and routes of communication.

A distinction should be made between international politics and what is commonly called “foreign” politics, since foreign policy generally means the action of any one state in regard to all others. The common idea of foreign policy preserves just that provincialism of mind which was shown above to be an obstacle to the understanding of international politics: for in foreign policy the accepted purpose is the attainment of a separate interest generally conceived as opposed to all others. To be interested in foreign politics appears to mean to be interested in foreigners and this is often connected with a mere acquaintance with a foreign tongue or a knowledge of the habits or policies of a foreign people. It should be understood, however, that international politics demands a larger view, just as in domestic politics it is not enough to know the idiosyncrasies of the Yorkshireman or the dialect of Somerset. In the first place there are men who can speak seven languages and have nothing of importance to say in any one of them: hence although it is unlikely that a man will think internationally to any effect who cannot think in more than one language, nevertheless a knowledge of languages is no guide to international politics. Secondly, a knowledge of what a foreign nation is like is quite different from a knowledge of the relation between any two nations. International politics is not the study of many separate countries but the study of the relation between them. Once again therefore, “foreign” politics is either a bad name for international politics or it is a name for an entirely different subject: but it is difficult to persuade either average men or philosophers to recognise the distinction between saying (1) there are many peoples differing in character and government and saying that (2) each people’s character and government is what it is because of its relation to those of other peoples. The second statement is the basis of international politics. The facts, therefore, which are to be dealt with in international politics are all those which affect or are affected by the contact between peoples living under different forms of government. That contact is in the present world very complex and continuous and it is developing in strange ways under the influence of telegraphy, railways, steamships and the completer control of man over the separatism of Nature.

It is a commonplace that the present situation is largely the result of past events. Sometimes this statement is carried too far, when it is assumed to mean that the present is nothing but the surviving past: but even allowing for the entirely original incompetence of men in each generation, they have some ground for looking askance at their forefathers. Some good and some evil now existing, some bad habits and some fine ideals are survivals; and therefore it is necessary to look back before we look round. But in no section of politics does the past survive so obviously as in the international. The lofty sentiments of international peace and a League are old, and so are the atavisms of practical diplomacy. Bombing aeroplanes and submarines are new; but the policies of which they are the instruments are those of Assur-bani-pal and perhaps even of the anthropoid apes who were our common ancestors. The desire for peace and most of the plans for its attainment are old, and so is their ineffectiveness. Omitting the far distant past, the origins of much of our international politics may be found in the Dark and Middle Ages which separate present European organisation from the Empire of Rome. Ideas indeed control us still which come from Athens and Rome, habits which come from Assyria and Egypt: but most of our institutions and social habits arose in the Dark Ages. From the fifth to the tenth centuries of our era the nations and religions of most of the present world were being formed; and the formation of Europe eventually showed itself to be the most important element in international politics. China had its own period of gestation, but its life did not become international until recently and therefore international politics is dominated first by the inheritance of the Dark Ages. When the Dark Ages ended, the assumption upon which the new Europe of the Middle Ages was found to rest was the fundamental community of all the men who coun...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• PART I DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTACT OF PEOPLES IN GOVERNMENT, TRADE AND GENERAL CULTURE
• PART II DESCRIPTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION OF THE CONTACTS OF PEOPLES
• INDEX